Introduction
The three newly appointed sales manager with different ideology and different approaches are a participant in sales management seminar. Jerry Kline is a team worker and believes in working as a team will benefit, Grace Gallo believes in working door to door approach and short term relationship with the customer, and Paul Swenson is a personality of the learner, want to try different approaches and believes in long term relationship with the customers. The main approach of the seminar in here to extract the knowledge of these sales manager and bind them in a team bonding so that they can share their perspective views about sales. The training is one of the essential approach to groom the employees.
Discussion
1. Based on the brief conversation between Jerry Kline, Grace Gallo, and Paul Swenson, what kind of sales manager do you think each of them is? What do you think is the level of performance of the sales force each person's heads? How do you think each of them will benefit from the sales management training seminar?
Jerry Kline believes in working with his fellow workers in the field helping them to prepare sales presentations, and handle customer complaints rather than trying to maintain long term relation with the customers. He believes in assigning quotas to maximize selling. He believes that the ultimate thing is to earn money for the firm and for the customers only things that matter is low cost. He feels the technologies of sales force management as a headache.
Grace Gallo says that it's important for a sales manager should have experience of going door to door. Sales people are motivated with commissions and bonuses so they try to fill up the quotas quickly. She seems to be confused about a long-term relationship with the customers as she has seen that her fellow workers who have believed in short-term relation have moved ahead. He believes that sales people turnover ratio is high due to the complexity of the job.
Paul Swenson is a new manager and believes in learning by doing and gathering knowledge from the seminars. He believes in innovating something new since the higher authorities do not allow discounts to catch up with the competitors and price is not everything in this field. He believes in customer relation and provides better services which are people looking for rather than prices. He believes motivating fellow coworkers is to provide proper compensation and to retain customers is to provide discounts. He believes that the seminars will help to grow sales forces.
2. If you were a top executive for a company, how would you go about selecting your new sales managers? What specific criteria would you use? How would you determine whether your candidates had the qualities desired?
Sales are all about the ability to know and convince your customer. A sales manager should have a positive attitude and temperament since sales are one of the toughest jobs in the sense to convince people to buy or use your products or services. If I was to select a new sales manager, I would first look into the sales people of my team. They are knowledgeable and experienced in the similar environment though there is a greater possibility that these sale people be a disaster as manager. Secondly, I will look in the market for the sales managers working for my competitors and who are ready to shift the job.
The specific criteria will be experienced, able to help other, anxious to learn the things, can work independently, can take a job out of his/her subordinates, and have the same vision and goal as of the organization.
There are lots of things that can determine if the candidate has desired qualities or not.
·
If the candidate has desired Communication Skill
or not.
·
If the candidate is ready to work in a team.
·
whether the candidate offers a positive
attitude.
·
How flexible and dependable is the candidate?
·
Whether the candidate has creativity and
intelligence to be goal oriented.
3. Do you think that outstanding salespeople newly appointed to the position of sales manager need any special training? If so, what should the training cover? Why?
It is familiar that most of the salespeople appointed as a sales manager are a disaster to the organization since the job of salespeople and sales manager differs in all aspects. So the newly appointed sales manager needs lots of training to change the perception from his/her previous job.
Training like field training, storytelling from seniors and mentors, personality development, communication skill development, micro training, daily meetings, presentations. The sales managers should be given training about using software like Customer Relationship Management software, train to analyze data and implement the strategy from the data mined. Regular feedback from the seniors will be an appropriate way for new managers to learn their mistakes. It is better to practice more than training more since piling up numerous training will not do good. A series of training upfront will not be effective, the managers will not be able to gather large information at once. So the best way to train a sales manager is to train less and make them work in the field more.
4. Do you think that sales managers can have much impact on the performance of individual salespeople? Specifically, what might new sales managers do to increase the performance of their sales force?
It is a fact that subordinates look up to their superiors as a leader, the performance of them depends upon how his/her superiors are making the task done out of them. So the performance of individual salespeople does get impacted by the sales manager. The sales manager analyzes the information and makes objectives and goals accordingly so the success of his/her team depends upon the sales manager. The ability and quality of the sales manager determine the achievement of the goals from the team of sales people, the ability to make the sales people work efficiently and effectively.
The total responsibilities of the team performance depend upon the sales manager capabilities. The sales manager should focus on the following points to increase the performance of the sales force
·
Need to clarify what is the company motives and
products.
·
Should give more time coaching to the sales
people and identify who needs coaching and what sort of coaching for fellow
individuals.
·
Able to analyze information from the CRM
software and make clear and easily understandable to the sales people
·
Break down specific targets according to the
ability of the sales people.
·
Need to interact with the sales people and act
on any sort of problems they are facing.
·
Segment and focus on the activity that is
important and urgent.
Conclusion
To conclude, it is necessary for a firm to list out the specific needs of the firm and create a job description accordingly so that they can hire the right people at the right position. The belief that sales people could be good sales manager is not totally right since they come from the different approach of selling to the managerial level of work so lots of coaching, mentoring, and training is essential for them. The team leader is the one whom the subordinate can look after so that a sales manager should bring a positive attitude and good working environment to make the fellow subordinate get the same line of vision.
References
Cespedes, Frank V. How to select sales manager who can actually manage. Retrieved April 19, 2019, from
https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/how-to-select-sales-managers-who-can-actually-manage
Unknown. Top 10 qualities and responses to look for when interviewing a potential job candidate. Retrieved April 19, 2019, from
https://www.universalclass.com/articles/business/top-10-qualities-and-responses-to-look-for-when-interviewing-a-potential-job-candidate.htm
Dean, John H. (Jan 2013, Jan 25). 10 Tips to Improve Your Sales Performance. Retrieved April 19, 2019, from
https://www.sellingpower.com/2013/01/25/10089/10-tips-to-improve-your-sales-performance
