© Customize Sales Training, 2011

Sales Management – The Key Differences

A different range of skills

The management role is very different from the sales role. Whereas they keys to success in selling were communication skills, presenting, negotiating and closing; they are very different in management were leading, planning, monitoring, coaching, motivating and developing reign supreme.

Managing not selling

Newly promoted sales managers should resist the temptation to hold onto their existing customers. Customers are very demanding and will reduce the time that sales managers have to actually manage.

Management is creating performance through others and therefore the biggest impact a sales manager will have on sales performance is improve the performance of all members of the sales team. A small improvement from each salesperson adds up to a large improvement in aggregate.

Providing a strategic direction

Perhaps the most important part of the management job is to provide an overall strategic direction from the sales team. This direction includes such things as the overall vision of the future and the strategy by which this vision is to be achieved.

From a sales point of view, this strategy includes the nature of the Value Proposition offered to customers; the Customer Strategy which specifies which customers are the most important and the Sales Process, which defines how each type of customer is to be approached and engaged.

Developing the team

Perhaps the most important aspect of the sales management role is to develop the effectiveness of each member of the sales team. The role of coaching and motivation is therefore particularly important and requires levels of skills that sales managers may have to acquire themselves from external training providers.

Acknowledging success

A further aspect of the sales management role is to create a climate of success, where achievements are acknowledged and celebrated. This success is not just about the traditional measures of achievement against target, but based on other aspects of success such as improving individual skills, adopting more professional behaviours or attitudes or helping others to contribute more to the team as a whole.

Customize, August 2011

In this book, the authors put forward some solid rationale upon which sales force design should be made.

In particular, they look at how sales strategy should reflect the changing market landscape and the specific needs of customers and why this strategy should provide the essential benchmark for sales roles, structures and management.

This book will make interesting reading for business executives looking to re-design their sales organisation for maximum effectiveness.

Author details:            a-zoltners@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Publisher details:         www.palgrave.com

Professor Piercy argues that the sales organisation should adopt a more pivotal and strategic role in the development of customer relationships.

He goes on to say, The conclusion to which we are drawn is that increasingly the ability of companies to achieve competitive superiority and enhanced business performance through the way they manage customer relationships is a core capability, but one which has been largely ignored by conventional sales and marketing thinking.

This book will provoke interesting reactions among business leaders and those responsible for putting together sales organisations

Author details:             nigel.piercy@wbs.ac.uk

Publisher details:         www.oup.com

This book will provide invaluable insights for anyone looking to understand how to put together a high performing team.

It debunks the myth that says merely putting the best individuals into a team will make it perform. The reality is that teams need a mix of different skills and behaviours in order for them to be successful and need, among other roles, Shapers to provide the ideas, but Completer-Finishers to make sure they are implemented.

This book will be of particular interest to sales managers or HR professionals with responsibility for sales team development.

Author details:             www.belbin.com

Publisher details:         www.elsevierdirect.com

Neil Rackham has been responsible for some of the most important books on sales strategy and account management.

In this book, he argues that sales organisations must be re-focused around the creation and capturing of customer value in order to respond to how customers are themselves organised and how they now make buying decisions.

This book will be very useful for sales and marketing directors looking to re-focus their sales organisation in line with changing market and customer requirements.

Author details:             www.neilrackham.com

Publisher details:         www.mcgraw-hill.com

Why would a book written 2,500 years ago by a Chinese general have any relevance to competitive strategy?

The book’s value is from translating its suggestions of how to fight a good war, into how to develop a good competitive positioning.

In particular, Sun Tzu extols the value of good planning and preparation, of using research to identify weak points in competitor’s offerings, in having a flexible response to changing circumstances and in focusing resources to produce specific areas of strength.

This book will be of value to sales and marketing strategists looking for inspiration around competitive strategy

Publisher details:         www.hodder.co.uk

This book written by two of the most prolific marketing writers provides a practical guide to marketing strategy, particularly for b2c marketing.

In particular, it stresses the importance of a number of essential laws of marketing

The Law of Leadership – the importance of being first to market

The Law of Perception – that marketing is a battle of customer perceptions, not of products

The Law of Focus – to own a word or an attribute in the mind of the customer

Although generally not thought of as an academic work, it is full of practical advice for the marketer trying to establish a positioning strategy

This book will be of great value to the professional marketer, particularly in the b2c arena

Author details:             www.troutandpartners.com

Publisher details:         www.profilebooks.co.uk

This book identifies the fundamental changes to the production and distribution of certain types of niche products brought about by the new economics of digital technology.

Specifically, the book argues that organisations who want to offer specialist products and services no longer need to rely on intermediaries to hold stock, distribute and market on their behalf, which is a situation that often works against those organisations offering small runs of specialist products to small, niche markets.

In publishing for example, authors no longer need to rely on publishers to hold stocks of books and to market them through booksellers, but can undertake all of these things themselves.

This book will be very useful for those organisations that want to market niche products to specific market segments that was previously almost impossible to achieve

Author details:             www.longtail.com

Publisher details:         www.randomhouse.co.uk

This book argues that marketers are no longer in charge of the message or how it is received, but are at the mercy of social networks, that influence their own content, make their own judgments and decide whether to bestow favour.

It further argues that digital marketing and the use of social media has changed the way organisations create and sustain relationships with their customers, creating more of a two-way dialogue based on facts and experiences, rather than on traditional marketing claims and advertising puffery.

This book will be very useful for those traditional marketers who have not yet appreciated that the marketing landscape and the role of marketing communications has changed forever.

Author details:             www.thelarryweber.com

Publisher details:         www.wiley.com