When your team wins - You win as a Manager
There are many people in our industry with the title of “Manager”, but very few who deserve it.
This happens for countless reasons in sales management. Some feel entitled by this newfound title and don’t believe they need to. Others claim they’re too busy. Surely some have been promoted to the point of incompetence and don’t know where to start. In the end, the reason many managers don’t manage is because they’ve never been trained how.
There aren’t classes in automotive that teach how to manage others. Most Sales Managers get the promotion because they were great salespeople. But being a great salesperson DOES NOT mean you make a great manager. Nor does knowledge of desking deals make you a sales manager. Overseeing inventory and pricing doesn’t make you a sales manager. Having the ability to make others run to get you Starbucks doesn’t make you a sales manager.
Here are several responsibilities that you should be incorporating into your sales management role:
Daily Check-ins – At noon and 5pm, review task completions and overdue tasks inside the CRM. Then promptly call each individual sales agent to the desk/tower one-by-one, alerting them of any discrepancies, and ask them to complete them. If you’re waiting to speak to your sales team when they approach you for a price or with a customer question, you’re waiting for the wrong time to engage with your team.
Process Trainings – Two 30-minute group sessions weekly, educating your team on instances from road to the sale tactics, navigating customer-facing websites, objection-handling, and more.
Product Trainings – Two 30-minute group sessions weekly, educating your team, not on the specs and features of your vehicles, but on the differentiators between each model and its competitors. Explain how to categorize vehicles by buckets of pricing, safety, towing, seating, and more. Knowing what options come as part of different packages is helpful, but not as helpful as knowing how your vehicles stack up against that of your off-brand competitors. *Every sales agent must attend it just once each week.
Save-a-Deal Meetings, once a week, one-on-one between you and each agent. Uncover how many ups they took over the last week. How many stemmed from appointments they had? How many were be-backs? How many sold? What prevented each customer from purchase (if you don’t already know)? And lastly, how can you help your team as a manager to save a deal for them, and put lost money back in their wallet?
Most importantly, during the weekly save-a-deal meetings, I urge you, as a sales manager, to ask questions about their home life. Their health, family, and interests. This is what will allow you to build a mentorship so you truly know how to positively manage them and understand their behavior. This is where the key to management comes into the equation.
Monthly Forecasting Meetings, one-on-one with each sales agent, using historical data from the CRM to determine goals regarding number of customers needed to reach their appointment, sales, and commission goals for themselves.
Yearly Performance Reviews are a necessity to build long-term growth and performance goals. What personal education does each candidate feel they need to take the next step in their career? To reach the next plateau of commission, position, or job security? This is where you determine if they’re a long-term solution for your organization, a steady worker-bee, or a short-term filler for a role that will eventually need to be replaced without more training or support.
Managing isn’t easy, but when times are tough and traffic is slow, the best managers know how to make it remain a positive environment. They don’t play favorites. They don’t turn the other cheek when they see wrongdoing. They don’t turn negative. They don’t disappoint. They don’t allow laziness, because they themselves don’t ever show that characteristic.
They follow-through. They lead by example. All of their interactions are an opportunity to influence others. Being supportive, interactive, empathetic, and entertaining go a long way to getting others to follow your lead and execute your directives. While no one likes meetings, if you keep all of these meetings listed above short, filled with good content and not empty air, they will not be tiresome wastes of time, but learning experiences for every person involved. That is what management is about.
Great management can bring out the best in others, but it takes dedication and perseverance. To quote the great Vince Lombardi..
“Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.”
Make It A Champion Day!
"SALES TRAINING MATTERS"