Sales teams that possess energy and confidence are successful. And, good sales leaders know how to keep morale high whether business is at a peak or in a slump. However, the majority of workers are not satisfied with their current jobs.
Research shows that 70 percent of workers are actively disengaged at their jobs. And, since poor morale is correlated with performance and turnover rates, it is an especially damaging drain on a sales team.
The best sales leaders understand that they need to maintain a high sales team morale in order to keep their reps motivated, and thus, hitting their numbers. However, sometimes it’s the smallest things that managers inadvertently do that have the biggest impact on their sales team’s happiness. That’s why at Peak, we put together an infographic with some of the most common ways sales managers kill sales team morale, along with actionable advice to turn it around.
Here are 9 ways you may be killing your sales team’s morale and how to turn it around:
Want to save this infographic? Download the PDF version:
Sales managers are the conductors of a company’s revenue engine. They create and nurture high performance sales teams, and lead them to generate hit revenue forecasts and meet customer needs.
To understand the responsibilities of a sales manager, it’s important to understand their position in the organization and the intangible roles and characteristics they embody.
In this article, we’ll discuss the high-level importance of a sales manager, also called a first-line manager or FLM, and then get specific by providing a complete list of typical sales manager activities and duties.
Hire a sales manager: Sample Job Description Template: Is your company hiring a sales manager? Attract better talent with this powerful job description.
First and foremost, let’s start with a high-level look at why sales managers are so important to an organization.
The value of a sales manager
To understand the value a sales manager brings to their company, ask this: Is it more important to have an excellent sales manager and average salespeople, or to have excellent salespeople under an average manager?
Consulting and research firm ZS Associates argues that it is more important for a company to have a top sales manager than to have great salespeople.
Average managers bring their sales representatives down to their level, whereas the best sales managers bring excellence to all their territories. A great manager who inherits average salespeople know how to coach, advise, motivate, or replace reps until they have created a high performance sales force.
Data supports the idea that sales managers have the power to drastically improve the quality of their employees. A study of top sales managers showed that their new sales hires, after 20 months on the job, performed better than the new sales reps hired by average manager (these were more likely to show declining performance over time). Why? Because top managers have the ability to identify and attract talented salespeople, as well as onboard, train, coach, and nurture them until they are effective producers. Research also showed a positive correlation between the amount of time a sales manager spends coaching their reps, and the reps’ ability to outperform neighboring regions coached by other managers.
Three roles of a sales manager
The topline objective of a sales manager is to meet company revenue targets through the activities of their sales representatives. In other words, they harness the power of their direct reports, driving sales force productivity and extracting the best performance from each individual employee.
A sales manager achieves this objective through a mix of approaches. For example they:
Are responsible for motivating and advising their reps to improve their performance, as well as hiring and training new sales representatives.
Achieve their objectives through effective planning, setting sales goals, analyzing data on past performance, and projecting future performance.
Ensure that the sales department works cross functionally with executives from other departments. For example, they collaborate with marketing to generate new lead sources and expand the target customer base, or with product and research teams to make sure customer needs are met.
A sales manager simultaneously plays three key roles:
People manager: Recruit, build and nurture a team.
Of these three roles, the #1 focus should be people management.
Some executives believe that a sales manager should continue to sell like other reps, just with higher-value accounts. However, a sales manager is most powerful when they enable their team of account executives. Their power and insight is scalable when they empower 5 to 10 reps that report to them, and more sustainable and long lasting as roles shift in the company. Successful companies minimize a sales manager’s selling responsibilities, placing the onus on the sales reps that report to them.
Characteristics of a top sales manager
A successful sales manager’s characteristics, skills, and aptitudes are different from those of a successful sales representative. In fact, most sales reps make bad managers. The key characteristics of a sales manager focus less on selling ability and more about the interpersonal skills that enable leadership.
Rather than “doing it themselves,” they teach and coach others how to do it, enabling the sales efforts of others. They develop their own leadership, hiring, and training skills while ensuring their team is using the correct selling behaviors and activities to meet their revenue objectives.
Typical characteristics, skills, and traits of a sales manager include:
Communication skills: they listen first and speak second. They don’t chastise in public or private. They are aware of the message they transmit to their team, how it’s delivered, and how it’s perceived.
Integrity and trust: they never ask their reps to do something immoral, illegal, or something that goes against a company’s core values.
Ability to build relationships with peers, cross-functional counterparts, and upper management: They are committed to helping others be successful.
Empathy and ability to understand customer viewpoint and customer service
Ability to unite a team under a shared vision and know what motivates each member.
Analytical skills: They use data-driven reports to spur sales coaching sessions and empower reps to take ownership of their opportunity pipelines. They understand pricing, margins, and discounting impacts.
The ability to prioritize and effectively manage time
What makes a good sales manager great?
Research shows that the best sales managers exhibit slightly different characteristics than average ones.
Top sales managers are more likely than average sales managers to be:
High achieving, ambitious, and results-oriented
Innovative, generating original solutions and lots of ideas
Decisive and comfortable making decisions quickly
In contrast, average sales managers are more likely to:
Be detail focused, methodical, and organized
Focus on following the rules
Solely make decisions based on facts, figures, and data analysis
(Source: ZS Associates [p. 14])
Qualifications
Typical qualifications for a sales manager include:
Demonstrated track record of meeting/exceeding goals as an individual contributor.
Successful experience building a territory from little or nothing
Skilled at building rapport, opening doors, and understanding business requirements of senior decision makers
Day-to-day activities of a sales manager
Here is a list of typical duties of a sales manager, including daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly repeating tasks. The exact activities may vary depending on industry, company, and team culture:
Managing people
Set targets, performance plans, and rigorous, objective standards for sales representatives.
Meet with reps one-on-one weekly to review performance, progress, and targets. [Weekly]
Deliver deep performance reviews for each individual rep once or twice per year. [Semiannually or annually]
Coach individual sales representatives one-on-one through phone work and prospecting help sessions to help them improve sales performance. [Weekly]
Participate in spontaneous sales call rides and planned field days. [Semimonthly or monthly]
Counsel, support, discipline, and fire underperforming sales representatives.
Develop a scalable sales process and ensure representatives adhere to it correctly.
Ensure that reps use sales technologies, such as a CRM, correctly.
Plan and implement training programs. Hold regular skills training sessions with internal or external sales trainers. [Monthly]
Plan and preside over weekly sales team meetings. [Weekly]
Hold team building events onsite or offsite. [Monthly]
Recruit, select, onboard, and train new sales reps.
In some cases, oversee regional and local sales managers.
Motivate and engage the sales team with monetary and non-monetary (intrinsic) motivational tactics, such as sales contests, lucrative incentive packages, prizes, and public recognition.
Unite the team: Ensure reps work as a positive unit and share their best practices.
Set a good example for the team. Work according to company culture and values, prioritize ruthlessly, use good communication, and deliver results effectively.
Managing customer needs
Maintain a deep understanding of customer needs and monitor their preferences.
