Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: It Gets Lonely Out There

Editor's Note: To listen to Dan's weekly column, as you've always done in the past, click here. For the written transcript, keep reading...I work with many sales managers, helping them manage, measure, and motivate their salespeople. This is not an easy thing to do when you consider that salespeople are a very different breed from others in a company. They are often driven, motivated, and ambitious some of the time and depressed and down at other times. The job of a good sales manager is to know when to drive salespeople to their own success level--encouraging them when they are on the way up and picking them off the floor when they are on the way down. The motivational part of being a sales manager is probably the most important aspect--not to mention trickiest part of the job.

Salespeople are often mavericks. The reason they wanted to be salespeople in the first place was so they could have independence. They want to work on their own, make their own hours, and come and go as they wish. Often they are hundreds, even thousands, of miles from the home office and have all the freedom they want. But it is the job of the sales manager to make sure they are at work as much as they need to be to get the job done. This means instituting a reporting system that will make sure the salesperson is always accountable. This system should consist of weekly status reports, as well as daily check-ins with the office. And what this all means is a heck of a lot of communication.

Another factor a sales manager must consider: Ensuring salespeople feel they part of a team. Those of us who've been out there know full well it can get pretty lonely. The good news is that, as a salesperson, you have freedom; that can also be the bad news. It gets lonely out there on your own. You can start to feel isolated.

You’re not in the middle of the office gossip and you can feel left out. It is the sales manager’s job to make sure that this doesn’t happen. He has to make sure his sales people--wherever they are located--feel they are part of the company, and an integral part of the company at that.

She has to come up with ways to make sure her salespeople are included in the company’s daily and weekly happenings. One of the best ways to do this is to have a weekly sales call. In this way, at least once a week, the salespeople get to talk with the management team and with each other, allowing communication with everyone. The GM can talk about what's going on in the shop, as can the quality and engineering managers. This gives everyone an excellent opportunity to communicate.

I often invite salespeople to have their own conference calls so they can discuss the challenges they face in acquiring business. They can exchange ideas and give each other tips and hints on how to win more business. They can also talk about what's going on at some of their large, multi-location customers and develop corporate strategies for handling those accounts. And, of course, they can give each other leads. This kind of meeting is key to developing a true sales team.

Finally, I cannot recommend enough that you bring the salespeople into the company at least once a year to have a sales meeting. I mean a real, working sales meeting consisting of reviewing what the company did in the past year and where it's going in the coming year. Salespeople should come in fully prepared to discuss their territory strategies, including account plans and forecasts. The sales manager should be prepared to discuss the sales strategy and tactics for the coming year. The president should be prepared to discuss the company’s overall financial health and direction; the GM should report on the company’s performance in terms of delivery; the quality manager should talk about yield performance, RMAs, ISO registration, and audits; and the engineering manager should be prepared to talk about any new technologies in which the company is investing.

Although there should be some bonding time (including a few dinners and maybe a sporting event for the entire group), this meeting should be brief (just three days, at most) and all business-like. Gone are the days of weeklong sales meetings with skits, events, and golfing. Sales meetings cost a lot of money and the time invested in these meetings should be used wisely.

The most important aspect to understand is that staff need to come together and feel like they're all part of the same team. This is critical for the entire team and vital to those sales guys who tend to get lonely out there. Its only common sense.