As a sales manager, your goal is to create effective and motivated salespeople, because motivated salespeople sell more. If a salesperson doesn't fulfil their goals, the focus is often on the fact that the salesperson hasn't done their best or makes a lot of excuses as to why a sale hasn't been successful.
The sales manager must help their salespeople make sales, so when a salesperson fails, the sales manager fails too. As a sales manager, you continuously train your employees and tell them what to do, but you may still find that the salesperson doesn't do what you agreed.
If you need some tips on how to create motivated salespeople who have the courage to become even better and more efficient, read on:
Motivate your salespeople
There can be many different things that motivate different salespeople. Therefore, it can be difficult to motivate all your salespeople if you use the same approach for all your salespeople.
Roughly speaking, there are three things that motivate salespeople:
- The feeling of responsibility
- Development
- Purpose
- Feedback
The feeling of responsibility
A salesperson often works independently and therefore has a natural desire to experience autonomy. That's why it's important to give salespeople responsibility, but it can also be that the salesperson is motivated by feeling that he or she has influence. This could be influence over what to sell, how the day or week is structured and so on.
Development
Salespeople, like most people, want to feel that they are developing in their work. This is also why performance reviews are held with employees in a company. However, when you work in sales management, there can be an even greater need for continuous development. This doesn't mean that the salesperson has to be sent on courses regularly - it can just as easily be internal development days.
As a sales manager, you also have a responsibility to make your salespeople even better at what they do. You can do this through training. Practise situations with the salesperson and rehearse different scenarios and different sales arguments. Observe the salesperson and give feedback.
Purpose
It's always easier to sell something you're passionate about. Your sales reps (and you) probably feel the same way, and for good reason: You can see the purpose of the product or service you're selling. You can see the difference it makes to the customer and you can't understand how they can live without it. In other words, you realise that the product has a number of benefits that your (potential) customers can also benefit from.
If your salesperson can't see the purpose of the sale, it will be difficult to convince others to buy the product and the salesperson will not be motivated to sell the product. In this case, the salesperson may need to get to know the product even better before trying to make the sale.
Feedback
Remember to give your salespeople continuous feedback. Even if you don't work closely together, it's important that your salespeople feel that they get regular feedback. Give them praise and recognition - it will motivate them to keep up the good work, or maybe even to do it even better. If you don't meet with your salespeople on a daily or weekly basis, send them a regular email or call them.
Help your sellers
Sales management is all about helping your salespeople become even better. In addition to sales goals, it can be beneficial to set up some action goals as well. Action goals are targets for how a salesperson should overcome some predicted challenges - in other words, what effort is needed to overcome the challenges.
Action goals help employees become even better at handling the challenges they typically encounter during the working week. By predicting possible challenges and setting goals for how to solve them, the salesperson also becomes more aware of how to act. This way, they can draw on their past successes in overcoming a challenge when they encounter a similar challenge in the future.
Remove the salesperson's excuses
One of the most common challenges we see with salespeople is that they make excuses for why a sale didn't work. Some salespeople have an expectation of how things will go even before they have contacted the customer. If the salesperson doesn't believe in a sale, how will the customer be convinced to buy?
Of course, there can be many reasons why a sale doesn't materialise. Here it is important to distinguish between genuine excuses and inhibiting excuses. Inhibiting excuses stem from the seller's own bias and can potentially be avoided if the seller knows how to handle the situation.
It could be that the salesperson is afraid to ask about the customer to generate additional sales because it seems presumptuous. Instead, as a sales manager, you should help the salesperson ask the right questions. Help the salesperson by providing new inspiration or by looking at the situation from a new angle.
Excuses typically arise because something is out of the seller's comfort zone.
Observe the sellers
If you're unsure why a salesperson isn't meeting their goals, it's a good idea to observe what they do and say. Based on your observations, you will be better able to help the salesperson: "Instead of saying that, try asking about this instead".
Get an overview of your sales reps' sales competences
To develop a salesperson, it's important that you know their competences and strengths. With the help of our sales test, Sales Assessment, you can get an overview of a salesperson's strengths and development areas across 18 crucial competences, including presentation, planning, goal orientation and objection handling.
You will learn how to understand the different sales skills and competences and how they affect sales performance. In addition, you will also learn how to develop your salespeople.
If you want to learn more about Sales Assessment, you are welcome to contact us by phone 70 26 32 25 or email info@hrsolutions.dk.
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