Resolve escalated customer issues and customer complaints regarding sales and service.
Provide expertise when setting and adjusting pricing plans and discount rates.
Provide advanced negotiation expertise.
Connect company headquarters with customers and salespeople in the field.
Managing the business
Determine and assign sales quotas, targets, and/or goals. Project and forecast annual and quarterly revenue and for one or more sales territories.
Develop sales strategies to acquire new customers or clients.
Track sales team metrics and share them with company leadership.
Analyze sales data on sales results and develop plans to address performance gaps.
Collaborate with marketing executives to develop lead generation plans.
Prepare budgets and approve expenditures.
Monitor competition, economic indicators, and industry trends.
Advance one’s own professional and technical knowledge by attending workshops and other educational trainings, participating in professional societies and industry networks, and reading professional and industry publications.
How to get promoted from sales rep to sales manager
If you are a current sales representative who is interested in getting promoted to a sales manager role, prepare early. Here are some helpful resources to point you in the right direction.
20 sales experts share how sales reps can prepare to be promoted to manager.
“Leadership skills are significantly more important than sales ability to succeed in a sales management role. If you’re looking to make yourself more attractive as a potential candidate for a sales leadership role, spend more time developing your leadership abilities and resume than your sales acumen. Take on a tough project at work. Join a board of a nonprofit or ministry. Come up with solution to a vexing problem at your company. The harsh truth is that there is very little similar about an individual producer sales role and a sales management role. It seems counterintuitive, but getting better at your existing job isn’t preparing you to get promoted.”
“Actively share sales tactics, set up lunch and learn sessions or a sales book club, volunteer to coach and mentor newer reps, etc. When you demonstrate a willingness to coach and an investment in the success of your peers, you demonstrate your ability to manage and lead a team.”
Dive deeper into what it takes to be a great sales manager. Learn about three advanced focus areas: engaging a team, retaining sales representatives, and creating a positive work culture: 3 Skill Sets Only the Best Sales Managers Possess.
Hire a sales manager: Sample Job Description Template
Hiring a sales manager for your company? A powerful and accurate job description will help you attract higher quality job seekers, get closer matches to your ideal candidate, and set shared expectations.
This is a sample B2B sales manager job description, which you can customize for your own company with the free step-by-step template guide here:
Company X provides Target Customers with Company X offering. Founded in Year and headquartered in Location, we have accomplished Accomplishment A and Accomplishment B due to our unique offering. Currently, Company X is generating an annual revenue of X dollars and is growing at a rate of X%. In the next five years, Company X plans on growing to X employees and will be an estimated worth of X dollars. Our key clients include Customer A, Customer B, and Customer C.
We are looking to hire a sales manager to hire’s objectives in the Location area. In addition, travel is expected to be X% and the compensation associated with this position is competitive with the market and will be decided during the interview process based of skills and experience.
GOALS
Manage, coach and lead a team of _ salespeople
Increase market share North America distribution by _% by the year 20__
Drive $__ of new net revenue over the first fiscal year
Maintain sales costs within __% of the target identified by the executive team
Responsible for overall sales growth of __%
RESPONSIBILITIES
Work with the senior management team to set revenue and sales goals on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis
Increase customer satisfaction ratings by __% and create innovative programs for upselling
Work with senior management to devise and implement innovative go-to-market strategies
Become a mentor to the sales team and nurture relationships with each associate in order to help them achieve their goals
EXPERIENCE
Successful experience:
Selling _______ (product/service or related product/service) to _____ (buyer/ group)
Closing __-figure deals
Managing a team of __ + salespeople
Utilizing a CRM to manage team sales tasks, pipeline, and closing
SKILLS
Demonstrated ability to hire high performing salespeople
Strong ability to coach sales reps to higher performance
Ability to accurately forecast future sales volumes
Excels at selling intangible solutions into the B2B market
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
Great salespeople do more than just consistently drive profitable revenue for their employers. They inspire confidence in customers and partners, increase brand trust, and contribute to a positive company culture.
And, these salespeople are rare, representing only 10 to 15 percent of the sales population.
If you want to accurately identify these top salespeople in an interview you need to know:
In this video we’ve compiled the top 5 ways top performing salespeople are different from the rest:
1. They spend their time selling
Peak’s survey found a major differentiator in how the best salespeople spend their time. While top performing salespeople – those who met or exceeded quota for the past three years – indicated they spend 19 to 23 hours selling per week, average salespeople only spend 14 to 18 hours, and poor reps less than 13 hours.
These numbers demonstrate that top salespeople are spending 36 percent more time selling than the rest.
Evidently, the best sellers are focusing their time on the activity that directly generates revenue.
2. They don’t give up easily
If you’ve read Peak’s eBook, Make the Right Sales Hire Every Time, you know that top performers do not give up because they hav/sales-resources/make-the-right-sales-hire-ebook/e a burning need to achieve, see rejection as motivation, and get excited by pressure.
When surveyed, the majority of top performing salespeople indicated that they attempt to contact a lead nine or more times before finally giving up on it. On the other hand, the average and poor performers indicated that they only attempt to contact a prospect five or six times before giving up.
Other studies support that the top salespeople are doing it right. According to HubSpot, 80 percent of sales require five successful connections.
3. They are driven individuals
Several sales experts have named drive or money-motivation as the trait that sets apart great salespeople from the mediocre ones.
When asked to rate certain characteristics from unimportant to very important to sales success, 81 percent of top performing salespeople surveyed rated “driven” as “very important” and listed it as the most important trait. Consequently, only 57 percent of the average and poor performers named being driven as very important to sales success.
Drive has been named as the most important trait common to the DNA of nearly all successful salespeople, and the vast majority of top salespeople agree with this statement.
4. They think critically
As sales continues to become more of a data science, critical thinking skills are now being named in several academic articles as an essential skill for a modern-day salesperson.
58 percent of top performing salespeople surveyed rated “critical thinking” as very important to their sales success versus only 40 percent of average and poor performing salespeople.
Critical thinking skills will continue to become more and more important to sales success as more companies start embracing big data. The best sellers use their critical thinking skills to interpret data, analyze findings, and ultimately demonstrate value to prospects.
5. They are independent
When asked how many hours per week they spend with their top salespeople versus average and poor performers, sales leaders surveyed that they spend 30 minutes less in contact with their top performers per week than their average or poor performers.
Studies show that autonomy drives employees to happiness, motivation, and performance. The best sellers take initiative and try to solve their own problems first before asking a leader for help.
If you want more insights on the behaviors and characteristics of a top performing sales person, download your free copy of the comprehensive study on what differentiates the best sellers from the rest.
Evidence of common attributes amongst top salespeople comes from many high profile studies. Spend some time with top sales talent and it will quickly become evident that they share common characteristics. Sales leaders of high performance sales teams understand that knowing these traits is critical in the hiring of their sales reps.
So, what are the characteristics shared amongst top performers that are essential to sales success? We asked the reps themselves.
