The 5 Best Practices of Highly Effective Sales Managers
A Guide to Leading High Performance Sales Teams
by
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The subtitle of this book is A Guide to Leading High Performance Sales Teams. It is a guidebook and a reference book for new as well as experienced sales managers who want to optimize the selling efforts of their salespeople to achieve the desired levels of sales volume, profits, and growth necessary for a thriving organization. It focuses on five critical best practices that, when used consistently and systematically, result in highly effective and efficient sales teams. It doesn’t cover topics like interviewing, hiring, compensation, forecasting, or sales force automation, although these things are all important. (The appendix will list books that will help the sales manager in those and other areas.) This book is for the sales manager who finds him/herself in the same position I found myself when I got my first sales manager position: an existing sales team leader who needed to tap the full potential of each salesperson on my team.
When I made the transition from salesperson to sales manager thirty years ago, although I needed to learn how to create job descriptions, interview, and hire prospective salespeople, structure compensation plans, forecast, and myriad other tasks, my immediate need was, “How do I move my sales team from where they are to where they need to be? How do I improve the performance of the stars as well as the non-stars, using methods that motivate both?” I quickly found that managing was one part of the equation, but leadership was an equal and oftentimes more important issue if I were to develop my people to become all that they could be. This book shows sales managers how to be the bridge to develop salespeople individually and develop the individuals into highly effective and efficient sales teams.
tHE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPING SALESPEOPLE
Developing salespeople is not the role that many sales managers thought they were taking on when they got the job of sales manager. How important is the development role for a sales manager? In a study done by The Forum Corporation, a Boston-based training and consulting firm, Jocelyn Davis, Vice President of Product Development, quoted a survey they had done:
“All of our respondents were unanimous in saying the most important role for sales managers today—and also the role they need the most help with—is the coaching and developing of their sales staff.” 1
As the survey respondents showed and as I have experienced, the role sales managers need the most help with is coaching and developing their sales staff. Coaching and developing salespeople is as much leadership as it is management. To coach and develop others takes a coach’s attitude, which we will look at in Chapter 1. Chapters 2 through 6 focus on the five best practices of highly effective sales managers that enable them to develop and create consistently high performing sales teams. These best practices are:
1. Define and clearly communicate expectations
2. Observe sales team’s use of the critical selling activities
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About the Book
The Five Best Practices of Highly Effective Sales Managers is a book for new as well as experienced Sales Managers. It focuses on five best practices that result in highly effective and efficient sales team which achieve the desired levels of sales volume, profits and growth necessary for a successful organization. The single most important factor for improving a sales person’s performance, as found by a major university study, is effective supervisory leadership. Filled with real-life sales management examples and anecdotes, the book shows sales managers how to use an effective supervisory leadership process to achieve high salesperson productivity. The book discusses the foundational attitude of highly effective sales managers then presents the five best practices that enable sales managers to answer the question, “How do I tap the full potential of each of my salespeople?”
About the Author
For over forty years, Jerry Elmore has drawn from his own experiences in sales, sales management and sales training as well as the experiences of hundreds of sales people and sales executives of the Fortune 500 companies he has worked with. He has created and refined sales management leadership concepts that boost performance and improve teamwork. His approach has been embraced by sales managers who want to optimize the selling efforts of their salespeople to achieve the desired levels of sales volume, profits and growth necessary for a thriving organization.
Jerry is a highly effective sales management consultant and popular speaker with significant experience selling, managing and training sales managers and salespeople. Jerry lives in