Forum:  http://webcasts.business2community.com/

Date: 28^th July, 2015

Key Speakers: Ms. Jill Konrath (Consultant with IBM, GE, MSN etc.) and Mr. Donel Daly (CEO & Founder, TAS)

This write-up will explore the various facets discussed during the webinar and key conclusions that emerged. The objective of this webinar was to discuss the ways proven by marketing research through which sales managers can succeed and achieve all targets per quarter.

Premise

Sales managers / executives are amongst the most over worked yet undervalued and underpaid persons in most organizations. For all their qualities and efforts, there is only one metric to judge them. That one is the achievement or not of quarterly targets. Thus a procedure needs to be followed to achieve the same.

5 Essentials

As discussed, 5 essentials have been suggested which sales managers must follow which will enable them to achieve their quarterly targets.

Role

All sales managers must understand the roles they are to work within. As per Ms. Konrath, 41 roles have been identified within the gamut of sales management, yet it is not possible for any one professional to satisfy all of these. However, a sense of agility is required as work profile keeps changing as per immediate requirements. Most people want to do same things repeatedly as it gives the human brain a rest, yet sales requires multi tasking. Also in order to be effective, the sales team needs to put itself into the shoes of the customer to analyze the strengths and problem areas.

On- Boarding

Corporate training is especially essential in sales teams as new recruits need to feel part of the group. The process of on- boarding requires mentoring by seniors. Millennials wish to be independent at work place and this must be granted, yet they must follow team norms and must possess adequate product knowledge.

Ideally a sales manager must follow the following cycle during the process of on- boarding.

Sales Process

The loss of a deal impacts a sales person more than anyone else in the chain. Also this is one vertical where losses arising from inadequate information at front desk lead to substantial business loss. Sales must thus be approached as a process and not as a standalone event. Everyone must speak the same operational language at the office.

Sales process problems can be categorized within the following 4 categories:

Coaching

Coaching and talent management is extremely crucial, else the attrition rates are expected to be high. The trainee must be provided the context for every product, yet not too great a depth as that will lead to too much time being dedicated to training rather than actual business. It has been observed that senior sales managers spend less than 5% of their time on mentoring.

Analytics

Business analysis through big data and sales analytics is extremely crucial these days. However, the focus must never be on derivation of too much of numbers but rather meaningful data that can be broken down for something useful.

Conclusion

Thus overall we see that sales can be considered a thankless job but yet the most crucial cog in a business. Following of the methods suggested in this webinar will majorly help boost productivity.