In a recent study, researching the behaviors and characteristics of top performing salespeople, over 500 salespeople were asked to rate several traits from unimportant (1) to important (5) to sales success.
In the infographic below, we’ve listed the top seven characteristics critical to sales success according to top salespeople–those who have met or exceed quota over the past three years–and average salespeople–those have met less than 80 percent of quota over the past three years.
Here are the top seven characteristics essential to sales success, according to top salespeople versus average salespeople:
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A critical factor in the maintenance of a high performance sales force is an organization’s talent management system: the people, tools, systems and processes that give it the ability to attract, hire, develop, reward, and ultimately retain talent.
Responsible for its development and execution, today’s human resource leader faces unique challenges and increased pressure as the demands from interdepartmental stakeholders rise.
For many HR executives, the greatest talent management challenges come from their counterparts in sales.
Taking an integrated view of talent management is essential:
Beyond Hiring: An Integrated Approach to Talent Management argues that hiring is just one component of a 5-part approach to managing talent, with a healthy talent culture as the capstone.
In this article we’ll examine three areas where human resource leaders can work with sales leaders to build an integrated approach to sales talent management — one that goes beyond talent acquisition — employee engagement, performance management, and leadership development. We’ll also highlight emerging and established technology platforms that have helped HR gain leverage in these efforts.
Employee engagement
Once talent leaders usher an A-player through the door, they must invest in that employee’s engagement in a number of ways to keep them highly productive and fulfilled. This also contributes to the all-important work of long-term employee retention, which has material implications: a Salesforce analysis reports that companies can lose up to $1 million in lost revenue, productivity, and replacement of a single core sales rep.
Onboarding:
An effective onboarding process is one of the first places HR can make an impact after hiring. (In fact, candidate onboarding should start when you extend an offer.) Accelerating the initial performance gap can have a direct impact on revenue, with the average sales rep spending 20% to 40% of their time at the company in a less than optimally productive state. One study shows the average ramp-up time for new reps is 5.3 months with an average tenure is 26 months, while a B2B-focused study shows that reps onboard over 10 months with 24 months of average tenure, leaving approximately 14 months to achieve ROI.
B2B sales teams with excellent onboarding programs get their new hires to reach peak productivity 3.4 faster than those with ineffective onboarding programs and show a correlation with a 10% higher sales growth rate, according to research from The Sales Management Association.
Another key area of employee engagement is to invest in robust sales trainings and continued learning. The quality of training has a direct impact on an entire organization’s performance, and companies that are not investing in training suffer from higher turnover and lower productivity.
HR professionals should develop and support a structured, repeatable, sustainable training program that is aligned with the requirements and efforts of the sales organization. Sales leadership legend Brian Tracy tells us that the highest-performing sales organizations train every week. “One of my clients, the sales manager of a division of a multinational company, told me that he started a weekly sales training program that consisted of playing one sales video per week, followed by discussion. Within one year, this division was turning in the highest levels of sales and profitability in the worldwide organization. He said that the day after the sales training day was the highest sales day of the week.”
Some of the industry’s top sales training firms include:
HR leaders are harnessing technology to inform their employee engagement strategies, predict and counteract employee attrition, and get the most out of their new hires.
Finally, the best HR leaders work hand-in-hand with sales managers to track these 8 key human capital metrics to measure the effectiveness of their onboarding, training, and engagement programs.
Performance management
The second key focus area for HR and sales leaders to collaborate on is conducting structured performance evaluation and management systems. According to Frank V. Cespedes and Steve Maughan, the most under-utilized lever for improving sales is the performance review. “Busy sales managers tend to treat reviews as cursory, drive-by conversations that are mainly about compensation, not evaluation and development.”
HR teams can work with sales managers to introduce rigorous structure and regular cadence to this practice, which is arguably more important in the sales function than in any other department due to the influence these discussions have on sales behavior and activity levels. In addition to quarterly and monthly check-ins, managers can meet with reps weekly or daily when needed – with HR providing managers structured meeting templates to ensure performance management standards are in compliance.
An important part of sales performance management is a rigorous set of standards, with specific deadlines for quantifiable goals and discrete metrics, such as:
Number of prospecting emails
Number of prospecting calls
Number of meetings
Number of presentations
Number of demos
Number of site visits
Sales by week
Pipeline value
Pipeline stage value
HR and sales leaders should also work together to craft clearly defined compensation packages that incentivize the aforementioned behaviors. Typical sales compensation ratios for non-leadership roles include 50 percent base pay (for stability) and 50 percent commission (for incentive to reach higher). You can also tailor your company’s compensation plan to support the business model and the type of growth you want to see (for example, HubSpot sales head Mark Roberge customized compensation for different stages of HubSpot’s evolution).
HR leaders should be forward-looking and create a promising talent pipeline for the sales leadership team. Few companies are happy with their leadership pipeline, with only 22 percent of executives reporting that they view their own pipeline as promising. Another survey reported that leadership development was executives’ number-one concern.
As growth organizations scale and established players refresh their sales teams, the need for critical front-line and regional management talent is essential for sustained revenue growth.
Why?
Here’s what one sales leader said – “We need them to be great with our customers, we need them to be great with their teams and we need them to be great business minds. What we expect from our first-line managers today is so complex, varied and unstructured that we don’t even try to make sense of it anymore.”
Does your organization fall into this camp?
If so, investing in leadership development that focuses on the core leadership skills and competencies is crucial. Creating career paths for top salespeople to allow them to stay as individual contributors or switch to managerial roles, based on their skillset, is a channel that needs to be capitalized on but approached with caution since top salespeople are not always great managers.
Technology platforms to manage to plan for succession management and aging workforces include:
Human resources leaders don’t stop when they’ve filled their headcount requirements. They stay alongside them as they deliver sales and reach new heights.
This is why it’s so important for HR to deeply understand the operational needs of sales, while sales managers must consider talent management a core responsibility. Strengthening ties between HR and sales supports the creation of a powerful talent management system that stretches beyond recruiting, to engagement, performance management, leadership, and beyond. When HR and sales objectives are coordinated in a deep way, your company’s revenue will reflect it.
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Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
Sales management is quite possibly the most misunderstood role in business.
Why?
Sales managers play a unique role – they not only select, build, lead, coach, and manage front-line salespeople, but also act as a customer and business manager.
Since these responsibilities compete and pull sales managers in multiple directions, the activities that are most critical to properly fulfilling the role’s mandate can become clouded, leading to misconceptions and mistakes that undermine success and in many cases, job loss.
In this article we debunk 14 misconceptions we’ve heard about sales management and the role of a sales leader, and offer alternate perspectives to guide effective decision making.
Misconception 1: Managers should step out of the sales ring whey they are promoted.
“The primary role of sales managers is to simply to be a people manager and support their team. They are supposed to stop closing deals and instead let their account executives execute the entire sales cycle.”
The first common misconception is that a sales manager climbs into an ivory tower and leads from afar. They are no longer responsible for being familiar with accounts reps are trying to penetrate, and distance themselves from the day-to-day activities on the sales floor.
