Good Better Best Sales Management

What makes a good sales manager in this industry? A lot of things that range from recruiting the right salespeople for your business to designing database systems that create permanent records of account activities. Sales management is much more a learned skill than one that is innate and, unfortunately, the best salespeople often do not make the best sales managers.

The Right Sales Manager

HME sales managers have two different roles. The first is to serve as a manager or overseer of activities, and the second is to serve as a sales strategist. Some people can function well in one role or the other; a smaller percentage are equally as comfortable in both.

Your sales manager's first responsibility is to ensure that the company's salespeople are performing the right activities in their territories. The typical salesperson spends four days a week in the field in front of customers and one day a week handling administrative functions such as account follow-up, completing paperwork, going to operations or sales meetings and dealing with customer service problems. It is the responsibility of the sales manager to set the standards for the number of sales calls that need to be made during the field sales days, as well as to oversee management of the sales team's administrative time.

I am thoroughly convinced that clinicians who serve as branch managers can handle this side of the sales management function if — and only if — they have had appropriate training on how to manage sales team activities. While most top sellers may be excellent at managing their own territory functions, they do not possess the basic attributes required to manage other sales employees.

Your sales manager's second responsibility is to develop sales strategies. This is the creative part of the sales management job. It seems that few clinicians possess this essential sales attribute, although for the best salespeople, it seems to come naturally.

Sales strategies involve the development of both maintenance (current customer) and new business (new customer, new program/service/product) strategies. These strategies range from the development of simple tactics, such as helping sales reps figure out how to handle weekly sales calls on top customers, to devising more complex plans to overcome competitive moves. The sales manager must develop these strategies, train salespeople on how to employ them in the field, and then monitor the strategies' effectiveness in the event that they need to be adjusted.