Organizations that want to grow their revenue must invest in sales leadership training. When sales reps are promoted to sales managers without any additional management and leadership training, what is the reason?
A track record of solid sales results is often required for a sales manager to be promoted from within an organization.
There is a tendency for many organizations to disregard other key skills that are essential to succeeding in this role. Incorrect assumptions are often the reason behind this short-sightedness.
Sales management and sales leadership skills, for example, are often found to be directly related to sales skills – and scalable.
Therefore, they believe that a sales representative who is successful in sales will also succeed in management and leadership. Not true! In addition to being a successful salesperson, you need additional skills to succeed as a sales manager.
Pearl Lemon Sales is happy to help with the essential skill of a sales manager.
How Can Sales Leadership Training Be Delivered?
Providing sales managers and leaders with sales management training should help them achieve maximum performance and results.
By equipping them with the right skills, they would be able to not only manage core sales functions, but also motivate and manage their sales teams to greater levels of success for themselves, their teams, and their organizations.
However, regardless of the industry, market or organization, the following team management components should always be addressed in sales leadership training:
In addition to managing key sales functions, sales leadership training should equip sales managers to motivate and manage their teams.
- Fostering a sales-friendly environment
A sales manager needs to learn how to cultivate a culture that fosters and rewards success.
Holding others accountable is crucial, as is fostering open communication, following solid hiring processes, and investing in personal and team development.
Additionally, they need to learn how to emphasize this clarity in their expectations, measures, and communication about the consequences.
- Encouraging the sales team to do their best
The sales manager must emphasize the use of SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely) goals in order to optimize team performance.
Given their time investment, they need to be able to identify which activities yield the best results.
Added to that, management training content should set expectations, define the metrics, and establish the consequences for enhancing sales performance.
- Reducing low performance
Programs should train managers how to support or retrain underperforming salespeople, as well as modify their job duties or assign them to new roles.
Furthermore, sales managers need to learn how to deal with a performance problem quickly, as well as how to manage performance improvements (PIPs).
- Individual meetings
A manager needs the training to succeed in all phases of the sales process, overcome obstacles, and coach for success.
Preparation should be emphasized, the agenda should be driven by the salesperson, and a collaborative and coaching culture should prevail.
- Ride-along services
Additionally, sales managers should understand the boundaries of what can and should be done on a supervised sales call in order to conduct ride-along.
Managers – and, ultimately, representatives – may also find this training helpful in determining how to prepare for, conduct, and follow up with clients after a call.
When a manager rides along with a team member, the objective is to support the employee, clients, and the organization as well.
Sales leadership training can be extremely beneficial to organizations and their sales teams. Having access to essential tools and skills that they didn’t possess as a salesperson is another benefit of being a sales manager.
In order to attain the team’s personal, team, and organizational performance goals, they will now be able to create a cohesive vision for sales.