Sales Management and the Right Software
Sales management is already a tough job. The right software won’t make it a breeze but will certainly make it livable.
Sales Management Made Livable
There are several key factors involved with sales management, any one of which, if slighted, can make the job nearly undoable. But if addressed squarely and head-on, sales management at least becomes something that can be done and done well.
Getting the Right People
When hiring sales reps, pay particular attention to the quality of the people you are hiring. In today’s highly competitive business environment, salespeople at the least need to have these characteristics:
- Intelligent and personable
- High interest in people, the courage to speak to them on their level
- Power to convince
- High capacity for listening
- Can observe, size up opportunities and make the most of them
- Willing to truly help the prospect, not just pitch
- Can function well as team members
Establish your Buyer Persona
With today’s Internet, a buyer can research all about your company and offerings before ever speaking to a sales rep. The reverse is also true: you can find out all about your buyers – their needs wants, desires, issues, and pain paints – so that your reps know a great deal about them before ever speaking to them. Salespeople can speak with authority and truly provide help.
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Coach and Mentor
According to recent studies, coaching and mentoring is the sales management function that is most neglected. It isn’t from a lack of willingness – it is usually because the sales manager is far too busy with other tasks. Those tasks usually involve chasing up sales figures and creating forecasts.
The right CRM solution, which allows you to keep up with your sales figures in real time without having to chase them up, will give you back that time. But in any case, without coaching and mentoring, your stuck with your sales team and its current abilities – without improvement as it now exists. The only way to improve the overall closing ratio is to hire more reps. Best to figure out, however you do so, how to get coaching and mentoring happening in a big way.
Sales Management Software
If you, your overall team and your individual reps are to succeed, they need to be armed with the best sales technology. This doesn’t mean traditional CRM solutions that mire down reps in administrative duties—it means tools that actually empower reps to manage their opportunities.
The right CRM solution is one that a sales rep will use to monitor and control their sales and to share all vital data with sales management and the rest of the team. It is also the one with which sales management can monitor and run the sales team, with the least amount of administrative effort.
