I know you are working on ending the year strong. Your sales manager is encouraging you to pull the last couple of deals across the line. But this week, many people will be taking time off to spend with their families and friends, which means your contacts might not be at work on Wednesday and Friday. If this is true for you, it’s a good time to start building your plan to succeed in 2024.

Read the full article at: www.thesalesblog.com

Sales management is how sales managers organize, motivate, and lead their sales reps while tracking — and improving — team performance. This includes hiring top talent, training sales staff, coordinating operations across the sales department, and implementing a cohesive sales strategy that drives business revenues.

Think of it like a sports team. Have you ever heard of a top-ranked baseball team without a coach? Of course not. The coach provides the guidance, inspiration, strategy, and training that enable players to secure big wins. The best sales managers operate the same way, inspiring, educating, and guiding their teams to maximize revenue. The result? Consistent sales growth and a happy team — not to mention sizable commissions.

Read the full article at: www.salesforce.com

“She looked so good on paper.”

Sound familiar? In your haste to fill an open position to keep your company running smoothly, you make a hiring decision that turns out to be a big mistake.

If this is the case, you are certainly not alone, and the problem isn’t a lack of judgment. A US Chamber of Commerce Foundation study released earlier this year confirms what many of us on the front lines of recruiting candidates already know: There is a skills gap in the current labor market. The study found 48% of respondents lamenting that candidates lack the skills to fill the jobs at hand.

In an uncertain economic environment where every employee must perform at the highest level – it’s important to understand what you can do to uncover top talent.

Read the full article at: www.entrepreneur.com

Paul Wright, head of the technology practice, Odgers Interim, explores the impact of coronavirus on senior level recruitment in the technology industry

In a matter of days, the socioeconomic impact of the coronavirus created an entirely new playing field for the technology sector, and for senior tech recruitment in this space. The first, and most dramatic shift, was in the unified communications market. What many anticipated to be a seven-year journey for an industry geared around remote working, was accelerated within as many weeks.

Following unified comms, came digital platform businesses and marketplaces as online food delivery and doctors-on-demand saw an unprecedented spike in the need for their services. Not every company that has an app-based offering did well, however. Those in transport, travel, hospitality and events saw steep declines in activity and are having to pivot their models in line with government restrictions.

The fallout on senior tech recruitment within the technology sector has been just as dramatic as the initial operational impact on companies. What we experienced immediately was the volatility of the market. There was a lot of stop-starting on projects – particularly large transformations. One minute we had clients who wanted transformation directors and consultants, the next they didn’t. This was particularly true of start-ups and the big tech players. Our clients are telling us that ‘virus volatility’ makes it nearly impossible to forecast financially, and we’ve noticed scale-ups being incredibly careful about the decisions they make.

Many of our larger B2B and B2C tech clients have frozen all hiring. In the main, this is down to their size and the ability to reallocate resources quickly to areas of demand without the immediate need for new hires. This has had a knock-on effect on their transformation programmes with many postponing or even cancelling as they reallocate transformation teams to the new ‘front-line’. This of course, also has an impact on the transformation people they hire.

It’s in the middle-market that we’re seeing the activity. Within the first week of the lockdown we received exploratory calls from PE firms looking for turnaround specialists; either chief financial/restructuring officers or CEOs with restructuring experience who could deploy on demand if their portfolio companies became financially stressed. More than one has since put in place a restructuring expert.

Sales also saw increasing attention — specifically from software firms backed by private equity; although this was arguably a trend pre-virus. Some have booming sales, especially in remote working or cyber. We know that one firm which has products in both unified communications and information security is so busy, that they’ve reallocated all marketing and head office staff to just taking incoming orders and is asking us for sales leaders who can start immediately as they try to manage a level of demand they could never have anticipated. On the other hand, a financial software firm looked to us for a chief sales officer for immediate start to implement a completely new strategic direction for a 220+ person sales team where revenue has flat lined. It’s an odd world right now.

As you’d expect, HR is busier than ever. We’ve seen a number of chief people officer roles push ahead and almost every tech business that needs a HR leader needs help realigning pay structures, implementing furlough schemes and, in some cases, hiring and onboarding new staff remotely. Whilst some of this might sound negative, it’s not. A lot of tech businesses are making the smart move and securing leaders who can plan workforces for every eventuality, including future growth and restructuring, or phases of both.

