Want to be a Smart and Effective Sales Manager? Use a Powerful CRM

Whether it’s a B2B or B2C, the sales department should be headed by an efficient, effective, and smart manager. He/she is responsible for managing a team of sales representatives who are vetted for their ability to build relationships, understand and communicate value propositions, and close deals. He/she has to identify and understand the inherent traits of his sales reps and leverage those traits to drive them to achieve the goals of the sales department. These are some of the potential sales manager responsibilities. CRM software is a necessary tool not only for the employee performance evaluation, but for the climate of each deal in the pipeline

Traits of an Effective & Smart Sales Manager:

• Leadership: An effective sales manager should be able to mentor and nurture his best people; avoiding micro-management. The sales pipeline is dynamic, and trusting the skill-set of your best people with their specialized knowledge of a customer is invaluable. He/she leads by understanding the social and economic complexities of sales and every employee involved
• Attitude: A sales manager exudes positivity, demands excellence and encourages his/her team to reach beyond quota – building authentic relationships along the way. For an effective sales management, sales is a communal activity, and a true leader understands these dynamics and leverages them to help the entire team
• Ability to Pick the Right Candidate: Very commonly, instead of spending time to hire and train, sales managers are retaining their best and highest-performing members. The hiring and training process is being pushed to these members quite often. Understanding the importance of the best sales people on the team will ensure consistent hiring practice
• Effective Sales Managers have Crystal Clear and Simple Rules: It’s a fact that Key Performance Indicators (KPI) differ from company to company. It is important for any sales manager to establish their own set of rules based upon research and general knowledge. Usually this begins at lead response time and (ultimately) never ends as you continually nurture relationships beyond the sales cycle – ensuring positive experiences
• Flexible Processes and Methodology: Sales managers should strike a balance with their sales methodology and process. Managers who trust their instincts and gut feeling that are unwritten rules will notice that their sales team has a difficult time finding tangible tools for selling. With a more rigid methodology (while leaving room for the dynamics of sales), a team will understand the fundamentals of how sales works in their organization and can use that as a foundation for all future deals

Nipping the negative patterns in the bud, finding fun ways to motivate and boost the morale of the team, and celebrating success amongst their sales team are necessary activities of any powerful manager.

Having a great CRM system in place is necessary for any sales team. Along with the general guidelines pointed out before, being able to track leads, analyze sales metrics, and set mandatory values all play into the academics of enabling your sales team for excellence

Boosting Sales using a CRM System

• CRM system aids in data sharing across the team: It isn’t uncommon for an individual to receive several phone calls/emails from the same company and many of these calls aren’t properly logged. Storing a database of calls/emails from the company enables sharing lead data and keeping track of every communication. Implementing a CRM system not only drives sales, but makes communication between you and a potential customer seamless. There is nothing worse than making a call only to find out the customer has been speaking with another sales representative in your company 10 minutes earlier. With a fast & powerful CRM in place, errors like these can be avoided.
  

• Sales process tracking: The number of steps in a sales process varies from company to company. The steps are designed to ensure that the team is consistent in following up with leads, converting them into opportunities, and eventually, closing the sales. A CRM system makes it easy to monitor and track the entire sales process workflow.
  

• Benchmark the performance of the team members becomes easier: The members of a sales team like to know where they stand and how they are performing. A sales manager would also like to know how each member of his team is performing. A best crm software can assist the sales reps in understanding their performance, and benchmarking toward improvement.
  

  

• Reporting and journaling of sales activities: A CRM system makes it easier for the sales personnel to generate reports. Whether at their desk or on the go, mobile CRM apps allow those same reps to journal their activities (capturing a new lead, entering call logs, and even scheduling follow-ups).
  
• Team collaboration made easier: Sales managers can share documents and information across the sales team, allowing collaboration between various departments.
  
• CRM for Customer Profiling: The client/customer profile is important to any business and contains vital data required by both the sales and marketing managers. It contains the entire details of a customer, including (but not limited to) behavior, preferences, and needs. Using customer profiling tools the sales manager can understand his best leads at a glance.
  

  

• Better allocation of sales resources: CRM software allows the sales manager to see how sales resources are allocated. The resource requirement for qualified leads can differ – some prospects needing more resources than the other. CRM makes it easier to make the right decisions while allocating and deploying the appropriate resources.

Smart and effective sales managers have great leadership goals to achieve and are at the urge of developing leadership skills that they use to train their team to surpass all sales goals. They use technology to ensure that the work is made easier not only for them, but for the entire team. A CRM platform in the cloud streamlines the sales process – making it easier for sales personnel in the field to access relevant data, keep up with notifications and reminders, set up meetings with the prospects, and send reports. Sales managers, on the other hand, can streamline their sales team by monitoring the sales process, tracking team activity, and always having a looking glass into the process from start to finish.