In truth, effective sales managers get in the ring with their team when they can add value to the selling process. They may not manage customer relationships firsthand, but they are side-by-side with their reps, coaching them and facilitating problem-solving processes on a weekly or daily basis. They participate in phases of the sales cycle and in situations where the manager’s skills or involvement adds credibility, and ensure the sales strategy is being properly executed on the front-lines.
Misconception 2: Sales is the exclusive domain of the sales manager.
“The sales manger should be in the sales department. Why should they be spending time with our CPO and CFO.”
Yes, sales managers are responsible for the activities of their team and accountable for making the number. But sales management functions at the best companies don’t operate in a vacuum. Instead, the best sales managers help create and foster a pro-sales culture throughout the company.
A pro-sales culture manifests itself in many ways. For example, when the entire C-suite buys into the sales strategy and understands the critical role of the sales force in helping the company attain its financial goals, resources like tools, training budget, and headcount are readily provided. A CMO that is aligned with sales adjusts their team’s tactics to generate the right types of leads and prioritize the creation of content and marketing collateral that reps can leverage throughout the sales cycle.
Misconception 3: Managers can stop recruiting when they’ve filled all headcount needs.
“Why should our sales manager spend time recruiting when we’ve got enough feet-on-the-street.”
Hiring great salespeople is the most important responsibility that a sale leader owns. But if a sales manager only searches for candidates when a headcount openings occur, then stops recruiting activities when the positions are filled, they’re practicing reactive hiring.
Reactive hiring treats an open seat like a fire to be put out. Managers start feeling the heat as the costs of the empty seat quickly compounds, ultimately forcing managers to hire whoever’s actively searching for a job – ‘C’ and ‘B’ players.
Hiring proactively, however, means executing a consistent, year-round system that attracts and nurtures talent — even when there aren’t open seats. It allows managers to reach out to passive candidates and “play the long game” by building relationships and cultivating a virtual bench that can be drawn from. It’s no surprise that this method attracts the best talent.
Misconception 4: Top performing teams don’t need sales training.
“I’ve got a competent team – they’re effective sellers. Why should I invest in training and development?”
Sales leaders often make the mistake of investing too little in sales training, or spending too much training time focused on product knowledge rather than sales techniques. Over half of companies surveyed by McKinsey rely exclusively or extensively on ‘on-the-job training’ compared to structured programs that build organizational capabilities. Leaders at these companies tend to under-invest in ‘front-line training’ as well: at companies where training is reported to be least effective, executives are more likely to spend on training for the leadership and least likely to spend on the front line. Meanwhile, the companies that report that trainings have measurable business impact are most likely to invest in the front-line training.
The success of athletes and performers hinges on the quantity and quality of their practice, as well as their long-term, consistent commitment to it. And if an elite swimmer wins an Olympic gold medal, they return to the pool for more training instead of “coasting” on past victories.
Sales professionals are no different: all levels of the sales force benefits from training. Moreover, a high-quality training program sends a clear message that the company is committed to investing in an employee’s success and professional development. In fact, according to Profit at the Bottom of the Ladder: Creating Value by Investing in Your Workforce, “offering training and career tracks to line workers led to lower turnover and easier recruitment, and served to make employees more efficient while they were with the company”.
Misconception 5: Resumes are the best way for a sales manager to screen job candidates.
“Great salespeople should have a stellar resume – it’s the best way to know if they’re going to be a fit on our team.”
An effective sales manager maintains a consistent search for qualified candidates to fill their hiring pipeline. But rather than only relying on resumes to screen-out candidates, the best sales managers understand two things: first, they know that top-performers are always actively and gainfully employed, and too focused on exceeding target than to be consistently updating their resume. Second, they know that resumes don’t show a candidate’s Sales DNA – the core characteristics that make a person uniquely suited to be a consistent top performer.
While resumes certainly have the capacity to show a candidate’s track record of results, they aren’t comprehensive and do a poor job of revealing Sales DNA, which can only be extracted through psychometric testing and behavioral interviewing techniques.
Misconception 6: All responsibilities on a sales manager’s to-do list are equal.
“I get 200+ emails a day, have 3-4 meetings, 15 calls, and a training session I have to lead. They’re all critical and need to be done today.”
The manager’s to-do list can stretch to what feels like hundreds of responsibilities. New sales managers often feel like they are only doing their job well if they deliver on all tasks – responding to all emails immediately, spending time on CRM reports, and attending all cross-functional meetings.
But sales managers ultimately have one responsibility: to build a high performance sales team that achieves the sales and profit objectives stated in the corporate and sales strategy. To-do list tasks that don’t directly contribute to this outcome need to be either automated, delegated, or eliminated.
Misconception 7: Sales managers must keep closing deals themselves.
“My ability to close deals is what got me here – and it’s something I need to keep doing if I’m going to continue to climb the corporate ladder.”
While some sales managers mistakenly retreat into an ivory tower and place too much distance between themselves and sales activities, other sales managers stay too involved in customer relationships.
This is especially common for managers who were recently promoted from an individual contributor role and simply continue with the momentum of selling. But if managers insert themselves between their sales reps and prospects, taking the reins of every relationship, they erode their team’s confidence and damage morale.
Misconception 8: Managers should invest extra time in C players.
“Yeah my team routinely misses quota – but they are great to be around, they’re great people. So if I just invest more of my time and energy, I hope their performance will improve.”
All sales reps require one-on-one coaching, whether they are A, B, or C players. However, sales managers need to divide their time intelligently among the three groups. In Smart Sales Manager, Josiane Feigon suggests that managers should spend, at most, 20 percent of their coaching time on C players to assess whether they have potential to dramatically improve their performance.
If the answer is no, C players need to be immediately cut loose so they can pursue an alternative career.
Misconception 9: A manager needs to hire extroverted salespeople to close deals.
“The ability to develop rapport is critical to being successful in sales, so why wouldn’t I only hire outgoing people?”
It can be tempting to search for extroverts to fill open sales positions. After all, they’re confident in social situations, quick to pick up the phone, and enjoy the process of making new connections each day.
But those considered to be introverts often have the characteristics that allow them to build trust with prospects and cultivate the same long-term customer relationships possessed by those with more outgoing personalities. What’s more, a meta-analysis of 35 studies of nearly 4,000 salespeople found extroversion to barely correlate with sales performance.
Misconception 10: Top performers can manage themselves.
“Why would I spend time with the few top performers I have on my team – they routinely hit quota and don’t need me.”
Top performers are self-motivated and have a high level of independence, but they require management. And the better their management is, the better their business results will be.
Sales managers must provide clear guidance on goals, a structured work environment, regular account and pipeline reviews and communication, training and development, support, sales tools and infrastructure, and most importantly, accountability.
Misconception 11: The best AEs should be promoted to manager.
“Why wouldn’t I promote someone into a FLM if they’re crushing their quota every quarter?
