SG Partners Insights - Part 1

By Michael Lang

What stops a organisation from achieving growth, revenue and market-share?

As a CEO or business leader, you need to have regular conversations and catch ups with your sales managers. This is true regardless of your managers’ skill level.

Great leadership is about rhythm and consistency.

By having consistent conversations with your sales leaders, you will have an accurate assessment of your current sales force and the coaching your sales managers require going forward.

To get the answers you need, you have to ask the right questions at the right time.

As a business leader, you must have one conversation per week with each of your sales managers.

This weekly meeting should allow you to feel in control of your sales force and let you know whether more frequent monitoring is required. For example, if there is a newly-appointed sales manager, it is best to increase the frequency initially, so that you are touching base with them daily. 

Seven questions to ask your sales managers at least once a week:

1. What is the overall synopsis of the team, how is it different from last week?

2. What has changed within the pipeline from last week?

3. What might prevent us from achieving our goals?

4. In the team, which salesperson is consistently performing, who are we working with to replicate this with?

5. In the team, what are we doing to turn B’s into A’s and exit C’s?

6. What are you coaching on this week and in what aspect?

7. Who will you accompany on calls this week? Are they the A,B or C’s?

With these questions, sales managers will understand what actions they need to take each week to be able to provide satisfactory answers to you during your meeting the following week.

I encourage you to go forward and arrange a meeting with your sales managers. Leave your experience in the comment section below. Stay tuned for Part 2 next Friday.

Contact us to see how we can help your organisation.