Keeping it simple in sales manager jobs

In any business situation, a thinking sales manager can usually identify a whole basket of things to change for the better. When taking over in sales manager jobs , this scenario can be exaggerated having taken over from a manager with a totally different style, who may have let things slip before departure, or indeed in some cases before they have been removed. Just how much should you change and how quickly?

Too many people in sales manager jobs in this situation let their desire for glory get the better of them and implement change after change in order to find that immediate kick in sales that will get them noticed for all the right reasons. So what’s the problem with this? To ensure progressive upward change, one needs to be able to isolate cause and effect.

For those in sales manager jobs who makes 5+ simultaneous changes will never know which change has had which effect and will then begin to guess which has had positive, negative and neutral effects. Then follows a series of guesses as to which initiatives to build on, which to stop and so on, resulting in a chaotic approach to developing results, with poor objectivity, and a sales team that doesn’t know whether it’s coming or going.

The exercise of listing all the potential changes that could be made is a good one, then the next stage is to prioritise in order of the expected magnitude of change. You should start with the changes you expect to have the biggest effect.

My opinion, is that in sales manager jobs you should make 2/3 changes, maximum, depending on the nature of the changes. You need to keep it to a level where you can accurately determine the effects of your change, and in particular whether the impact is positive or negative. Once you have seen enough to ensure a change ‘is’ positive, you can consolidate it and move on to another issue. Of course if another change proves detrimental to results, ditch it, and move on.

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f you’re looking for some ideas, here’s a some of the biggest things I believe impact on the results in sales manager jobs

• People – In my experience, an randomly picked sales team of 10 will have 3 really good, 4/5 middling plodders, and 2/3 poor/under performers. You can generate improvement with training and development in all three areas, but this will never equal the impact of replacing the bottom 2/3 delivering very little with people of the same calibre as your top 3.

• Clarity of goals – On more than one occasion I’ve inherited sales teams where each member was able to tell me they were the company’s top performer, each with their own criteria as to what made them top! You need to have one clear criteria for what is ‘best’ and make it absolutely clear what this criteria is.

• Visibility of results – Once you have set the above, you need to make everybody’s results visible across your team. Just as long distance runners run faster in groups, as they have someone to chase, the same is true in sales. Once people see someone out in front, the have someone to chase, and also to analyse what they are doing to succeed. Regular news letters with people’s names up in lights alongside league tables can have dramatic effects.

• A cohesive team – A team which regularly meets and talks is more likely to share best practise than one that doesn’t. A team that collectively tries to work out the best ways of doing things will always outperform a team of individuals each doing their own thing and not communicating.

There are many other examples but the principles of sales manager jobs remain constant. Build you hit list of changes but only implement 2/3 changes at any one time to monitor effect.

Good luck.