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It’s Only Common Sense: A Day in the Life of a Sales Manager

Imagine that you’re the sales manager for a $15 million board shop in the Midwest. Your sales team consists of six direct regional salespeople and five independent sales reps; together they cover the entire U.S. and Canada. Besides managing the sales team, you also handle the company’s marketing and even dabble in social media. In short, you have your hands full, so much so that you could easily be overwhelmed if you don’t have good scheduling skills. Since I work with sales teams and specifically, sales managers, I thought it would be interesting to talk about how a good sales manager spends his days.

First, a sales manager must manage just like a baseball manager; he should make sure that he is fielding the best team possible. Let’s assume that’s the case and that these sales people are good. Here is what the sales manager should be doing in an average day:

1. Ensuring the reporting system is set up. This should consist of:
   • An annual forecast: month-by-month and customer-by-customer.
   • A weekly sales status report from each salesperson (reps are handled differently; we’ll talk about them later).
   • A daily dashboard that shows what the sales people book and where they stand in terms of their monthly and annual forecasts. This report needs to go to the company’s other managers as well.
2. Touching base with your salespeople. This is just a quick phone call to see what they are up to. Ask each salesperson what they will be booking today, what challenges they are facing and what you can do to help them. This does not have to be a long phone call, just long enough to get an understanding of what they are doing and keep them on their toes.
3. Working with the rest of the managers, communicating with them, and passing on what you learned from your salespeople. Remember, as the sales manager, you are the company’s number one sales advocate with everything that entails. You are responsible for making sure that the customer is always present at the table.
4. Checking in with your reps. I don’t recommend you call them every day, but at least once a week. I would urge you to set up a weekly call with each of your independent sales reps to go over their accounts. This is also the time for you to communicate to them what is going on at the company. The true value of keeping in touch with the reps is to make sure they are working for you. Realize that they have other principals and products to sell, and you are competing for their time. The more time you invest in your sales reps, the more you will get out of them.
5. Working on your marketing. This is more important than ever. A few years ago, when we called someone a manager of sales and marketing, it meant that they spent 99% of their time on sales and 1% on marketing and what they were really doing was working on a new brochure every couple of years. That has changed drastically. Now, a manager of sales and marketing must spend as much time on marketing as on sales. Besides making sure that the literature is up to date, he also must make sure that the website is current. He edits a value-added newsletter that should go out at least one a month and stays involved in social media, keeping up the company’s LinkedIn page and sending out pertinent, attention-getting tweets as well.
6. Getting in touch with customers. This is the one that most sales managers skip and arguably the most important one. Make it a habit to call customers and ask how things are going. It’s a good way to create a one-on-one relationship with customers. A great sales manager will try to develop relationships with the customers’ upper management. This will greatly benefit both parties.
7. And finally, being cheerleader-in-chief. A great sales manager is also the person who talks about hope and the future of the company. He must be the company’s strategist, helping to set the direction of the company based on his knowledge of the customers and the market.

A great sales manager will keep these plates spinning, making sure always that the company is delivering great customer service, keeping customers happy and revenue growing.

It’s only common sense.