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what is the sales manager's daily action plan i've got that for you and so much more on this episode of the inside bs show hi my name is dave lauren so and today we're talking about a sales manager's daily action plan now why is this important to you well you want to grow and you want to grow rapidly and you can be the best salesperson on the planet but there's only one of you so you need to get your team to be as good as you are if not better in fact if you're a business owner or you're the leader of a big business your sales people need to be better at connecting and developing relationships than you are if you want to grow your professional practice let's say you're a lawyer you're an accountant you're a cpa and you want to grow your professional practice beyond where you currently are from six figures into seven figure territory this program is going to help you manage yourself so whether you're managing a sales team of one or a sales team of 300 like i managed in my career you need this action plan and the five things i'm going to show you that will help you make your sales team the best they can possibly be at growing revenue are first the daily basics review second the key performance indicators that you're going to share on a regular basis daily the third thing is communication that's part of your daily action plan i'm going to show you how to do it and how to do it effectively the fourth thing is the visits when you spend one-on-one time with your sales team now if they're remote this one-on-one time may be virtually on zoom or skype or it can be one-on-one in a car driving from appointment to appointment gonna show you how to do both of those the fifth thing is providing feedback and recognition there's a right way and a wrong way we're only gonna teach you the right way we're gonna help you become the absolute best sales manager you can then at the end of our time together today i'm going to share a focus point with you and i'm going to share a story that will demonstrate how you can be the best possible sales manager anyone's ever had and how you can get your people to run through a wall you don't want to miss this focus point it's going to help you motivate your sales team it's going to be the best part of the daily action plan so stay with me till the end of our time together today okay let's start with the daily basics review this is the first part of your sales manager daily action plan now what is a daily basics review i'm basing this on my experience in the hotel business my experience in the hospitality industry ritz carlton which is now part of marriott has a plan that works really well each day all over the world every one of their managers stands up in front of his or her team and they review one basic point every single day it could be as simple as smile and greet everyone that you pass in the hallway with a warm hello that's a basic but they remind their people of 30 different basics across each day of every month you need to do the same thing with your sales team so if you have a sales team and you're holding a stand-up meeting with them before they go out on the road or you have a sales team and you're meeting with them on zoom once a week cover one of the sales basics that you have in your business so for example one of the basics that i've taught all my sales team members is three points of follow-up you follow up immediately after a meeting or a phone call with an email that says it was great connecting with you i enjoyed our conversation here's what we talked about you recap the conversation i look forward to our next steps you tell them what the next steps are and we will be speaking again and you set a deadline for your next meeting or appointment or conversation that's the email follow-up the second point of follow-up is a handwritten note every interaction you have with a prospect you write a handwritten note and drop it in the mail the same day so they get it the next day or two or three days later the third point of follow-up is a week later or when you've committed to contacting them with the information or for an answer or with a referral or a connection that's the third point of follow-up that's one of my basics and it's one of the daily basics i cover with the members of my sales team every month so one day a month i cover that basic and then 29 other days of the month i cover an additional basics so they get the basics from me whether we're meeting in person or meeting on zoom or on skype or i send out an email every day to the members of my sales team with one basic point yes they even get an email on saturday or sunday does it annoy them maybe it does but candidly i don't care because whether they're annoyed or they're not annoyed i asked them if they read the basic from saturday i asked them what it was they repeat it back to me it sinks in the second thing you want to do in your daily routine as your action plan as a sales manager is check your key performance indicators you should have a dashboard of three to five no more than seven key performance indicators that you're looking at so if you're going to speak with sally who's a sales rep for you you need to know how many calls sally has made in the past week how many deals sally has closed what her revenue target is for the month how close to the revenue target she is for the month and what things she's doing to meet her revenue target those are five key performance indicators you review them you get on the phone with sally and you talk to her hey sally i was looking at your targets for the month i see you've made 15 calls you're scheduled to make 45 for the month you feel confident you're going to hit those 45 i see you've already brought in 15 000 this month your target is 20 you're right on track it looks good do you feel good about hitting your target that's great what are you focusing on for this week who are your appointments with and what do you think the results are going to be great sally it was terrific talking to you thanks that's how you use the key performance indicators in your daily action plan the third thing you need to do is communicate with the team now i just gave you an example of a phone call communication with a sales rep i prefer to have in-person stand-up meetings when that's possible i used to take all my sales people and get them together in the morning the inside sales people with me in the office the outside sales people would call in on the phone and we would do a stand-up meeting it's only 15 minutes long each day we cover our basic we go over our key performance indicators for the day maybe i do a training topic share any company news or information and then i turn them loose to face the day that's a stand-up meeting obviously we're in a virtual world these days so you're probably not going to be able to do in-person stand-up meetings with your team so you can do them on video you can make a video just like this cover the topics that you cover in the 15-minute meeting send out the video you can use a tracking service like loom or there are other tracking services to determine who opens the video and how long they watch if you don't want to be bothered you can simply ask people to repeat back that daily basic to you sending out video is great you can do them live on zoom or on skype people can call in people can watch on their phones communication is critical communicating with the team in groups is essential one-on-one communication is good too and that's the fourth point that's the visit you need to visit with