It is important to continually advance the careers of top performing salespeople. But management isn’t necessarily the right next step because the competencies of managers differ from the competencies possessed by individual contributors. Too many companies make the mistake of cherry-picking their standout reps and promoting them, resulting in the loss of actual closed sales and the addition of a poor manager.
In fact, 96% of firms place internal candidates into sales management roles, but only about one-third of them report having defined processes or internal candidate assessment tools for these promotions, according the Hiring Top Sales Managers Research Report by the Sales Management Association. This suggests that 65% of sales managers who have been promoted from rep positions haven’t been fully vetted for the proper managerial skill-set.
Misconception 12: Trust your gut when hiring.
“The candidate lacks a few competencies I’m looking for, but I’ve got a feeling that they’re going to be a great fit.”
Using gut instincts alone to screen candidates is the best way to make poor and costly hiring decisions. Hiring on gut feel is usually not a deliberate first choice. More often, it’s a fallback that a sales manager or other interviewer lands on when they don’t have the tools to properly evaluate candidates or don’t feel confident in their company’s recruiting process.
The gut can “yell” loudly, but because it’s based on fluctuating mood cycles, it is unreliable and can tell an interviewer one thing on Monday and another on Tuesday. Ultimately, the gut isn’t usually screening for sales skill; it’s screening for how likeable, safe, and relaxed a person is. A strong positive instinct about someone is not the same as proof that a candidate has the skillset or experience to succeed in your unique selling environment.
Misconception 13: Managers can use financial incentives alone to motivate their reps.
“I broadcast a bonus on the team scoreboard – that should be enough to keep the team hungry for more.”
It’s true that financial incentives motivate sales professionals, but that’s not the whole story. Some managers might have the mindset that there is a linear relationship between money and sales, in which they expect to plug in monetary rewards and receive a proportional return from reps.
But human motivation is complex and not machine-like. Intrinsic motivation can be even more powerful than external rewards, and top performing teams have a healthy mix of purpose, autonomy, competition, shared values, team acceptance, and other factors.
Misconception 14: Sales managers don’t need a structured hiring process.
“I’ve got an idea of who I need on my team to get the job done. Why would it matter whether or not we recruit the same way every time.”
We recruit thousands of candidates for our customers ever year and see a direct correlation between the intensity of structure in the hiring process and the number of teams who hit quota.
When hiring managers don’t follow a clear, consistent, and repeatable hiring process, the result is a diverse pool of candidates that don’t fit the corporate culture, don’t work well as a team, and generally don’t fulfill their sales goals.
In contrast, a structured process dramatically increases the probabilities of making a hire that hits and exceeds quota. It gives the hiring manager an objective, clear picture of the characteristics, skills, and experiences that a candidate needs to be successful. It also protects the company from subjective forces by standardizing, documenting, and regularly evaluating its screening and interviewing criteria. In addition, having a standard process reduces time-to-hire and saves time and headache for every interviewer and manager who is involved in sales hiring because they can follow proven steps that eliminate underperformers.
Top performing sales teams don’t hire themselves, and sales reps can’t be their own managers. This is the domain of the sales manager, who plays a key role in employee recruitment, motivation, accountability, and focus. If they can detangle themselves from the misconceptions above, they will have a strong, positive, direct influence on the sales results of the company at large.
Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.
Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
Today’s buyers are overwhelmed with too much information — delaying purchasing decisions and resulting in lost sales. In order to compensate, several sales professionals are either over-accommodating or creating high pressure which alienates prospects in the process.
So, how does a salesperson meet sales targets while satisfying the customer’s desire for a heartfelt, authentic sales approach? Shari Levitin‘s new book Heart and Sell answers just that.
In Heart and Sell, Shari shows you how to blend the new science of selling with the heart of human connection in order to reach more prospects and consistently close more deals.
Peak Sales Marketing Specialist and Sales Hiring Expert Taylor Dumouchel caught up with Shari to discuss her new book:
Shari, what was your inspiration for writing Heart and Sell?
Several years ago I was teaching a sales seminar in Mexico, when a salesperson in the back of the room raised his hand. He said he liked the strategies I was teaching, then he asked, “But won’t the customer feel sort of, well, manipulated by all of these sales techniques?”
I had never been asked that question before, and it threw me.
Fortunately, that evening I was invited to dinner with the top salespeople at the seminar. An older gentleman introduced himself as Apapacho. “Apapacho?” I asked. I hadn’t heard that name before.
He said it was a nickname meaning ‘hugger,’ or ‘affectionate one.’” He told me that he’d never received formal sales training, but absolutely loved his customers. At that moment, I knew I had my answer for the salesperson in the back of the room and, much later, the idea for my book, Heart and Sell.
This experience set my mind in motion. I started to ask myself some questions. What makes a great salesperson: nature or nurture? What’s more important in selling: techniques or genuine empathy? What if you could combine the two — both heart and sell? Seeking answers to these questions, I made it my mission to study top sales leaders and salespeople in various industries.
For each person I studied, I asked myself:
What did they say—and what didn’t they say?
How did they do it?
Did they have secret tricks or best practices they could share?
I learned that top salespeople know how to balance the science of selling with heartfelt connection. They also understand that, unless they really know themselves, they’ll never truly connect with their customers—or anyone else, for that matter.
They know that what you do matters, but who you are matters more.
The Ten Universal Truths contained in my book are all about achieving that balance and connecting more deeply with your authentic self.
The book is a model for how to blend the new science of selling with the heart of human connection in order to reach more prospects and consistently close more deals. What makes selling with the heart more effective?
We live in a world of fake news, or what’s been called, “The Post Truth Era.” Trust is more difficult to build than ever before. A recent Gallup poll found that customers consider salespeople such as real estate agents, auto dealers and phone reps among the least ethical of all professions; only lobbyists and members of Congress ranked lower! If we as salespeople aren’t coming from a place of integrity, customers know it instantly. Today’s buyers, as I’m sure you’ll agree, are savvier than ever, and they’re wary of staged presentations and canned pitches.
It’s the combination of both skills and character, the mixing and blending of these ingredients together, that creates long term success. In his book, The Road toCharacter, David Brooks (opinion columnist for the New York Times) discusses the difference between “resume virtues” and “eulogy virtues.” According to Brooks, resume virtues are those skills you bring to the marketplace—qualities like drive, competition, and gregariousness. The eulogy virtues, on the other hand, are the ones people will talk about at your funeral. Were you kind? Honest? Empathetic? Loyal? In the book, he states, “Many of us are clearer on how to build an external career than on how to build inner character.” We need to ask ourselves, “What do I want my legacy to be? How do I want to be remembered?” Selling with heart means knowing what to say and do, but sustained success requires virtues like integrity, empathy and optimism.
How can a salesperson build a strong relationship with a prospect but be assertive at the same time?
Top-performing sales reps build a structure to ensure they’re performing the right sales steps in the right order. But they also know when to turn the heat up or down depending on the emotional reaction of their prospects.
