As you’re hustling between training your team on custom-design applications and creating reports in your sales forecasting software, you might wish you had a brilliant mentor or guru to give advice on boosting business.
Although we don’t know the innermost business strategies of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, we do have access to strong advice for sales managers, thanks to the Internet.
To get you started, I’ve scoured the web for insightful sales management advice that can help you grow your business. From pieces about industry trends to selling more efficiently, don’t miss advice from these top 5 posts:
Top Tips for CPQ Success by Greg Acierto
This post explains how to determine when CPQ software is right for your sales team. For example, CPQ helps your team take disparate processes and develop unified procedures. If your products have a complex hierarchy, your system operates in a silo or you’re using disparate systems, a CPQ can unify sales processes and boost your business.
“In many organizations, salespeople have their own ‘tribal knowledge’ and have disparate methods of configuring products, pricing and quoting, which makes it difficult to standardize sales operations and set ‘guard rails’ for sales processes. This disconnect results in inaccurate and inconsistent product configurations, pricing and quoting.”
Acierto also explains how a CPQ implementation works to get your sales team working more efficiently, boosting your business.
Resisting change is a natural human tendency, but it can be frustrating when your sales team isn’t responding to the change you’re striving to implement. This post offers sales management advice about overcoming emotions, such as curiosity, disbelief, and concern when implementing change.
“When emotion is involved, there is a distinct approach that is necessary to break through these concerns and create stronger engagement and commitment… This is not a time to talk over or disregard concerns, but a time to engage in individual discussions to understand what lies at the core of the objection.”
When your sales team is struggling with change, try to avoid feeling defensive or frustrated. Instead, take this advice and know your team will adapt if you help guide them past their objections.
Where manufacturing is heading has a far-reaching impact on those who work in sales. This post contains insight into factors that influence manufacturing, and therefore the sales sector. Read about big-picture shifts that are likely to affect manufacturing (and therefore sales) such as the dropping price of natural gas, to garner clues about possible industry developments. Sales managers who know about upcoming trends will be poised to react quickly to market trends and demands.
“Communication technology… will continue to bring together geographically disparate manufacturing expertise. Manufacturing will need to react to market trends more quickly as demand can now be developed nearly instantaneously through social and other media.”
Keeping on top of larger economic factors can be helpful as you manage not only your sales team but also create sales forecast reports and plan for the coming month and year.
If your team needs fast, easy access to tools that support their sales process, you may consider implementing a CPQ solution.
Your team wants to be able to quickly access pricing changes and applicable discounts and get started down the road of creating an accurate, robust quote for customers.
“Companies that have complex, detailed sales processes with a number of various possible combinations need CPQ software. Whether a company offers different product lines or updates its products and prices frequently, the sales team needs a solution that automatically incorporates changes, stays current and is easy to use, allowing them to seamlessly create updated forecasts.”
CPQ software gives managers visibility into quoting errors and areas that need improvement – so it enhances not only your sales team’s performance but also supports your successful team management. Learn the history of CPQ.
As you manage your sales team, it would be nice to know where you’re going wrong so you can change course. This post has valuable sales management advice about avoiding two potential problems when communicating with your team, which is vital to team growth, cohesiveness, and success. Communicating in a self-directed way can come across as selfish while being too empathic can come across as being a pushover.
“Some people and some situations call for patience and empathy… but other people and situations call for a more self-directed approach. A great leader will have a range of approaches they can use for different people in different situations. All of those approaches must include some consideration of the person and the relationship, lest your approach subtracts from your moral authority.”
You may become a more effective leader by approaching different members of your team in ways that fit their individual communication styles, improving your effectiveness.
-----------------------------------
From insight about better communicating to suggestions for tools that can help your sales team improve performance, these blog posts have valuable sales management advice. Use these tips to avoid obstacles and have better clarity about your industry to help boost your business.
Learn how sales forecasting software can help you streamline operations, keep costs down, and grow your business.