(By Loyd Ford) To be seen as a top-flight leader today, you need to have a clear vision of the sales process and the ability to effectively lead your team of salespeople. Here are ten key radio sales manager expectations to focus on to bring home the bacon:
Become excellent at recruiting and retaining talented salespeople. To be a truly great sales manager, you should spend time looking for great talent continuously. The top sales managers regularly seek out and interview sales candidates regularly even when they don’t have any openings. Keeping tabs on top talent in your market takes knowing where that talent is and what they are capable of regularly.
Exceptional sales managers are good at casting a compelling vision and making it easier for individual sellers to buy in and create opportunities from the vision. It is well known that sellers control the narrative and lead potential clients by listening, watching for opportunities, and closing when buying signs appear, but great sales managers must encourage the story that sellers believe in their heads as they face their day-in and day-out sales reality.
Having a measurable process that every seller knows and follows. Weekly sales meetings should have a regular training element to stimulate learning, but a weekly sales meeting is also a regular opportunity to encourage individual competitive edge and to focus on the accumulative goal of the team. The best sales managers make their weekly sales meeting a top priority with a specific set time and a planned agenda. Since everyone loves meetings, powerful sales managers plan a meeting that lasts no longer than one hour.
Elite sales managers know that their job is to make sellers’ jobs easier and to create as much opportunity for individual sellers to spend the most ‘time spent selling.’ Selling is made hard enough by rules, paperwork, and often unnecessary red tape. Great managers instinctively know how to make it easier for sellers to avoid being caught up in anything other than selling.
Great sales managers manage multiple personalities by listening, watching behavior and process, and encouraging individual sellers regularly. A successful sales manager should be able to encourage and hold accountable many different kinds of sellers to work as a team to achieve a common goal.
Great sales managers don’t only tell – they sell. Examples are powerful, and nothing makes a better example than a leader who does what he or she asks of the team.
The top sales managers spend time with individuals on their teams. Spending time with individuals on your team allows you to share ideas, observe the process, and encourage others personally.
The best sales managers make selling a variety of products a regular goal and help individual sellers achieve balanced success in knowing and using all of their products to solve problems for potential clients regularly. They encourage balanced selling and make sure that individual sellers have the best education on how every product works in a variety of situations.
It’s also critical to be a good coach and mentor to your sales team. Many people can run a top-down dictatorship that micro-manages. However, celebrating the wins along the way is also essential to creating a culture of purpose, commitment, and passionate execution vs. simply “doing it my way.”
Finally, great sales managers praise winners in public. Yes, in front of other sellers, in front of the full team. Excellent sales managers make it a priority to catch sellers doing something right and then let everyone know that they are crushing it, too.
You can tell where the great sales managers are today. There is purpose, energy, and a team bond that propels their organization and goals forward. It isn’t easy to be great. It takes being prepared and constant self-improvement to sharpen your skills and keep the team focused on new goals.
Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or [email protected]. Read Loyd’s Radio Ink archives here.
