Your number one priority as sales manager (and three practices you should avoid)

A sales manager plays an important role in the success and failure of an organisation. He is the one who plays a crucial part in achieving the sales targets and generating revenue for the company. Sales managers organise, orchestrate, encourage, and undertake a host of activities that keeps the sales team on goal and moving forward in terms of capital generation and skills. Unlike the other teams within an organisation, a sales team cannot be simply judged by the amount of emails they send or the number of meetings they attend. Instead, their work is evaluated on the basis of the sales they make at the end of each month. Here’s what should be the number one priority of every sales manager and the three things they need to stop doing today.

The top priority of a sales manager

Driving sales is undeniably the top priority of every sales manager that has ever been employed. If you're not working in the field coaching your team members and you're not leading productive sales team meetings, then you're not focusing on your number one job as a sale manager. You should actively listen and seek ways to help your members raise their performance levels. Ask your team players the right questions and get them thinking about new ways to approach difficult people and situations. This way, you'll inspire and challenge them to achieve targets they might have not even thought of accomplishing.

In accordance with your number one priority as a sales manager, here are the top three things you need to stop doing today.

Promoting best performers to be sales managers

Just because an employee can make maximum sales, doesn't necessarily mean he will turn out to be a great sales manager. You need to evaluate your best sales professionals for their aptitude and ability to supervise before placing them in a leadership position. If not, the company as a whole suffers because the individual appointed is unable to perform, the sales team under him is unhappy and the company is missing out on potential sales.

Lacking a solid sales strategy

Any sales manager whose strategy is 'hope for the best' is doing it wrong from the very onset. In some companies, CEOs play the role of a sales manager and they often don't have any sales background to guide them or their team. They tend to have a number of other, more important, responsibilities due to which they leave their sales team to their own devices.

Sitting behind a desk

In some organisations, sales management has devolved into a desk job and managers have their eyes glued to their laptop screens at all times. They believe that sending a high volume of emails to their reporting manager equates to leading the team. This unnecessary work prevents sales managers from indulging in high payoff activities that moves the revenue needle.

It is therefore important for sales managers to efficiently guide their teams and drive sales. Focusing on the above mentioned three activities will prove detrimental for their personal growth as well as the success of the organisation.