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how to manage a sales team dealing with the sixth most common challenges faced by sales managers that's what we're talking about today join me for that and so much more on this episode of the inside bs show hi i'm dave lorenzo this is the show that takes you inside business strategy it takes you inside business sales today we're talking about how to manage a sales team in fact i'm covering the six most common challenges you face as a sales manager we're going to share each of those challenges with you i'm going to give you some secrets to overcoming them so let's dive right into the content right now the first challenge you face as a sales manager is getting priorities straight both your priorities and the priorities of the members of your team you're faced with all kinds of competing issues you've got a boss who wants you to deliver reports they want to know where you are they want to know what your progress is keeping people focused on what's really important is your job so when your boss is breathing down your neck about reports it's natural for you to want to pass that on to your sales team to go to them and say hey listen you got to get those reports to me where are your reports how many calls you make how many emails you send out what research did you do this week it's natural for you to pass that crap onto your team i'm telling you if you want to be the best as a sales manager you can't do that this is one of the challenges you face you've got to keep your team focused on their priorities and what's their biggest priority well their biggest priority is getting results that's what you should be focused on they need to get results they need to close deals and bring money to the bank if they're doing that screw the reports don't worry about it if your top producers are blowing their numbers away and they are late with their reports or they forget to do a report from time to time don't breathe down their neck you're never going to get fired if you have great results and no reports and you shouldn't harp on this with your sales team members now reports are just one example don't focus on anything that does not lead to results and keep all that crap away from your sales team members now if your people aren't producing you certainly need to dig in and figure out why they're not producing and that may be because they're not making enough calls they're not sending out enough emails they're doing research but they're targeting the wrong prospective client they're not leading with an external orientation reports are necessary to diagnose all that stuff but the top ten percent your people who are blowing the doors off keep all the noise keep all the crap away from them keep their priorities focused on getting results that's what you should be looking for the second challenge you face as a sales manager when you're thinking about how to manage the sales team the second challenge you face is motivation and my solution for motivation is abc and it's not always be closing that's a great at you know that's a great axiom that's those are great words to say over and over again no my abc is always be competing there are three groups that your sales team should be focused on beating day in and day out the first group is their own personal best your sales team members should focus on beating their best each month so better your best each month this month is going to be your best month what was your best month okay you sold x number of widgets this month you're going to beat that that's the first place your sales team member should be competing the second place your sales team members should be competing is with each other you want them to always focus on king of the hill so how do you do that you track your rank and you publish you track their performance you rank them and you publish that information every week so your sales team members know who the best is they know what their performance is they know where they stand and you're constantly on top of them to beat each other and to better their best the third group of people that your sales team should be competing with as a team are your competitors they should know what competitors are out there and they should be calling on their competitors best clients and every time you steal a piece of business from a competitor you should celebrate they should be competing as a team with your competitors so compete with themselves compete with each other and compete with the competition outside if you're always focused on competition and if you hired the right sales people in the first place big ego highly competitive if you hired the right people you're gonna get results through these three motivation tactics you don't need anything else you don't need contests you don't need motivation other than these three competitive areas if you're hiring the right people and you focus on this alright so another challenge you face when you're managing a sales team is bad sales habits there are training videos out there that teach absolute garbage when it comes to business development my approach is to develop relationships nurture those relationships have an external orientation and continue to communicate with everyone prospects referral sources clients over and over and over again and that has served me well for the last 30 years those are the habits that you should cultivate those are the habits that you should focus on everything else push it aside don't listen to the sales trainers that give you gimmicks don't listen to sales trainers that are out there right now hawking real estate and they have some videos you can watch and they call that sales training the real sales training comes when you watch these videos and then you as a sales manager coach your team based on what you learned in these videos based on what they learned in the videos you've got to do the hard work you've got to coach them up but i'm going to give you a tool that's going to make it easier for you scroll down to the description of this video scroll down right now you'll see a free gift from me it says free gift from dave go to the website revenue revenuerroadmapguide.com revenuerroadmapguide.com enter your contact info there you can download a