Not everyone knows how to be a good leader, and if you think it carefully, you’ll find out that maybe your management style could be ruining the performance of your sales team just in front of your eyes.
Sales departments typically have one goal, increase sales, but unfortunately for sales managers, 67% of reps fail to achieve their objectives.
Sales managers must invest not only in motivating their teams, but also in infrastructure, programs, and the technology to build a high-performance sales teams that accomplish success, but it’s also a priority to identify the reasons why your management style
Five reasons why your management style might be ruining your sales team performance.
Career opportunities in the future.
In the first place, this looks that the biggest reason people leave their job isn’t even related to their manager, and in fact, the average amount of time salespeople are spending on one company in one position is between 9 and 15 months.
Many of the people working in a company expect to grow automatically to the next role in their careers. But when the person feels like it’s my time to rise to the next level – there is no room for the person to grow in the company. Or even worse, the company grabs an outside hire because it wants someone with more experience.
Simple things like micro-promotions and trusting additional duties on employees can go a long way in helping them feel valued and build loyalty.
Compensation
For the salesperson, it’s okay to start the base salary from something and put the compensations on top of it. On salesperson one-year mark, there should be happening something for the salary. Normally companies offer 1-2 percent raise. We can bet that raising the salary 10-15 percent will give them much more boost to develop themselves and finding a new gig.
Instead of letting the talent run off after developing themselves for a year in your company, design the compensation so that it gives them a reason to stick around. Offer a significant raise in the base for every year they stay, assuming they are performing at their expected level.
People Management
As a manager, how much you really care about your employees? Are they just filling your rows or someone with individual strengths, weaknesses, and experiences that can be celebrated and leveraged?
If you only look at the team instead of the individuals, you’ll probably miss someone with awesome abilities that haven’t had a chance to surface.
Spend some time with your employees to get to know them. Motivate them with passion rather than fear. Coach them in their success and failures.
Everyone longs to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Your job as a manager is to show them where they fit in and help them see the importance of their job beyond the numbers.
Development Opportunity
Give your employees a chance to grow in the company and also develop their own skills. Listen to their strengths and guide them to do tasks that are serving them.
Buy some books for your team or spend an hour per week as a group watching a LinkedIn learning course. Encourage a culture of making changes.
Very few people are born as natural sellers, so don’t assume that every employee will succeed without some development.
Recognition
This doesn’t always need to be expensive. A sales leader simply acknowledging the hard work of a rep can go a long way.
Did a struggling employee have a better month? Buy them lunch and tell them you’ve seen how hard they work. An ounce of positivity will return in gallons of effort, especially if you are managing someone who is motivated by affirmation.
Don’t forget that improvements, measuring performance of your sales team and motivating your employees is an important part of success.