What’s the biggest hurdle you face as a sales manager? According to a study conducted by The Bridge Group, two of the biggest issues that executives faced in 2018 are sales productivity and sales performance. Another study suggests that 67% of sales team members don’t achieve their expected sales quota per annum. These staggering figures may reveal the problems your sales team is currently facing.
As you go about preparing sales team expectations and accountabilities, focus on the hindrances that keep your sales team members from performing at top-notch level. These helpful guidelines in setting and communicating sales team expectations may help you boost your team’s productivity and sales:
Steps in Managing Sales Performance:
Communicating and setting expectations
This step can be confusing to sales managers. Many of them will tell you that they have successfully communicated their expectations to their team. However, sometimes managers use vague language, making their message lackluster in clarity and purpose. In order to successfully communicate and set expectations, you should explicitly tell your team members what you want them to do and what they need to achieve. In other words, you should specifically tell them about your expected behaviors and expected results. You should also define metrics, which includes how you will measure their performance within a specific time period. Goal-setting is collaborative, so you should also communicate how you will support them.
Monitoring and managing behaviors
- Accountability
Once you set the goals of each sales team member, they should be held accountable for those goals because there is a likelihood that they will follow through. A recent survey shows that 46% of sales leaders are not confident in holding their teams accountable because they either fear confrontation or they under-value the need for accountability.
- Positivity
While sales results can’t be managed, behaviors and activities can be monitored and managed. When you are monitoring your team’s behavior, you should be upbeat and encouraging. The monitoring aspect of this process is designed to help your team members succeed and not to bring them down.
- Regularity
You should set regular weekly meetings in order to evaluate your team’s compliance. This is a time to review, measure, and coach your sales team.
Monitoring results
Many sales managers tend to focus on this third step more than any other step on the list. However, you need to spread your focus on the other steps as well in order to develop a well-rounded sales performance management process. It is easy to monitor the sales results of a team with well-communicated performance standards. Admittedly, we all live in a results-driven world. It is the ultimate bottom-line, but your team’s ability to accomplish results is driven by managing behaviors.
Providing feedback
Constructive feedback is essential for salespeople. One of the most important roles of sales managers is providing feedback that would build up your team members and motivate them to be better. Your team expects you to provide guidance, counseling, and even resources to help them achieve their results. The way that you deliver feedback can make a huge difference between developing a winning team versus a de-motivated team. Your feedback should be actionable, positively-framed, and specific. In providing feedback, it is also important for your team to hear your recommendations and to see you modeling the correct behavior.
Automate Your Sales Process
Copper suggests that 40% of business professionals in small to medium enterprises waste around 2 to 5 hours a week on manual data entry on their CRM. Unfortunately, this greatly affects the productivity levels of your sales development team. Avoid roadblocks like this through a smart and powerful Sales CRM that will empower you to do more with the same amount of effort.
The success of an organization mostly rely on the success of its sales development team. This is why it’s important to identify and address key problem areas in order to achieve peak sales performance. Always keep in mind that discipline and a powerful Sales CRM can help you skyrocket to success.