In my experience, many salespeople either lead too much with relationship or are too aggressive. They don’t have the structure, the mastery, or the confidence to make it, as Goldilocks says, “JUST RIGHT.”
Am I providing valuable insights that are distinct from my competitors?
Is my prospect bored?
Is she engaged?
Do I need to ask tougher questions?
Is she fearful? Have fight-or-flight hormones hijacked her brain?
Should I ask them to buy now after that obvious buying signal?
Should I back off?
What are some techniques you recommend for salespeople to ramp up their rapport-building techniques and establish a sense of trust?
Most salespeople have been told that, to earn trust, you have to get your customers to like you. That’s backwards. Earning someone’s trust doesn’t start with getting customers to like you. It begins with empathy; with you caring about them. Trust follows empathy. Otherwise, we’re just another salesperson with a hand in our prospect’s pocket.
You become more empathetic by establishing rapport. Rapport is a precursor to empathy. You’ve almost certainly heard about establishing rapport in sales seminars you’ve taken. In my experience, most salespeople are taught to view rapport simply as a box to check. Match and mirror. Pace. That’s all useful, but where’s the humanity that animates this new relationship with your prospect?
Here is a sampling of methods to build rapport:
1. Be interested in their battles.
Each time you meet a prospect, find at least one positive character trait and offer a sincere compliment. Not just “Hey, that’s a cool jacket,” or “Wow, what a beautiful bracelet!” Is he patient with his kids? Is he funny? Is her work fascinating?
2. Notice the purple hats.
You’ve probably heard the expression, “We need to talk about the elephant in the room”. Think of it like this: If I invite you to our home in Park City, Utah for dinner, and there in the foyer is a circus elephant squatting next to the grand piano, would you say anything? If you don’t, it’s going to be awkward for both of us. Likewise, when you meet someone whose appearance shouts, “Look at me!” You have to look. You have to comment. “Nice hat! Where’d you get those feathers?” or “How long did it take you to get forty-six tattoos?” Selling would be so easy if we only had to sell to people with our appearance, background, and tastes. But that’s not how the game is played.
3. Let them talk about themselves.
We trust the people who take the time to get to know us. But giving someone else the floor is difficult to do. Research from the Harvard Business Review shows that, on average, people spend 60% of their time talking about themselves, a number that increases to 80% on social media. The Greek philosopher Epictetus said it first: “We have two ears and one mouth, so we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
You talk about the power of the ‘right questions’ and how questions help us fall in love. How can a salesperson determine what questions are right for him or her?
Getting the attention of your prospects, gaining commitment and reaching consensus now is the greatest challenge salespeople face. In this age of information overload it’s difficult for prospects to sort through the clutter and the complexities of your product offering. You need to guide the conversation and travel the most direct route.
As an analogy, can you imagine driving from one end of the country to the other without directions? You may eventually get to your destination, but without a map or GPS, you’ll take far longer than necessary.
Your customers may not be as flexible. When your presentation is too long or off-point due to a lack of precision, your customers, to continue the analogy, may simply run out of gas. Your customers today are busy. They’re overwhelmed. Side-road conversations that aren’t relevant to them are simply an annoyance. You’ve got to keep them speeding down the Interstate; not getting lost on side roads.
Your job is to ask questions, I call this the discovery phase, so that you can provide solutions that are specific to their needs—the WIFM or “What’s In it For Me?” Your questions must follow a logical order—in other words, you start by gathering facts, and then progress to deeper questions that uncover customers’ problems and emotional motivators.
Craft a Discovery that helps you uncover what I call The Big Four:
First Level Questions: Get the facts about your customer’s current situation with First and Second Level Questions.
Second Level Questions: Find the problem- Dig deep to determine the implications of the problem.
Third Level questions: Discover the dominant buying motive or emotional motivators
Uncover hidden objections or concerns.
In Chapter 8, you discuss how most salespeople incorrectly assume that they can create a sense of urgency by threatening scarcity or appealing to greed. What is the most effective way of creating a sense of urgency?
No one cares if there’s only two left, or the price goes up next week, if they don’t want or need what you are selling in the first place. You can’t hijack your customers’ minds and force your incentives upon them.
You can’t create urgency without a prospect’s permission. But people will give you permission if they are emotionally committed to what you are selling. When you align what you’re selling with what they’re feeling, they will open their hearts. And their wallets.
I’ve seen countless salespeople ask poignant discovery questions only to deliver a generic sales presentation. At this point, your customers want to know one thing: What’s in it for me? (WIFM). They want to know you can fulfill their desires and solve their problems. But before you can link their needs with your offer and make a compelling case for your product, you must confirm that you got the information right.
In other words, no matter what you’re selling, or whom you’re selling to, you must complete each of these three steps in order to build that vital sense of emotional urgency.
Here’s the process:
• Confirm your customer’s wants, needs, and concerns.
Salespeople often assume they’ve discovered the accurate information, but they miss or misinterpret critical facts. And we all know what happens when we assume. Depending on your sales process, you can either launch into a confirmation statement directly after your Discovery or at the beginning of a follow-up meeting. Information confirmation is, simply, the act of repeating back the information you heard and getting confirmation that what you heard is, in fact, what the customer meant.
• Link their wants and needs to your product or service
Good salespeople do a Discovery.
Better salespeople ask the right questions in the Discovery to uncover the Big Four: First Level facts, Dominant Buying Motive (DBM), Problems, and Objections.
The Best salespeople actually take the information from the Discovery and link it emotionally to the features and benefits of their product. And then gain comittment. Our brains love stories, but our hearts cherish them even more. For years, I told this story to couples who, at the moment of truth, just couldn’t make a decision. It almost always pushed them over the edge.
• Create an emotional experience through evocative stories and a memorable sales experience
New research confirms that hearing the right stories at the right time cause the brain to release oxytocin, the neurochemical responsible for empathy. Oxytocin, dubbed the “Moral Molecule,” by neuroeconomist Paul Zak, makes people more trustworthy, generous, charitable, and compassionate! Researchers experimented on customers in a sales environment, having them ingest oxytocin through their nasal cavity to see if they would become more trusting and empathetic. (I figure if you can get a complete stranger to sniff an unknown chemical, he probably trusts you already!)
Even if your prospect is interested in the facts of your offering, he won’t be inspired to act without his emotions leading the charge. Your customer may think your solution is right in his head, but he’ll only take action when it feels right in his heart.
You mention that top performers celebrate the word “no” and learn from it. Why do salespeople need to hear the word “no” and what techniques can they use when they hear it?
Salespeople are often taught that No’s are a necessary evil, or a hurdle to overcome. But top performers think of No’s differently. They look for the No’s. Instead of setting goals for the number of Yes’s they get, they actually celebrate their No’s and learn from them. As Winston Churchill said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
I find that many salespeople simply don’t know what to do when they hear the word “No.” So here are some guidelines:
Listen fully before you respond. Don’t become defensive. I am always amused at salespeople who apologize or criticize customers when they disagree. Breathe. Let the customer finish their train of thought. Now ask yourself: is this a deal killer? Many objections are valid—the customer just needs more information. Some test you to gauge if you will answer their concerns truthfully.
