If you own a business and you’re “playing” sales manager – or worse, VP of Sales -it’s costing you buckets of money. I know this because I’ve been building, leading and managing sales organizations for decades.
So how did I get into marketing strategy, planning and management? Because as the lead sales dog, I wanted control of the marketing funnel -the pipeline that feeds the sales organizations I build and run. Honestly, many of the “marketing experts” I hired in the past were lame. So I jumped on the hood of the digital marketing bus in 2006. And I haven’t let go since.
The bottom line is when my team and I audit marketing strategy, planning and budgets for CEO’s and business owners we see complete mayhem. All sorts of things go wrong when it comes to building the marketing funnels that feed sales. Websites, landing pages, copy writing, programming, quality control, marketing automation. In short, people being people makes marketing absolutely maddening.
When I see what otherwise amazingly bright and talented business owners do when they are playing sales manager… Mayhem. Chaos.
Why would an otherwise sane business owner add the role of “sales manager” to his or her job descriptions? Think about this for a minute. How many hats or jobs does the typical business owner already wear?
Too many.
If you don’t know what you don’t know about sales management, it’s going to cost you time, money and lots of headaches. You’ll learn how to be your own sales manager the hard and costly way. I’ve seen it 10,000 times.
Sales managers and leaders who do know what they’re doing know the essential questions to ask. These are some – not all – of the big ones:
- Who’s writing the job description for your top sales positions?
- Who’s making sure the interview process is the same each time?
- Who knows how to build a proper compensation program?
- Who knows how to administer your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system?
- Who knows how to coach each salesperson on a daily basis for pre-call strategy or post-call debriefing?
- Do they have times to coach?
- Who knows how to nail the stages of your sales pipeline?
- Who knows how to integrate your marketing funnels into the sales pipeline so you have a clear dashboard?
- Who knows how and when to fire non-performing salespeople?
- Who knows how and when to go on a sales call with a salesperson and not screw it up?
You see, being a sales manager is a full time job if you own a sales-driven business. Most sales-driven businesses and teams have solid lead generation and marketing funnels in place to feed them. And, you already have five jobs!
Ask yourself this question… (Look in the mirror. Do it now.)
“Self, who are you kidding being your own sales manager and what’s it going to take to get through your thick head how much this is really costing you?”
Don’t be too hard on yourself. Just wake up if you’re the sales manager for your own business.
And if you are the only employee of your business, look in the mirror one more time and ask, “Who’s holding you accountable for your daily sales responsibilities?”
Yeah, I stink at holding myself accountable at times. But overall, I crush it because I AM A SALES PERSON AND SALES MANAGER deep to the very core of my Soul. And then I learned how to hijack the digital marketing bus and drive it through hell and back for you.
No wonder I love my job.
Who’s leading your sales force and what’s it really costing you?
If you’d like to end the insanity and get better sales and marketing results, schedule a time to talk with us.
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