Brian Tracy breaks down sales management into three core skills: recruiting the right people, training them effectively, and managing them by objectives. He argues that improving your weakest skill delivers the biggest returns, and that all three are learnable.
Hello, I'm Brian Tracy and one of the greatest discoveries that I've seen in the last decade is the discovery that your weakest skill sets the height of your success and determines the value of your contribution. You can make more progress by going to work on your weakest key area than you can by working on any other task. Getting better at what you do is one of the most powerful time management techniques all. And the best news is that all sales management skills are learnable. You can learn any key skills that you need to learn to achieve any goal that you can set for yourself. Now, with regard to sales managers, there are three main key skills. Each of them recruiting, training and managing, can be broken down into sub skill areas as well. In recruiting, number one is to be results oriented. You must be clear about exactly what results you want this particular salesperson to produce. And you must make it clear in the interview exactly what these results are. It's amazing how many salespeople are hired with a wrong idea of what the job requires of them. So first of all, you have to make it clear what the results are that are necessary. Second of all, you have to make it clear what skills will be required to achieve those results and make sure that the person has those skills. Now, the third part of good recruiting has to do with the personality of the recruit or the fit between the recruit and the company. Some salespeople are suited to one type of environment and some are suited to another. The best way to determine the proper fit is to make sure that you genuinely like and appreciate the prospective salesperson. Now, the second key to sales management success is the actual training. This can also be broken down into three parts. First, identify the key skills that the salesperson will need to have in order to make sales in a competitive market, especially with your product or service. Second, teach the new recruit these key skills. Go out with them on calls and watch them perform. Give them audio programs to listen to and either conduct or send them to sales seminars. Remember, you cannot expect a person to perform in a skill area where they have not been trained and taught in advance. The third part of training is for you to follow up and reinforce what you have taught or what the salesperson has learned without the follow up and reinforcement. Usually the learning doesn't stick. Always remember that sales training is a process that goes on throughout the life and career of the salesperson. You have to work on it all the time to maintain high levels of performance. Now, the third part of sales management is the actually managing. And there's three key skills to managing salespeople effectively. First, set clear sales goals and quotas for each person. Each person must know exactly what he or she is required to accomplish. Second, set clear plans of action in terms of prospecting, making appointments, following up and so on. Manage and motivate by objectives. Once you and the salesperson are absolutely clear about what you need that salesperson to accomplish, you should continually encourage him or her to engage in those activities every single day that will lead to those sales results. The good news is that all sales management skills are learnable. If you can ride a bicycle or drive a car, you can learn step by step how to become absolutely excellent as a sales manager. You can be the best in your job if you want to be. Thank you for viewing this video on the important skills of a sales manager. If you enjoyed this video, please press the like button below and click on the link on the screen to subscribe to my YouTube channel.