When I hear an objection in the sales process, I listen fully. I validate the concern by saying “I can absolutely see why you’d feel that way,” or “That’s a valid concern.” I may even state their objection more strongly. “You certainly don’t want to invest in a product that doesn’t work for you. It sounds like you have enough on your plate.” Then I wait for agreement. When I hear it, I’ll confirm: “This is good. We’re on the same page.”
You can’t bring someone to your side of reasoning if you won’t first move to theirs! Now, you can share more information, ideas, and an awesome rebuttal.
Remember that questions are often objections in disguise. One of my business school students worked for an aircraft-part manufacturer attempting to close a major deal with the government. The customer asked, “How much testing did you do?”
My student was taught to ask himself: What’s the real concern here? What’s the ‘no’ or the barrier underneath the question? By doing so, he discovered that what the customer was really asking was: Is this model safe? Do we need to launch additional testing before bringing it to market?
Again, think before you act. No never means no. Which means you should never bulldoze your way through with a rebuttal. Instead: listen, analyze, and respond to the concerns the customers express—and the concerns they may not even know to express.
Know when to isolate a “no.” You’ve had it happen before: Customers that rattle off question after question, concern after concern. It sounds like an endless sea of “no’s.” Don’t give up. Instead, ask a question that isolates the customer’s concern and listen carefully for the response.
A hotel company who books large events and weddings was working with a very upscale client. One of their top salespeople, Natasha, had answered about 10 questions when the customer asked, “Do you allow pets?”
Instead of answering yes or no, she isolated the concern by asking, “Would that be important to you in your decision to secure a venue?”
The customer thought a moment and said it would be nice, but not essential.
Some questions aren’t a “no” at all. You just need to isolate the deal breakers from the chatter.
Finally, can you tell us how using the strategies mentioned in your book, and selling with the heart, has helped you?
Writing Heart and Sell and attempting to live the truths in Heart and Sell, has helped me redefine happiness and contentment. Mastering happiness is the same as mastering any skill. Whether you’re a professional artist, musician, or athlete, it takes persistence and time to become a master.
You need to do a lot of little things right; it requires tireless determination and consistency in your attitude and efforts. It can be a real challenge to wake up happy everyday. That’s why you need to make a conscious choice to incorporate rituals of happiness into your daily practice.
Positivity is a skill. Like a golf game, it must be examined, practiced, and perfected. Make these small rituals a part of your life—and I guarantee you’ll see a big impact.
I also learned from TED speaker, Sean Anchor, that this “Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.”— when you feel positive, dopamine floods your system and not only makes you happier, but turns on the learning centers in your brain, making you more receptive to new ideas and solutions. I not only feel happier, but mu business is booming.
Most importantly, I have learned why I do what I do, so I keep on going when times are tough.
As Frederick Nietzsche said, “He who has a why can endure any how.”—Don’t just ask yourself why you do what you do. Ask yourself: who do you want to be? What gives your life meaning? This is the most important question we can ask ourselves. It’s a much more important question than, “What are my goals? What actions must I take to reach them?” Everything, from your goals to your strategies, flows from knowing who you are and why you’re doing something.
I’ve learned that to get trust, give trust. To earn respect, give respect. To be applauded for your talent, look for talent in others. The happiness that comes from excellence cannot be bought; the joy derived from sharing your heart cannot be measured. Building skill matters, but building character matters more.
Click here to order your copy of Shari’s new book, Heart and Sell.
About Shari:
An internationally known sales strategist, writer, speaker and entrepreneur, Shari Levitin is CEO of Shari Levitin Group, a global training and consulting firm with clients in over 48 countries, and one of Inc. Magazine’s Fastest Growing Companies.
Companies including Hilton, Hyatt, Adobe, RCI, Jaguar, Wyndham Worldwide, financial service groups, and countless individuals have all benefited from Levitin’s pioneering Third Level Selling™ techniques. Shari Levitin Group also includes Levitin Learning, a unique virtual university with more than 240 online courses. Levitin is also an adjunct professor at the University of Utah, David Eccles School of Business, teaching their first ever graduate sales course entitled Pitch Perfect.
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Sales force sizing is an integral aspect of a best-in-class sales team.
Optimized headcount maximizes revenue while limiting inefficiencies within the sales organization.
However, this important process doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Executive teams usually choose to expand and scale their sales teams when they’re responding to or anticipating a significant shift, such as major external investment, a merger, a new product or market, or a change in leadership.
Because the expansion of a sales force size impacts both new business goals and existing revenue streams, it’s vital that business leaders create a comprehensive sales team scaling strategy.
Many organizations skip this step, lured by the promise of higher revenue with more ‘feet on the street’. However, it’s important to plan an expansion with full knowledge of potential missteps.
Here we examine the 5 biggest mistakes made when scaling a sales team, and the tactics that can be used to prevent these errors moving forward.
1. Taking a Slow Growth Approach
Due to financial concerns, business executives often recommend a slow growth approach to scaling a sales team. Although it’s natural for leaders to take a conservative stance, slow growth fails to account for both the short-term and long-term gains that accompany a sales force expansion to match prospect needs. In short, it places fears about short-term solvency ahead of the long-term viability of an organization.
World-class companies understand that headcount costs are an investment in future market share, which is the clearest indicator of long-term profitability. In fact, research from ZS associates suggests that by holding off on expansion, companies compromise their future standings compared to competitors’. Meanwhile, their studies also found that organizations that adequately staff their sales teams based on analytical models exhibit higher short-term and long-term profits.
Even if executive teams choose to take a conservative route, initial conversations around sales team sizing should rely on analytics and modeling rather than short-term financial constraints. By taking into account the future revenue and market share that accompany an expansion, companies can determine the optimally sized sales team to widen profit margins. With numbers based on analytics and data, business leaders can make a firm argument for fast but sustainable growth that supports the organization.
2. Ignoring Sales Territory Analytics and Data
Many sales leaders use CRM and automation tools to evaluate sales team performance, but don’t apply the same technology to determine the sizing. Instead, they make a critical mistake of relying on gut instincts or inaccurate cost limits, which can lead to a mismatched sales force size or failed expansion.
When executives scale up too fast, they waste valuable resources, fail to adequately support reps, and can cause a downward spiral in the sales culture. When they scale up too slow, profits and standing in the market regresses. Therefore, any go-to-market strategy needs to be grounded in top-down and bottom-up assessment of sales territories. Leaders need to test assumptions, basing sizing decisions on data rather than instincts. Two methods — the return-on-sales optimization calculation or the efficient frontier benchmark model — help companies maximize profit and market penetration.
Both these methods effectively target the ideal sales force size based on factors like the segment and product profitability, sales revenue, costs for sales employees, and competitors’ performance. The benchmark method is particularly effective for making sales allocation decisions on a national scale.
