The sales team is the engine that keeps a company running, but a team is only as strong as its leader. If you’re not seeing results in your organization, your management might be part of the problem.

Fortunately, learning a few simple secrets of effective sales team management can drastically increase your odds of success, and author Mike Weinberg wants to help.

What are the pillars of a successful sales team?

Several clients have recommended Sales Management Simplified by Mike Weinberg as the best book they’ve read on the subject. Weinberg, who has written four #1 Amazon bestselling books on sales management, is known for his funny, no-nonsense approach.

Mike clearly states that sales management matters much more than the individual salespeople in driving revenue. Here are a few takeaways from Sales Management, Simplified, that can help you reevaluate your leadership strategy.

1. Get your priorities straight. Evaluate the tasks that take up most of your time and energy. Are these tasks directly contributing to your sales team’s success? If not, get them off your plate and focus on the tasks only you can do.
2. Avoid distractions. It’s so easy to get caught up in unimportant tasks that feel urgent in the moment. Delegating and blocking your time can help you focus on what matters.
3. Train your team. Sales managers need to take an active role in training and monitoring their teams. You should know each team member’s strengths and weaknesses to coach them appropriately. Most sales managers start as salespeople, so you should be acutely aware of the bad sales habits that your team needs to break.
4. Be strategic. Everything you do should have a purpose. If your team meetings are unproductive, you’re wasting money. Setting company goals, holding one-on-one meetings, and providing continued training to improve sales performance should all be conducted with strategy in mind.
5. Cultivate a high-performance sales culture. Culture starts at the top. Fostering a sense of healthy competition, providing support, and arranging for ambitious compensation will all create a healthy sales culture at your organization.

Once you’ve refreshed your team’s attitude towards sales, you can maintain it by following the four R’s of successful talent management. According to Sales Management.Simplified, they are:

• Right people in the right roles: Great salespeople, or hunters, are rare. Sales managers must ensure these people are well-placed to play to their strengths.
• Retain top producers: Your best employees will leave if you don’t regularly reward them for their hard work. Ensure they feel seen and appreciated, and give them creative incentives to stay.
• Remediate or replace underperformers: You don’t have time or resources to spend on people who consistently underperform. If they don’t improve after coaching and a written warning, they are likely not a good fit for the sales team.
• Recruitment: Ask two powerful questions during the recruitment process to identify strong performers: “Can you provide the details of your last two successful deals? Imagine you’re left unsupervised for 90 days. What would you accomplish in this time?” Promising candidates will have great answers to both of these questions.

If your growing business needs to overhaul its sales department, a business coach can help. Click here to schedule a complimentary call to discuss effective sales team management.

Coach Dave