plan that all of the members of your sales team can follow it's my revenue roadmap guide they can customize it for themselves based on their strengths and they'll follow that plan consistently now if you share this with every member of your sales team they'll all be doing the same things they cannot get into bad habits because they're following the guide step by step it's the easiest thing you can do you don't need to invest tens of thousands of dollars in sales training you can if you want to and i can help you enhance the revenue roadmap guide but get started with this guide now it breaks all bad habits it gives them something consistent to focus on the fourth challenge you'll face as a sales manager when you're managing a sales team is a slump that's right some of your top producers some of your best performers are going to go into slumps and you're going to have to coach them to get out of it how do you coach someone to get out of a slump well you don't focus on the slump you focus on what they did when they were successful here's the thing in our minds when we're in a slump we suck we're the worst person on earth and your sales people will feel that your job as a sales manager is to coach them and convince them that they're the person they were when they were on the top of the leaderboard they're the person they were when they were number one they're the person they were when they were the number one sales rep in the company they haven't closed the deal in two weeks no problem check their activity if they're doing everything right keep them focused on the fundamentals pump them up boost their self-esteem and they'll pull themselves out of the slump remember your top producer who happens to be in a slump now is still your top producer he just is in a rough patch keep him focused on the fundamentals keep him focused on what he's doing right maybe make some tweaks to what he's doing wrong but don't spend a lot of time on it keep his confidence up and he'll pull out of the slump and you'll overcome that challenge as a sales manager all right the fifth challenge you face as a sales manager is managing big egos if you want to manage a big ego what should you do well it's very very simple when people succeed recognize and reward them give them recognition in front of their peers this is almost more valuable than compensation i said almost it's almost more valuable than compensation because people who are excellent at sales have big egos and they thrive on recognition so you're tracking your ranking and publishing the data every week when somebody is top of the list each month have a trophy that they get to take home take a picture of them with the trophy put the picture in the office share on a zoom meeting you awarding that trophy to your sales rep your other reps are going to get fired up and they're going to want to beat that person but the person who got the trophy that week that recognition will keep them going it will motivate them always recognize and reward your producers in sales because they have big egos if you're hiring the right people they have big egos and that big ego is critical for your success in the long run all right the sixth thing you should focus on the thing that's one of the most important things is consistency and consistency comes in three areas for you as a sales manager right one of your challenges is consistency well there's consistency in the way you treat your team there's consistency in the way you as a team go about your business and then there's consistency in how you focus on outcomes let's talk about the first one first consistency in the way you treat your team everybody gets treated with respect even the people who are at the bottom of the list get treated with respect but that doesn't mean that you spend a lot of time with the people who are not performing most of your time should be spent with your top producers but you're professional you're cordial you deal with people on a professional basis always so you're consistent in your behavior you're consistent in your treatment when somebody is a top producer and you have on the same team somebody who's terrible and they're on the verge of being fired you coach and you counsel those people based on performance but when it comes to treating them like human beings you treat them the same the top producer is going to be recognized and rewarded and compensated far better than the person who's not produced but they're still people they still have families and they still are human beings who need to be treated with dignity and respect even when you're letting someone go as a sales manager when you're firing someone do it with dignity and respect respect the person critique the performance so that's the first area of consistency the second area of consistency is your sales approach your sales methodology if you use my revenue roadmap guide and you stick to it everyone will be following the same system so you'll know where everybody stands in the process consistency will take care of itself so consistency in how they sell don't worry about that download my revenue roadmap guide follow it the third area for consistency is in focusing on outcomes focusing on performance your company is going to be all over the place if you work for a big company sometimes the reports will be a priority sometimes different reports will be a priority sometimes incentives will be a priority always be consistent in how you manage your team by focusing on the dollars they take to the bank the dollars in their pocket make sure they get paid on time and accurately but the dollars the company makes as a result of their efforts always focus on the bottom line always focus on results if you recognize reward your people based on the results they achieve you'll always be consistent forget about reports i mean if your company requires that you do them you got to do them but don't beat people up about them beat people up about following the fundamentals sticking to the system if you're consistent in that you'll be successful all right this is one video in a whole series of videos join me scroll down right below me right here right now is another video in the series click on that video watch it right now in the next video i will see you over there