There is no perfect system because one system may work great at the company you were at before but fail miserably in your new company. That being said, your first job as a sales manager will always be to find the system that works best for your company and team and run with it. So how do we build a system?
- Meetings – Set a meeting time at least once a week and possibly twice a week depending on your environment. This meeting time needs to be scheduled out and it needs to happen no matter what, so no skipping out because you would rather do something else you deem more important. This sets the tone for your week and keeps your sales reps and you accountable which in turn drives up productivity. I typically have two meetings a week, one on Tuesday to go over their funnels in detail and another one on Thursday to look at how they are doing with the small details like follow ups, call lists and activity in general.
- Step by Step Sales Roadmap- Have a comprehensive step by step roadmap from lead to conversion into an opportunity with guidance for success at each phase. Once your leads are converted into an opportunity, have another path that leads the sales reps from interest to sale with success tips along each stop. The key to this working is for every lead and opportunity to be correctly placed so that when you have your sales meeting you can pinpoint where the client is in their sales journey. This is vital as it will allow you to coach your sales rep in what to do next and help them get over any roadblocks they may be encountering. This to me is the most important part of creating a system, once you get your team buy into actively moving their clients into the right spot on the path everything becomes easier and success will be just around the corner
- Data, Data and More Data – You need tools to help your team and that only comes with data. Hunchies can be wrong but data tells a story that rarely ever is. Some of the most important statistics you must know each month are:
- Conversion – Leads/Opportunities
- Win rate – Sales/Leads
- Activity – Sum of all activities (calls, email, text)
- Open opportunities – Sum of all opportunities
- Pipeline – $ Cash value of all opportunities
- Total sales – Total monthly or quarterly sales
With the statistics mentioned above you should be able to pinpoint and help any sales rep and coach them to succeed. Once you implement your system and know which key indicators drive your sales you can dissect any reps month or quarter and help them turn it around if they are struggling or keep them rolling if they are already doing a great job.
If your team is struggling right now you need to ask yourself if there is a tried and true system in place, if not you need to fix that immediately. If there is a system that has proven to work in the past but isn’t now you need to reevaluate where you are falling short or make the changes needed to combat an ever evolving market. Remember you are the driver of this system so you need to preach it over and over again until it’s completely ingrained in your team’s culture.
Written by: Todd Marinshaw (President/CEO Allen Sportswear, Dad/Football Coach)
