Sales Method & Tools

The sales team’s efforts is what creates the opportunity and closes the sales. Your job as the team’s manager is to help them be at their best and win the best business, every time.

There are many uncontrollable variables when we work with people in a complex ecosystem. Stakeholders’ behaviors and decisions are motivated by very various factors, which makes the buying cycles more difficult to control or even understand. This section is all about turning this into a predictable, forecastable revenue growth machine.

By applying structure into our ways of working and defining our sales processes well, we bring predictability into the process. What can be measured and predicted can be improved.

Solid performance management comes through a disciplined and structured approach, and it ensures that we work with the right customers and in the right way.

Value-based sales methods help us to stay focused on the value our company provides to the customer. This keeps margins healthy.

Using the right tools helps automate tasks; shortens time to get data, analyze and plan for customer visits; proposes the right solution; and wins the business. Modern tools can shave off more than 50% of admin time, which can now be used for customer facing, productive time.

Tools will include:

• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Sales and market intelligence
• Lead handling and prospecting
• Analytics and reporting
• Process and training
• Automation and integrations

Feedback & Monitor

In this process area, you will find methods and tools for performance management, and systems for continuous feedback from your market, your customers, and your people. This is fundamental for change management and steering.

Without proper performance management, you are running your car with your eyes closed and without a steering wheel.

In B2B sales, people propose solutions to other people. When introducing human psychology and behaviors into the equation, sometimes forecasting and predictability become a challenge.

An efficient sales process, adequate sales skills, and optimizing customer base planning are the ingredients to successful sales.

If we know what we are doing, we can set objectives and find smart ways to monitor and feed.

It is important that we work hard, but real productivity happens when we boost conversion and hit rates by focus on quality and skills in every customer interaction. Larger deals come through ensuring enough opportunity to allow us to select the best prospects that perfectly fit our company and offering.

Smart objectives, intelligent dashboards, the right KPIs, and frequent feedback potentially can increase your sales productivity by 25% to 30%. Check out the articles below to find out more about setting smart objectives and feedback systems.

Develop & Build

Managing and leading is all about getting the best out of the team. Your performance management system tells you where your strengths and weaknesses are. Your business plan maps out where you are headed.

Whether you actually reach the goals or not depends on how well your team Is prepared and motivated for the task. It is the sales manager’s job to make sure every team member is prepared for the challenges ahead to reach the objectives. Some training will happen centrally, or it can be hired externally, but most of the time competence development happens internally by the manager and other team members.

This section is about how you as the manager can develop skills and competencies, and present tools and methods to train and prepare the team.

Knowledge around training and pedagogics, experiences from running workshops, and how to make the training truly stick are discussed here.

Stay tuned and check out this section for materials, checklists, tips, and tricks.

Lead & Coach

The job of directors and managers is to create success through others. By setting up the best structures around the team, solid planning, and installing a performance management system, the groundwork is done. Leadership, culture, and performance management then take the plans and turn team into reality. Your leadership qualities and your coaching skills are your tools to influence the team.

They help you install the motivation, drive, and energy that is needed to get things done and to work in the intended direction. Leading is about creating the vision and setting the direction. Coaching is about supporting and developing people to be the best they can be.

A team and its members have different needs for leading and coaching in different periods of the team’s evolution. The initial focus is on setting the direction and on conveying the plan and vision to the team. Later, this moves to more of a supporting and coaching attitude, so people understand how to get there once they have bought into the vision.

In the sales team context, leading is closely related to setting clear objectives, and coaching is guiding the team members on the way to achieve them. Clear objectives and guidance are demonstrated success factors for motivation and team productivity.

The better you build the vision, lead, and coach, the less you need to manage details, and the happier and more successful the team is. The team feels empowered to achieve goals on their own.

In this section, we collect experiences, tools, and tricks on leadership and coaching for success.

Plan & Organise

Planning and organizing is a process area that all managers work with, without exception.

The processes here includes setting the local strategy and creating the tactical plan for the team. Without this, you don’t have a map to navigate with, so it certainly is a fundamental and essential area for any sales manager to master.

The process areas of leadership, culture, and performance management take the plans and turn team into reality. But if you didn’t first create the plan, that energy is blind and doesn’t know where to go!

The process takes the sales and revenue objectives from headquarters and maps the local conditions and the teams’ possibilities. Here you will find great tools, tips, templates, and other stuff that will help you in this work.

Some examples of areas: fundamental customer and market planning to understand what is even possible in your market, resource planning to help the team with its skills and capabilities, product launches, onboardings, reporting, and KPIs.