As a sales manager, you are judged not only by the success of your team but on the improvements you make to the entire organization as time goes on. Often this will mean enabling others to their jobs better.
Ultimately, sales are about persuasion and persuasion is about making a strong case. Without evidence, even the most persuasive people are hard-pressed to put together a winning case. For sales, this evidence is called sales collateral. In more ways than one, sales collateral is what will determine the success or failure of a sales manager.
Whether you are new to your organization, or you are looking to boost the productivity of the team you’ve been managing for some time, here are five things you can do to see immediate results.
1. Engage In Regular Sales Forecast Meetings
If you want your salespeople to progress, invite them to take a knee with you. Review current and past data, and help your salespeople look to the future with actionable (and realistic) sales goals.
Even if you are being judged by other growth metrics, ability to meet the quota is always going to be #1. Are your reps going to make it this quarter? If not, find out why that should be your biggest priority.
As sales enablement manager, your job is to help your salesforce comprehend the data that is worth examining. The information should be organized in easy-to-read reports so that it’s accurate and complete.
2. Discuss The Biggest Obstacles
Every team has obstacles that continuously trip them up. These should be discussed at every opportunity. Find out directly from your reps what obstacles are limiting their performance and what resources they need to improve efficiency.
For example, on average, 20% of a salesperson’s time is spent searching for relevant sales collateral. Worse still, after all that time and effort, many sales professionals will reach for the most easy-to-find materials rather than the ones that are most relevant to the customer’s needs.
If this is the case for you, ensure that each member has the proper sales collateral available when it’s needed. This means positioning proposals to convey value to the customer and updating contracts with the most accurate information.
3. Integrate Data Across Various Solutions
Having the right data when your reps are on a sales call or prospecting new opportunities can make a huge difference. For your team to be as efficient as possible, each member needs instant access to real-time sales analytics.
The crazy part is, you probably already have these analytics! Your CPQ solution is giving you detailed metrics on the most effective discount levels and the next best action to increase win probability. Your CMS is tracking the content your prospects are consuming before talking to sales. And so on…
Despite this, your reps aren’t using this data because it isn’t right in front of them. Integrating your sales data across your solutions so that it is presented to them when and where it’s relevant will have an immediate impact on how your team is leveraging that data.
If the software your team uses isn’t arranged to share analytics team-wide, find ways to integrate current and past sales figures to improve the way your team leverages data.
4. Utilize Guided Selling and Support
The sad reality that sales managers are accepting is that some reps just perform better than others. Wouldn’t it be a quick win if you could confer the knowledge of your best performing rep to your worst? Enter guided selling.
You should be assisting each member when it comes to generating and capturing leads, as well as how to follow-up and close to ensure the most cost-effective process for winning deals. You can shadow each team member in the field, or you can use guided selling to direct the sales process from afar. Your team will then be able to navigate common hurdles with no guesswork required.
5. Integrate CPQ Solutions
CPQ (Configure Price Quote) solutions are quickly becoming a favorite of sales teams everywhere. These platforms can instantly deliver valuable analytics to team members, can stock necessary sales collateral and can make the most current sales data instantly available as deals are in progress.
The key to making this a quick win is in choosing the right CPQ solution. Don’t spend time and money dealing with a vendor that will take months transferring your processes into their system. Find a solution that you can get up and running in days. From there, CPQ users see an average 8% improvement in overall team attainment of sales quota.
With these five quick wins put into play, your salesforce will improve and you’ll look terrific at your next performance review.
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