3 Critical Questions Every Sales Manager Must Answer

I have a quick question for you…

How confident are you that you will hit your revenue target by the end of the year?
100%?
50%?
0%?

When I ask this question of sales leaders, the answers I receive tend to fall somewhere in between 100% and 0%. Obviously, certain failure is not a common response but neither are we completely certain we will succeed.

Which is interesting, because sales leaders spend a lot of time with their sellers talking about their revenue targets. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that we constantly reminding them of their progress against their target when we meet with them. And if they fall behind, we are quick to point this out.

So why then, despite these constant reminders, do we sales managers think our sellers will not help us attain our revenue target? We know where we need to be – we have communicated that expectation to our sellers – and yet, if you think back to the question we started with, very few (if any) sales leaders are 100% confident they will be at their revenue target by the end of the year.

This is even more important with what’s going on in the world right now – oil is trading at fresh lows, China’s financial market is in a bit of turmoil, and there is an uncertain economic picture in Europe and in North America as well. All of this puts a lot of pressure on us, as sales managers, to make sure we are driving as much productivity as possible from our salespeople.

If you see yourself in this picture, you are certainly not alone. In fact most (if not all) sales managers share this same sense of doubt and even frustration about hitting their annual target.

But you don’t have to.

There is a way to vastly increase your confidence in your and your team’s ability to drive the revenue that is expected. And the good news – the answer is NOT about spending more time with your team. Most sales managers already spend a healthy amount of time with their salespeople.

Rather, the answer lies with how you spend that time – where you choose to focus your efforts with your salespeople and how you guide them through sales coaching to spend their time in their markets (e.g., their territories, pipelines, or the accounts they are responsible for managing).

So how can you do that? Well, in order to more effectively guide your sellers’ efforts, you must be able to answer three critical questions:
(1) What should my sellers be doing?
(2) What should I be doing to enable my sellers?
(3) Is it working?

The ability to answer these three questions will enable you as a sales manager to have much greater confidence in your ability to guide your team to a successful conclusion at year’s end.

Vantage Point has developed a sales methodology to guide you to finding the answers to these questions. Feel free to contact us if you would like further information.