The best sales leaders combine personal responsibility with organizational infrastructure to advocate for their team. Part of this advocacy ensures that the Corporation supports the team with tools and infrastructure to make the sales reps job as efficient as possible. The responsibility of the sales leader also includes leading the implementation of the operational processes with the sales team to take advantage of the organizational infrastructure. The best sales leaders take this need as their personal responsibility, and ensure the following operational items are working at peak capacity by either collaborating with the sales support organizations or leading the charge themselves.
- Territory management – how does a sales rep manage their territory? Are the tools being used implemented in such a way to make it easy for the sales rep to do both: 1. manage their territory at the task level on a daily basis, and 2. view the territory overall to ensure the week to week and month to month strategies are still the best way to move forward? Build a territory management culture that benefits both the sales rep and management – working together to find and win business. Surrounding the tools, what are the expectations of territory management? Process? For example, is there a regular planning call (more than a status review – ensuring the territory plan is enabling the sales rep to maximize their time and ability to find and close deals)? Ensure the process is in place and working.
- Escalation procedures – a sales rep needs help. How do they get it? It’s a simple question and surprising how many organizations don’t have these answers written down. As a sales leader, take an hour and write down the following: 1. What would a sales rep need help with? (there could be dozens of questions here – come up with at least 6 to get started) and 2. What is the first step in getting that help? (including the particulars of what the sales rep does/says to get the help). Here’s a thought regarding this topic: when should a sales rep proactively call their manager? When should they talk to ABC corporate department (sales ops, training, tech support, marketing, etc.)? Establishing clear escalation procedures will save everyone time – and ultimately give the rep a greater chance to succeed.
- Funnel tracking & follow-up automation – although all of the areas in this article go hand in hand with establishing expectations on how to work, this area of tracking the funnel, establishing priorities, ensuring timely follow-up, etc., has the most direct connection to how corporate can help implement an infrastructure of sales support. Does your company have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system and a Marketing Automation tool? These products are specifically designed (or should be) to help the sales rep keep track of and in touch with as many prospects and customers as possible. The sales leader needs to advocate on behalf of the sales organization to ensure this is true, and request fixes when it is not. No automated tools? Create something – anything – to ensure tracking and follow-up are being handled.
- Metrics and reporting – Even in the best organizations that fully support their sales teams, the bottom line is that executive management need to know what’s going on. The average b2b sales organization has some type of reporting to management – the sales leader needs to take the "typical" to the next level – what specific metrics can be tracked and integrated into the sales culture – to ensure the most successful ‘deals closing’ outcomes? (after all, are successful metrics that don’t contribute to sales closes really worth a sales team's time to track?) Establish those metrics and report back out to the sales teams, management, and key departmental managers (marketing, sales enablement, product owners). Then take that data, combine it with the opportunity funnel and win/loss data, and ensure an executive level dashboard is used on a regular basis (monthly seems to be the common time period). Again, report it not just to executive management, but to the sales team itself and key corporate partners.
Great sales leaders have many attributes and key reasons for their success (see the Harvard Business Review article here as an example of a good list). Ensuring that the teams have what they need to do their job is a detailed operational need that sometimes gets overlooked.