Manage a Sales Team

Managing a sales team is all about finding a balance between setting expectations and giving your employees freedom to use their talents. You’ll want to set definite quotas you expect team members to meet, but avoid micromanaging. Make an extra effort to support any underperformers, but also be ready to adjust your expectations if the team as a whole is consistently having trouble. Don’t forget to be encouraging all along the way!

Steps

Managing Sales Quotas

1. Set reasonable quotas. Look at the historical performance of your sales team. How many units have they been selling per quarter? Take this number and factor in a rough estimate of the kind of growth you'd like to see. Use this number to determine the quotas you want your sales team to reach.
   • For instance, your salespeople might have been 25 units a quarter, but you'd like to see 20 percent growth. Set a quota of 30 units a quarter.
   • Setting aggressive quotas can be reasonable, as long as you are prepared for the possibility of scaling back in the future.
   • If you are just setting out and don't have historical data to draw on, research the sales figures of your competitors or similar companies in your market.
2. Hold your team accountable for quotas. Managing a team well means having expectations and helping team members meet them. If you want each team member to sell 30 units a quarter, for instance, expect them to do so. Don’t make excuses for underperformers.
   • If, however, many of your team members consistently have trouble meeting quotas, it may be time to review your expectations and create more reasonable ones.
3. Review your metrics to keep expectations realistic. Consistent, widespread problems making sales--even among your best workers--is a sign that your expectations are off. Keep careful track of your sales metrics and compare them regularly against your expectations. Make any adjustments that seem reasonable.
   • For instance, if many of your team members seem to be having trouble meeting your quota of 30 units per quarter, try scaling back to 25.

Managing without Micromanaging

1. Focus on managing results rather than activities. Trying to oversee too many of your salesforce’s daily activities can lead to micromanaging. Instead, look at their results. Are they meeting their quotas? What kind of revenue are they generating? What kind of contacts or potential sales are they generating?
   • This approach allows you to give your salesforce some freedom to use their talents and skills to produce results.
   • For instance, you might have some salespeople who generate more through social media or networking rather than cold calling. Let them do things their way, as long as the results are good!Template:Expertgreenbox:160958
2. Ask your force what they do rather than telling them what to do. Good coaching doesn’t have to be the top-down approach of giving orders. Instead, show curiosity about your team members’ approaches. Ask them what seems to be working well, and what challenges they have.
3. Use your high performers as examples. Learning from your salesforce gives you the opportunity to set guidelines that really work. Look at your team members who are performing best. After talking to them about what works well, use this information to develop optimal practices for others.
   • For instance, you might learn that your highest performers make an extra effort at the beginning of each quarter, rather than trying to spread their quotas out evenly across that time.
   • Based on that, you can suggest that your team hosts networking events or a special sales drive to make an early-quarter push.

Dealing with Team Problems

1. Make sure selling is the priority. To operate effectively, a salesforce should make selling is the priority. This sounds simple, but you need to make sure that team members are not being burdened with paperwork, or non-essential tasks. If so, give those tasks to employees who aren’t focused on sales so that your team can focus on its primary job.
2. Take away some freedom from underperformers. If any of your team members are having consistent, unexplained problems meeting your expectations, it’s time for you to take action. This is the sort of instance when you would take away some of those workers’ freedom. start to take away some freedom for underperformers which means like more planning and review.
   • For instance, you might begin having weekly review meetings with underperformers. Touching base more frequently gives you the opportunity to do more hands-on-coaching. Offer them advice for improvement at a more regular basis.
3. Work extra hard to stay in touch with a remote team. Communication is key if your salesforce doesn’t operate on-site. Make sure to be in regular contact with remote salespeople to stay abreast of their progress. In addition, schedule some face-to-face time to meet on a regular basis.
   • You could try having a weekly teleconference with your remote workers, along with bi-weekly summaries for instance, Then, plan on having face-to-face meetings a few times a quarter, or whenever seems most appropriate.
4. Solve interpersonal problems. Occasionally, you may run into issues, such as when a junior salesperson is insubordinate to a senior one. Or, for instance, you might have a senior salesperson who has begun to slack off. If this happens, call a meeting to deal with the individual(s).
   • Provide a review of past performance, a clear summary of the problem, and suggestions for improvement.
   • Agree to a meeting in the future to review the situation. Decide on consequences if the situation does not improve.
   • If the issue is not resolved, or if other problems consist, consider firing the worker(s).

Encouraging your Team

1. Set a positive tone. Making sales takes a special set of skills, and it’s hard work. Still, you don’t want to suggest to your force that the job is impossible. Always speak in encouraging tones about progress. That will make your team want to strive for continued success.
2. Train your force to have confidence in your product. If a team is having trouble making sales, it’s often because they don’t understand or believe in their product. Taking time to explain your product and talk about its benefits to your team will help them make compelling pitches and complete sales. For instance:
   • If you’re selling clothing, talk about its durability or quality. Give team members a chance to try the clothing for themselves. They can then tell customers about their first-hand experience.
   • If you’re selling home solar panels, spend time talking to your team about how much this can save consumers on power bills, how efficient the product is, and so on. Specific data will give your team something concrete to talk with customers about.
3. Recognize your team members when they do well. Taking some time to congratulate and reward your salesforce for doing well will be greatly appreciated. Just make sure that if you’re recognizing individual employees, you have concrete reasons for doing so. This will stop other team members feel like the employees are being unfairly recognized.
   • For instance, you could have a running policy of recognizing any team member who exceeds their quota by 10 percent or more.
   • Recognize individual employees in whatever ways seem appropriate. You could use an employee of the month plaque, or take them out to lunch, for instance.
   • You could also recognize the team as a whole, for instance, if it exceeds its quarterly quota.

References

See also

• Create a Productive Working Environment
• Be Appointed to a Board of Directors
• Become a Better and Effective Team Leader
• Set Up an Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• Retain Good Employees
• Be an Artist Manager
• Build a Management Team
• Use an In Basket
• Write an Employee Handbook
• Plan an Employee Retreat

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