as many people on your team as you can each day my rule of thumb was i would want to visit with each member of my team at least once every two weeks now i had a 300 person sales team so i had division managers and i had territory managers i would visit with each of my division managers twice a week i would visit with my territory managers once a week i would visit with each rep at least once a month that was basically 10 reps every day now if you have a smaller team you can touch every rep every day send them an email send them a text reach out to them on the phone visit with them in person going on meetings with sales reps in person as often as you can is going to be great for them because you're bonding you're building a relationship with them it's great for training purposes it's also great for you to gain experience in the field seeing things through your sales reps eyes why is that important because the next big thing that comes down the line from corporate may not be realistic and you'll know this if you've been out in the field with your reps and you can blunt the blow of stupid decisions made by corporate yeah that never happens okay the fifth thing you need to do for your daily action plan as a sales manager is provide feedback and recognition to your reps here's the formula for providing feedback in case no one's ever talked to you about it before it's called the sandwich method you're going to give them some praise for something good that they've done then you're going to share an area that they can improve and then you're going to give them more praise so you sandwich the bad thing in between two good things joe i watched you on your last appointment and the way that you connected and bonded with that prospect was fantastic i noticed that the person who you were meeting with gave you some buying signals they asked how much they asked what the time frame was for delivery those are buying signals and you didn't ask for the sale next time you need to program yourself to always ask for the sale when somebody asks how much what the next steps are or how long it takes for delivery whenever you hear those things you need to ask for the sale immediately but the takeaway that i got from this meeting is they expect some follow-up from you in the next couple of days and you agreed to follow up with them that's fantastic so your next steps your planning of the next steps was wonderful when you go for those next steps ask for the sale and you'll be good to go overall joe is a great meeting thanks a lot for taking me along i really enjoyed it notice how i did the good the bad and the good again and i pumped them up at the end and i said it's going to work out great you're going to do a great job thanks for taking me along providing feedback using the sandwich method recognizing what they're doing right catching them doing things right is critically important and that is also part of your sales manager daily action plan now i told you that i was going to share a focus point with you i'm going to share one of the most important things and i'm going to give you a story that highlights that i'm going to do that in just one minute first i want to give something to you for free i want you to take my plan my revenue roadmap this is the exact plan that i use to grow revenue i've used it in all the businesses the five different businesses that i've started and grown over the years i use it in my business now it's your guide to selling professional services to selling high ticket coaching consulting high ticket services and products like private jets i've got people using it to sell high-end real estate i've got people who sell high-end consulting services go to revenue roadmap guide right now revenue roadmap guide get your free business development plan that you can customize for your business it's the one i use i'm giving it to you for free because i appreciate you joining me here for today's show okay now for the focus point the key element that i want to stress to you today is capturing best practices and i'm going to tell you a story about a time when capturing a best practice really helped me not only nail down a big sale but it's been a point in my entire career that has made all the difference in relationship based consultative sales i was working as a big ticket consultant and i was using this corny sales method that the company had developed it had some ridiculous acronym it wasn't spin selling it was like span grow and each letter stood for something nobody could ever remember what the letter stood for and the one thing that was missing was being natural with the clients so i'm going to pitch a million dollar consulting engagement to the ceo of a fortune 500 company and i walk in to the fortune 500 company ceo's office he has a conference room right off the side of his office and it's myself and his head of marketing the head of field sales is there and we're ready to pitch the entire program and i looked at him and i said let's call him joe i said hey joe you look a little down is everything okay he said yeah we're just dealing with the challenge right now i'm not sure what we're really gonna do and i said well what's the challenge and he said to me well you know the biggest challenge we have right now is we're having trouble keeping and he had a category of employee that was very high level very specialized extraordinary ability employees he said we've lost three of them we have a team of 20 and these people are responsible for all the research and development for our company if i lose any more to my competitors not only is my business going to take a hit but i'm probably going to get fired and he said this in front of other people on his team so i was there to pitch a sales force effectiveness program and i sat down at the table and i said hey joe let me ask you something if i could come up with a plan to talk to that entire group and we could create an action plan for keeping them would that be something that you'd be open to exploring and he said well tell me a little bit more about that and i spent the next 45 minutes of our one hour meeting talking about this plan to solve his biggest problem now why am i telling you this when it comes to your sales manager daily action plan why did i make this the focus point sales managers have to be quick on their feet and the capturing of best practices is critically important i learned that day that when you're in front of a prospect and they bring you a problem even if that's not the problem you're there to talk about you can help them solve that problem in the moment and you can create a relationship on the spot that client became my best client they were worth over 20 million dollars to me on an annualized basis and it started when i solved that problem for the ceo so my focus point to you is your sales team is going to come back to you with stories just like i relayed to you there when you learn something as a sales manager from that story make it a best practice and teach it to everyone else if you can teach your best practices to everyone on your team you'll never have to come up with a new training topic your sales team already knows what's going right catch them doing it right and share it with everybody else if you want more great sales management tips just like this watch the next video coming in right now i have a whole series on sales management videos you're going to love them it's going to make you better as a sales manager you're going to make more money and you'll get home on time for dinner join me in the next video right now