Congratulations!  You’ve worked hard, made your quotas, and succeeded in exceeding all your goals.  As a result, your company has seen fit to reward you with a promotion to Sales Manager.   Now what do you do?  Managing your own book of business and a personal sales process is one thing.  But leading a team of sales professionals with different personalities, strengths and weaknesses, while attempting to meet the sales goals set by your company can be very difficult – frustrating even.  Here are five activities commonly overlooked by new Sales Managers and some tips on how to successfully implement them into your strategy.

Number One:   Develop A Plan!

This is number one for a good reason.  Plan Your Work and Work Your Plan applies to both the individual and the leader and not having a plan is a huge blunder.  Planning, tracking and reviewing are extremely important when leading a sales team.  This can only be done when the manager has a plan.  I’m not suggesting you micromanage your team.  Just the opposite, it’s fine to allow the individual sales people to plan their sales calls and processes.  However you need to develop an overarching plan that will guide your team to achieving success.

Number Two:  Don’t Be Too Controlling!

This follows closely with number one above.  Some sales professionals will need a lot of guidance and require fairly tight reigns, most will probably not (at least not the good ones).  Micromanaging can be frustrating for sales professionals trying to do their jobs.  As a Sale Manager you shouldn’t become lax in your leadership, but you need to settle on a happy-medium between being involved but not too involved.  This is extremely important: as the Sales Manager you must remember you are in a partnership with your sales people and mutual respect and the allowance of some measure of autonomy is important.

Number Three:  Be Supportive!

It doesn’t matter if your sales team is straight off the college campus and new to the business or they’ve been ‘hitting the bricks’ for years.  Every sales person requires support.  Some won’t need as much support as others but everyone will need it in some form.  Having sales materials and information about the company’s products readily available can be of great help.  Joining in on important sales calls or allowing a struggling (or new) sales person to shadow one of your own sales calls are also duties of the sales manager.

Number Four:  Provide Professional Development!

Part of your new role will most likely be developing some form of recognition program for the team.  Prizes and certificates for your top performing sales people are fine.  Rewarding good sales performance  is part of the job.  It’s expected and appreciated.  Awards can help to drive results.  But real support comes from ongoing coaching and training for the group.  Award and bonus programs should not be done in lieu of coaching and professional development.  An important part of your role is to work with each sales person to shore up their weaknesses and/or provide general classes to everyone.

Number Five:  Hold The Sales Staff Accountable!

Though it is important to consider external factors i.e. the economy, competition, etc.  it’s more important to remember the sales team was hired to do exactly that – sell.  Should they fail in that expectation some measure of accountability must be taken.  This might include more training and more closely shadowing and mentoring on your part.  But if they still can’t manage to perform well you have to consider the fact this may not be the best fit for them.  You need to make the decision to either move them to a different position, or just let them go.

Successful sales management is the key to the success of a sales team.  It can be difficult, frustrating and at the same time a very rewarding job.  As a new sales manager, you’re going to stumble.  Accept that fact, learn from your mistakes and move on.  Concentrate on what’s good for the sales team in terms of reaching your company’s goals and incorporating these five tips.  You’ll be successful.