Sales Management Essentials
This page contains information about the Basic Essentials of Sales Management
Much of the content is taken from the ebook that you can download here, which is supplemented by other content such as videos, blog articles, and more. All of this content will help you to build a solid foundation for your sales management career.
Hitting the Ground Running!
Malik’s 5 Fundamentals of Management
You need to be personally highly organized and self-disciplined – managing your time and where you place your focus is the starting point of management. If you can’t manage yourself, you can’t manage others.
You must understand what is important to whomever you report to and focus on delivering that. Make sure both you and your manager agree in writing what your goals are so there are no misunderstandings going forward.
This means whether it is external partners & vendors or members of other departments in the organization, learning how to interact efficiently with each is critical.
You need to figure out how to collaborate and build positive relationships with other managers – particularly those in departments critical in supporting sales such as Marketing or Customer Support
If you have mastered the first 4, then managing those who report to becomes much easier because you have cleared any external obstacles and allowed them to concentrate on selling.
Key Management Principles
The E-book “Theory Made Real: Pipeline CRM Puts Principles Into Practice” provides you with a blueprint for how to apply these timeless principles that will help keep you on track.

Focus on Results
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Contribution to the whole
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Easy user rights management
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Administering Pipeliner rarely a full time job
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Huge time and cost savings
Virtues of Management
The freedom that today’s technology provides requires that a responsible operating system is built on some timeless virtues.

MODERATION (Temperantia)

FAIRNESS (Lustitia)

CHARITY (Caritas)

TRUST (Fides)

WISDOM (Sapientia)

FORTITUDE (Fortitudo)

HOPE (Spes)
Managing Salespeople
Keep your sales compensation and commission plans simple and easy to calculate. Incentivize overperformance by not capping commissions — this drives salespeople to redouble their efforts in the latter part of the year instead of taking their foot off the pedal.
Coach your salespeople and Mentor them. Then it is up to them to perform. But once you have done that and you see no improvement, you have to be willing to let them go. Otherwise, you cannot grow.
Sales is really not a team sport. It’s not like soccer, hockey or football—it isn’t a group of people all cooperating to move to a single goal. People have tried to operate sales teams this way, but it never works. You’re never going to get a group of salespeople to agree to be paid a “team commission” or some such if the team reaches a goal.
But even so, a sales manager has to create a team spirit. And because a sales team is composed of such vastly different individuals, all self-motivated, it’s definitely a tricky business
In today’s sales environment, perception is everything. Your sales reps have reputations that rapidly spread online–good or bad. Guess what? As a sales manager, so do you! If you are perceived as a manager that helps, that reps can rely on, then you’ll be able to rely on your reps, too.
And they’ll be able to recommend you, as one of their customers would recommend them.
If you have salespeople who are great at opening doors and creating opportunities but not great at closing, then rather than try to improve their closing skills keep them focused on filling the early stages of the pipeline. Focus those salespeople who are good at developing and closing opportunities on the later stages.
Everyone will be happier and more successful as a result.
There are some fundamental rules that you need to follow as a Sales Manager:
- Never get in competition with your salesperson.
- Never summarily overrule a salesperson.
- Never sell for them Save.
Sales is about effective results. So you need to measure those results.
For example:
- How many (outbound) leads does a rep bring in? Of what quality?
- How many inbound leads does a rep convert?
- What is the average length of time for a rep’s lead conversion?
- What percentage of leads does a rep “heat up” and make ready for primetime sales?
- What percentage of leads does a rep convert to opportunities?
- What is the average length of time it takes a rep to bring an opportunity to a successful close?
- What is a rep’s closing ratio—the percentage of opportunities closed?
- How good is a rep at upselling? At cross-selling?
Remove extraneous administration from salespeople’s jobs and allow them to focus more on high-value activities.
Pipeliner CRM has inbuilt automation and workflows that allow companies to automate many of the mundane and repetitive tasks that weigh salespeople down.
Sales Technology
Selecting the right sales technology & sales management tools will be a critical part of your success. There are many considerations so here is an ebook that will make this process so much easier.