6 Strategies to Effectively Manage a Sales Team

1. Commit time to attract and recruit new talent.

You are looking for people who possess a great attitude, an eagerness to learn and openness to feedback and coaching. These people are out there, and you need to maintain awareness to ensure good candidates are not missed. Here are some other key attributes of high-performance sales professionals: 

• Experience aligned with your company and industry.  
• A solid track record.  
• Strong written and verbal communication skills. 
• A natural ability to initiate and build relationships.  
• An energy and passion that you can sense when around them.  
• A demonstrated desire to always be learning and improving.  

2. Prioritise Onboarding and Training your sales team. 

You need to ensure your onboarding process is thorough and consistent to reduce ramp up time. Great salespeople are eager to learn and improve, do you have online as well as instructor led training opportunities in sales and other related business topics? As yourself these questions: 

• Do we have effective and accessible training? 
• Are we encouraging our people to learn other business-related topics to support their sales performance? 
• As a sales manager, am I meeting one-to-one to deliver coaching to my team? 
• Am I seeing consistent demonstrable improvements in my team or has their growth stagnated? 

3. Clearly communicate your expectations to your sales team.

You need to ensure that the goals you set are clear and achievable. Are you tracking achievement against goals? Is your tracking transparent and visible to the individuals on the team? 

4. Support your team with tools and processes.

Sales processes need to be part of the onboarding and training to ensure consistency. Are you automating manual tasks? Does your team have a library of email and communication templates? Do they have adequate collateral to use in their sales process?  There are two key tools that are necessary for any sales team, regardless of size: 

• Customer relationship management (CRM) software. The benefits of a CRM cannot be overstated. Your sales team needs to be well trained in its use and understand the importance in maintaining its accuracy.  
• A Sales Playbook is essential. This is ideally available digitally and documents the sales process, proposal templates, email templates, call scripts, buyer personas and much more.  

5. Coach and support – do no micromanage.

WorkPlan has a program that will help you understand the difference and how to adjust your style from manager to coach. A great sales manager is always a great coach.  

6. Retention of sales talent is a key sales management strategy.

All the preceding strategies will help to build retention.  Here are three more ideas to help keep your team engaged and committed: 

• Consider retention bonuses for different tenure milestones. These may be financial or non-financial like trips, conference attendance or external learning opportunities.  

• Broaden the responsibilities of people who show interest and competence in different areas. For example, assign a person leadership over a new project or to create a presentation for the other team members.  
• Be transparent and communicative with the sales team about strategic plans, company news and analytics etc.  

These six strategies are a great start to being an effective Sales Team Manager. You can get started by creating an action plan to put these strategies into action. 

WorkPlan has an extensive catalogue of online Sales Training modules to help you develop as a sales professional. Our Sales Leadership and Management Program is comprehensive and includes 12 learning modules.  

Get started by creating an action plan to put these strategies into action. 

WorkPlan has an extensive catalogue of online Sales Training modules to help you develop as a sales professional. Our Sales Leadership and Management Program is comprehensive and includes 12 learning modules.  

If you would like more information or to schedule a call to discuss your business, contact WorkPlan on 1300 726 708 or contact@workplan.com.au for more details.

Download our Sales Excellence Program brochure here.

Interested in a tailored solution?  Contact us to explore how we can meet your specific needs.