A Team Effort

Every salesperson needs a partner. In many small companies, however, there is only one salesperson, leaving the representative few people with whom to share ideas. As a manager or owner, you may need to play a dual role. You need to manage your company as well as become the sales manager. If you have a designated sales manager, then he or she must become not only the sales manager but also a sales partner.

Every employee needs advice, encouragement and understanding of their role and the challenges they face on a daily basis. They need someone with whom to brainstorm marketing plans and to validate what is or is not working.

Try these ideas to help:

• Weekly meetings with your sales team

  If you do not schedule regular meetings with your sales team, they will not happen. Having meetings will first let your staff members know that you as a manager are committed to helping them, listening to their issues and working with them to ensure their goals are met.

• Review all accounts — the good, the bad and the ugly

  Review information from all accounts. Remember that you want to hear all the news about an account. Encourage salespeople to share information about any account changes, problems, special requests or issues they have had with the office. The more everyone knows about the special requests from any account, the better able you will be to meet their individual needs.

• Review sales expectations and goals

  Every salesperson wants to be successful. They want to meet expectations, but they need to understand what those expectations are and how they can be met. Continue to share not only the goals of the company but how the salesperson's work contributes to those goals. It is a great time to understand if those goals are realistic, need refining or whether new goals need to be designed.

• Review all sales documentation

  Sales documentation is like having company insurance. Comprehensive paperwork allows us to review where the salesperson has been, what has happened and what we need to bring up during the next appointment. If you do not review or analyze the sales staff's reports, do not expect clear and accurate reporting; filling out the reports will be seen somewhat like homework that the teacher never reads.