Like HR, we had a number of CTO or VP (software) engineering roles in play that pressed ahead in spite of coronavirus. The resilience and scalability of both B2B and consumer platforms are being tested heavily right now, and the tech firms who own them want to ensure they can handle the pressure, and in some circumstances, scale-up in a condensed timeframe. This responsibility falls at the feet of the CTO. These are incredibly busy people right now.

Since WHO (The World Health Organizations) declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic, the world as we know it has experienced a drastic change.

For weeks now, the business community has been ramping up efforts to help contain the virus. Large corporations like Airbnb, Google, and Twitter all asked their teams to work from home to reduce the spread. Annual events have been canceled, business strategies have shifted, and companies everywhere have been forced to rethink the way they approach their sales activity.

As travel restrictions, hiring freezes, and evolutions in market demand all create new challenges for brands, one thing hasn’t changed: Our need to access regular sales.

The question is, how do you guide a sales team towards measurable results in a sales environment unlike anything we’ve ever seen before? We’re going to guide you through how to approach team management during a crisis so you can keep your company growing and your team positive and productive.

It All Starts with a Plan: Strategic Selling in a Crisis

All successful sales strategies start with proper planning.

Now that the world as we know it is evolving at an incredible pace, business leaders need to think carefully about the kind of challenges they’re going to face. For instance, will a remote sales team be harder to manage than in-office employees?

If so, then you need a campaign in place that allows you to keep your team members motivated and productive during this crisis. Accessing new tools for workforce optimization, time tracking, and team management is crucial to keeping everyone on the same page.

According to Richard Harris, the Founder of Harris Consulting Group, early adopters will thrive by researching new opportunities and looking for new ways to keep teams motivated through training.

To figure out how you’re going to progress through the crisis, think about:

• How big your sales team needs to be to continue delivering the same quality of service to clients. As tempting as it may be to reduce your personnel during this difficult time, a reduction in team members could threaten your reputation.
• What kind of communication strategies you’ll be using. Face-to-face conversations might be out, but you can keep team members engaged and informed through video conferencing and real-time chat instead.
• What resources do you need to deliver to your sales teams? Beyond CRM systems for customer management, what other tools are necessary? Do you need a way for your clients to track their individual performance for gamification purposes? Would a service that helps your clients track sales sequences online keep them on the ball?
• How will you support your teams? Offering the right training and technology is a good start. However, you also need to provide support in the form of reassurance and regular updates, so your people feel educated and informed.

As more companies ask their employees to work from home, it’s important to remember that there’s more to building a digital sales team than giving them a laptop and sending them on their way. You need a clear picture of how work can be done in their new environment to ensure your team members have the right technology and support to thrive.

Whether it be deciding on the right time to hire salespeople or identifying potential candidates, developing a sales hiring process will certainly help streamline recruitment decisions. A clear and comprehensive sales hiring process can save resources, reduce turnover, and produce an efficient sales team.

Devising a thorough process in objective sales hiring is a critical component of sales management success. To simply put it, you need to build and manage a team that will get you to your numbers and delivers profitable revenue. 

For your business to hit its target sales and revenue, it’s extremely essential to hire the right people. 

Read the full article at: www.myvirtudesk.com

Motivation is more than Vince Lombardi quotes and quirky posters on the wall. It’s one of the most important components of sustained sales success over time.

As a sales manager or director, you can only influence your team’s sales performance in two dimensions: Their skill set (what they can do) and their motivation (how repeatedly or passionately they do it).

Improving your team’s skill set is a largely objective process. By evaluating current performance metrics and comparing them to a successful end state, you can diagnose what areas need improvement and act accordingly.

But motivation is far harder. Not only are there are many external factors that affect motivation, every person requires different incentives and motivational tactics.

Read the full article at: blog.hubspot.com

Sales managers hold great responsibility, but there’s no need to feel intimidated. You’ve earned this role—now it’s time to get out there and kill it.

Good leadership comes in many forms and you’ll quickly discover what leadership style works best for you and your team.

As the leader of a sales team there are many things you can do to maximize output in a way that will build respect and camaraderie. This begins with getting your sales reps to believe in you as a leader that can help them accomplish the overall company mission and their personal goals.

Read the full article at: blog.close.com