Sales management is a lot like a team sport – you need to manage, motivate, and organize your team to help them grow and thrive. And that’s exactly what sales management does. In this article, we tell you why sales management is so important and why it needs your attention.
Sales management has a direct impact on your revenue and your sales team’s growth and productivity. It helps manage and improve sales processes while giving you the visibility you need to guide and support individual sales reps, identify best practices, and help your sales team close deals faster.
Sales management relies on investing in, and developing, sales managers. And for good reason: Top-performing sales managers achieve 39% more of their target than bottom-performing managers while an underperforming sales manager can cost an organization approximately $3.5M.
How sales management directly impacts business revenues
Sales management is the process of optimizing your sales team and processes by organizing, motivating, and leading sales reps – while tracking and improving team performance.
Sales management covers at the very least these four aspects: strategy, people, activity, and monitoring/reporting.
This means that sales management includes
- Developing the right sales strategy and goals for the team and individuals
- Hiring and retaining the right talent
- Investing in training and sales coaching,
- Identifying and ensuring consistent practices across the team
- Using the right tools to track and measure performance
– with the ultimate focus on building a better sales engine and driving business revenues.
5 reasons why sales coaching is important for business
1. It sets a solid sales methodology and clear expectations for sales reps
With effective sales management, you can set consistent sales practices and processes for sales reps to follow. This makes it easier for sales reps to understand what is expected of them, and how they can deliver – having a huge direct impact on sales effectiveness
Additionally, with strong sales management practices in place, sales teams – from managers to reps – know exactly what is expected of them, ensuring that they are better supported to perform and improve.
2. It helps sales teams see the big picture with data
On one hand, sales management can help sales reps see the big picture of the sales function – while helping them understand how they contribute to it.
On the other hand, it helps sales managers with visibility into individual sales rep performance – giving them the granular understanding they need to analyze the big picture and make the right decisions for the team.
A big part of this is because of the sales data management and monitoring/tracking aspects of sales management. With a strong focus on sales data analysis and sales rep performance, sales management can help you identify areas of improvement and opportunity for your sales team.
3. It helps sales managers and sales reps with better time management
A Forbes article reported that salespeople spend less than 36% of their time actually selling or building customer relationships.
This is because they spend too much time on other sales activities like learning about new tools, managing individual tasks, etc.
Sales management done right helps sales managers understand where sales reps are spending their time. This can help reduce or better manage habits or practices that don’t directly impact performance or revenue.
Additionally, investing in sales management tools can help managers better use their time. For example, a sales conversation intelligence tool can help a manager observe and give feedback on every sales rep’s call – without having to shadow them on every call.
4. It shows you when and where to focus sales coaching efforts
One of the biggest reasons to invest in sales coaching is its impact on revenue and performance. It can result in a 25% to 40% increase in sales activity while impacting leads generated, average deal size, and close ratio.
However, nailing the when, what, and where of sales coaching can be a challenge for sales managers. This is where a good sales management program can help.
Sales management can surface issues, challenges, and bottlenecks at the right time – empowering managers to step in to support sales reps at the right time — and with personalized as well as contextual guidance and feedback.
5. It helps make better hiring and product decisions
A sales team is only as good as the people in it, and sales management has a direct influence on this ‘people’ aspect of sales.
Whether it is to hire the most suitable talent, to help them grow, or to recognize and reward performance, sales management keeps managers in close touch with the skills and performance of individual sales reps.
To sum it up, on the people front, sales management is absolutely essential to
- Identify the best-fit skills/traits and hire the right talent, and
- Retain, reward, and grow existing talent
Sales management can also help you make better product decisions since it involves keeping a close eye on customer interactions and customer feedback.
Whether it is feature requests, pricing feedback, or competitor benchmarking, a strong sales management program will surface critical insights that can help you make better business and product decisions.
Wrapping Up
We hope this post helps you understand how you can use sales management to efficiently streamline and manage your end-to-end sales process.
Here’s a quick recap.
Why sales management is a must-have for any company
Your business will gain an edge over the competition only when your sales team is doing their best, and when all your sales processes are working well together to hit quotas, as well as gather customer and market insights to improve your business strategy.
Sales management does exactly that.
How can you implement sales management in your company?
Successful sales management techniques to start with include
- Managing sales rep performance through training and personalized sales coaching Creating feedback loops,
- Capturing and using data for performance tracking, deal monitoring, and forecasting.
- Leveraging sales management tools such as cloud-based CRM systems, revenue intelligence, and sales coaching platforms.
Recommended reading:
- Cracking the Sales Management Code: The Secrets to Measuring and Managing Sales Performance (by Jason Jordan)
- Sales Management. Simplified: The Straight Truth About Getting Exceptional Results from Your Sales Team (by Mike Weinberg)