What Every Great Salesman Needs to Have

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Would your selling improve if you worked for the best sales manager in the United States? I’ll bet it would. Great sales managers offer business insight, develop sales strategies, and motivate sales professionals to get better results. In 2004, Sales and Marketing Management recognized Greg Alexander as the Sales Manager of the Year. He’s now the CEO of The Sales Benchmark Index (http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/. If he isn’t your manager, you still can benefit from his sales management skills.
 

Sell the way your customers buy. Alexander coached his sales staff to sell the way customers buy instead of the way salespeople want to sell. Alexander says, “Salespeople are paid to accelerate the timeline of selling. One way they accelerate the sales process is to offer discounts at the end of the quarter.” This quick fix devalues the salesperson. Instead, he coaches his staff to understand a customer’s definition of success for a project and work backwards to help the customer achieve it. The way to do that is for salespeople to identify milestones in a project that will lead to a customer’s success. The salesperson can then focus on helping a customer accelerate through those milestones while keeping the customer on time and on budget. Alexander adds, “When you look at the sales process from customers’ perspectives they appreciate it. There’s something in it for them.”

Manage Your Manger. Alexander says that there are 2 types of sales managers: Ones who think the salesperson works for them and others who understand that they work for the salesperson. The former tend to be micromanagers and report on the progress of the outcome. They don’t add value to the process. The latter will ask salespeople, “What can I do for you so you can be successful? What’s standing in your way either internally or externally? We all work for customers.” Alexander says if you have the latter sales manager it’s your job to be the customer’s internal champion and identify the areas that are preventing you from closing business. Then ask your manager for help in removing the obstacles. If you have the former, it’s your job to recognize it. These managers tend to be inspectors. They like consistent performance, predictability and a constant flow of information. They like to feel they are “in the know.” To accommodate them, salespeople should provide frequent updates, forecast accurately and involve their manager with all critical sales campaigns.

Multiply your productivity. Instead of selling by yourself, use all the resources you have to distinguish yourself from the competition. Alexander says to “turn people who are not customer facing into customer facing people.” For example, a person from manufacturing is familiar with the quality process. They typically don’t meet with customers. You can involve them in your sales process and have them speak on how your company’s process improvement impacts your customers. A passionate, articulate IT (information technology) person can talk about how the IT department is impacting the customer’s experience of billing or shipment tracking. These internal people can provide your competitive advantage. They’re not “salespeople” so their message gets heard. Alexander says, “They educate your customer and in the process you make yourself memorable to a customer.”

Run it like a business. Manufacturing, like sales, is a mission critical business process. What sets manufacturing apart is that its performance can be analyzed and measured. Think about how manufacturing reports the number of defects off a line and measures quality. Do most salespeople do the same? Can they report how many cold calls it takes to get appointments which then result in a certain number of sales? Alexander says most salespeople can’t. With that lack of analysis and measurement salespeople lack the ability to modify what they’re doing to reach their goals. He recommends applying the principles of process improvement to the elements that are critical to daily sales success. To do this sales professionals should measure what they’re doing to learn what’s working. He says, “If you’re not making the sales you need, look at the numbers of proposals, face to face meetings, warm leads and phone calls you make. Salespeople who manage themselves quantitatively are more successful.”

You may already have a great sales manager. If not, when you learn from a great sales manager it just might seem like you have one.