Sales Management: Culivating Your Team

Just like gemstones, your sales team needs to be cut and polished in order for them to shine.

Good sales people like to cut their teeth on a challenge and they prefer to be busy but they need guidance to make sure they’re moving in the right direction. They should genuinely like people and also get excited by achieving targets and goals.
And, as a business owner, it means you too should be focused on your goals.

Answers and direction your sales team need from you are:

• Is your company targeting new or existing business for sales? If it’s both, to what degree – 50-50 or 60% new business and 40% existing customers? Making the goal clear enables the sales team to prioritize.
• Is there a product campaign? For example to increase the sales of bracelets for Valentine’s Day.
• Who is responsible for what? If you are managing a large team it might be worth fostering special talents and interests into specialist sales areas.

Polish your team by ensuring they receive feedback often. Utilize business management software that allows you to not only track stock movement but also evaluate your sales team’s performance.

To be effective, you need a POS  and back office system that makes determining commission or bonus structures for your sales team easy.

Most importantly, don’t forget to talk to your team often, not just about their sales targets but also encourage them to give you feedback from customers.

Good sales people who have built a strong rapport with your customers are an invaluable source of information that may impact on your stock and pricing decisions.