5 Signs of a Great Sales Manager

A great sales manager must be diverse enough to be everything from an instructor to a mentor to a therapist.  As leader of a sales team, he or she must be able to bond well with different personalities and navigate the politics of the sales department to create a team that effectively rockets through a sales cycle, cultivating the best leads, generating high revenue and becoming super sellers.

Here are five traits that can help a manager produce such a team:

1. Knows how to keep the team motivated.

 A great sales manager keeps morale up even during sales slumps and knows how to not only plot a course of action for recovery, but also how to inspire individual sellers to take control of their territories and see possibility where they saw failure beforehand.

Assuming the role of a motivational coach, a great sales manager doesn’t use empty platitudes to inspire the team. Instead, he creates a culture that is empowering and positive. He identifies unique strengths of individual sellers and encourages them to hone their personal style while minimizing weaknesses.

2. Always ready to take make hard decisions.

 While exceptional sales managers may be well-liked and respected, they often make decisions that are tough and unpopular. However, they have to put team success above the team’s emotional reactions. A few of the typically difficult decisions for sales managers include:

• Firing a salesperson who lacks real ability for the job despite the time invested in training.
• Reassigning a seller who may not be the best fit for a territory.
• Giving a salesperson a bad formal review and pointing out their professional shortcomings, such as low productivity or failure to meet target goals.
• Adjusting the budget

3. Keeps upgrading his skills and his team’s skills.

 A sales manager is the de facto trainer of the sales department.  To do that job well, he must first develop himself, which is often an independent job because most companies do not invest in training for sales managers.  A sales manager must avail himself of books, conferences, expert mentors and other resources to remain aware of the best sales technology, methods and techniques.

When it comes to developing the sales team and increasing sales and revenue, a manager must instruct sellers how to develop territories,  perfect their presentations, refine communication skills, how to have persuasive conversations with prospects and, above all, the art of plotting and executing top-notch negotiations.  Some managers even make a practice of doing ride-alongs with sellers to watch how they interact with buyers. This enables the manager to provide customized feedback and correction.

4. Knows how to set goals.

 Goals keep salespeople focused, but not if managers don’t reinforce goals properly. Great sales managers know how to set monthly, quarterly and yearly goals for the department and short term goals for individuals. They involve their team in the setting of goals so the team feels invested. An effective manager follows up the team meeting with individual chats about goals and discusses strategies for meeting the goals so that they become more feasible. Then, the manager devises a way to measure goal achievement and holds sellers accountable for their progress.

5. Rewards results.

  Excellent sales leaders know how to make top sellers and hard-working sellers feel appreciated. They create formal rewards programs to acknowledge performance. They provide trophies, certificates, and notes of praise, salary increases, bonuses, gift cards, special privileges and many other tokens of honor.

If a manager has these five attributes, he can guide a sales team to impressive success.