3. You’re Overpopulating Territories
When expanding a sales team, it’s also easy to misallocate reps, overpopulating a territory to the detriment of the sales team and the entire organization. When hiring too many reps cover the same area, new or less-experienced salespeople prioritize ‘low-hanging fruit’ from low-revenue prospects or easy, short cycle accounts instead of lucrative clients that have a strong lifetime value (LTV).
However, by intentionally optimizing territory design, leaders can increase sales by 2-7 percent without requiring additional resources. Industry leaders can prevent overpopulation by using index-based methods that incorporate three variables: the potential of the territory, the base of existing accounts, and the workload associated with the area. This approach balances reps’ workloads and earning opportunities while guaranteeing that reps are covering the most lucrative prospects.
When an organization’s leaders proactively plan territories, they can create a clear foundation for revenue growth — with the exception of a few tweaks, a well-planned territory design can work for three to five years before needing a reassessment.
4. Failing to Recognize and Counter Role Pollution
When designing an expanded sales team, organizations often fail to recognize and counter the impact of role pollution. As more people join the team, administrative and managerial support can be spread too thin, leading salespeople to pick up extra non-selling activities that are not central to their positions.
Reps spend too much time servicing and supporting clients and conducting administrative work, which severely limits their ability to maximize sales. A survey from ZS Associates indicates the average salesperson spends 8-10 hours on internal administrative activities (expense reports, meetings, and incentive tracking), 5-7 hours on customer service and support, and 7-11 hours on travel.
As best-in-class companies scale up their sales force, they also scale up the administrative, customer service, and support teams, enabling salespeople to focus on selling products or services. By delegating these low-value tasks, organizations create a more engaged, productive sales team and set themselves up for higher revenue.
5. Your Compensation Plans are Misaligned
Compensation plans are the most powerful tool a company can use to guide its sales force actions and behaviors. As a company scales its’ sales team, leaders need to consider the incentives that drive reps.
When compensation isn’t directly aligned with sales goals, reps allocate too much effort on sales actions that don’t contribute to the company’s goals. Reps may focus on activities that, once profitable, are no longer lucrative in a new stage of growth.
There are three aspects of an effective compensation plan for expanding firms: simplicity, alignment, and immediacy. Simplicity means that sales reps can easily calculate their direct earnings based on their performance—it prioritizes the most lucrative sales action without getting complicated. Alignment refers to the strong “cause and effect” connection between incentivizes and the priority of the organization. The compensation plan should align with the most important goal of the year, whether it’s market share, profitability, or penetration. Immediacy means that when salespeople either succeed or fail, they see the impact on their salary immediately.
Incorporating these three characteristics into a comprehensive compensation plan leverages a company’s resources to meet its goals. This approach is even more important for an expanded sales team because the negative impact of misaligned incentives has even wider consequences.
Want to know the 5 other massive mistakes organizations are making when it comes to expanding their sales teams? Download our latest eBook – The Biggest Mistakes Made When Expanding a Sales Team.
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Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.
He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.
Top performing salespeople conduct themselves differently. They are just as disciplined and committed to achieving their goals inside the office, as they are at home. While an average sales rep may only be committed to success Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, A-players seize opportunity for success 24/7.
While unplugging at the end of the day is not necessarily a bad thing, top talent is unique in how they spend their free time.
How do top performing salespeople spend their free time?
1. Monitor email
A high sense of urgency is one of the top traits shared among top performing salespeople. A-players know that in order to succeed in sales, it is crucial to “strike while the iron is hot”. In fact, research from insidesales.com shows that the odds of the lead becoming qualified are 21 times greater when contact within the first five minutes.
Outside of office hours, great salespeople are watching for messages from prospects and checking for updates on deals. They respond to all communications within five minutes.
2. Plan
Planning plays a key role in a salesperson’s success. A study by Pace Productivity Inc. on how sales reps spend their time found that salespeople who spend 24-36 minutes per day planning, optimize their weekly selling hours.
To take this a step further, great salespeople plan their days outside of the office. They analyze their daily activities and evaluate how they are performing against quarterly goals. Using these insights, they schedule their top priorities for the coming day so they can focus on selling right off the bat.
3. Continuously improve
A-players never stop learning. The best reps are participating in professional development inside and outside of the office. They research online, read books, and spend time with mentors. They spend a considerable amount of their free time working to improve themselves professionally and personally.
4. Rest
It is critical that sales reps get rest in order to maintain their competitive edge. 93% of executives agree that taking a break from work is important and working long hours is not a necessary success strategy.
Whether it be watching sports, playing board games with the family, or catching up on sleep, great salespeople make sure to get the rest they need to be successful.
5. Keep commitments
The best salespeople understand that in order to be successful in sales, you need to prove that you can be trusted. To build a reputation of trust, A-players ensure to deliver on their promises even if it takes work outside of regular business hours.
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Top performing sales reps are rare — making up only 10-15% of the sales industry workforce — and, they are highly sought after. In order to remain competitive, it is essential that companies implement effective strategies to keep their top talent.
However, research shows that the voluntary turnover rate for salespeople (15.9 percent) is higher than the average rate for other types of employment (14.3 percent). These statistics demonstrate that in sales, if your employees are unhappy, they will move on to the next opportunity.
As a sales executive, it is crucial that you have a deep understanding of why your top talent is leaving in order to increase retention rates. That is why we have put together the top 21 reasons great salespeople leave their current position and what you can do to mitigate the risk of losing your best salespeople.
This infographic demonstrates 21 reasons why your top salespeople are leaving your organization:
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Average managers bring their sales representatives down to their level, whereas the best sales managers bring excellence to all their territories. A great manager who inherits average salespeople know how to coach, advise, motivate, or replace reps until they have created a high performance sales force.
Some executives believe that a sales manager should continue to sell like other reps, just with higher-value accounts. However, a sales manager is most powerful when they enable their team of account executives. Their power and insight is scalable when they empower 5 to 10 reps that report to them, and more sustainable and long lasting as roles shift in the company. Successful companies minimize a sales manager’s selling responsibilities, placing the onus on the sales reps that report to them.
successful sales representative. In fact, 
“Leadership skills are significantly more important than sales ability to succeed in a sales management role. If you’re looking to make yourself more attractive as a potential candidate for a sales leadership role, spend more time developing your leadership abilities and resume than your sales acumen. Take on a tough project at work. Join a board of a nonprofit or ministry. Come up with solution to a vexing problem at your company. The harsh truth is that there is very little similar about an individual producer sales role and a sales management role. It seems counterintuitive, but getting better at your existing job isn’t preparing you to get promoted.”
“Actively share sales tactics, set up lunch and learn sessions or a sales book club, volunteer to coach and mentor newer reps, etc. When you demonstrate a willingness to coach and an investment in the success of your peers, you demonstrate your ability to manage and lead a team.”
An internationally known sales strategist, writer, speaker and entrepreneur, Shari Levitin is CEO of Shari Levitin Group, a global training and consulting firm with clients in over 48 countries, and one of Inc. Magazine’s Fastest Growing Companies.
