What is an inside sales manager? As a sales manager, you’re responsible for leading the day-to-day activities of a team of salespeople. You set sales revenue goals, analyze data, implement sales plans, train new hires, and prepare monthly, quarterly, and annual sales forecasts. What’s a typical day like? Because all other activities (like growing the […]
What is an inside sales manager?
As a sales manager, you’re responsible for leading the day-to-day activities of a team of salespeople. You set sales revenue goals, analyze data, implement sales plans, train new hires, and prepare monthly, quarterly, and annual sales forecasts.
What’s a typical day like?
Because all other activities (like growing the team) cease to exist without new business, your top priority is your reps’ performance.
You’ll oversee:
1. Training and coaching: This means sitting with sales reps while they make calls and practice demonstrations, listening to recorded calls to give feedback, and helping reps by role-playing handling objections.
2. Helping your reps close deals: Taking over calls with prospects if necessary and developing a strategy to close.
3. Motivating your reps: Running weekly or monthly challenges to drive productivity or increase revenue.
4. Improving process: This means pivoting your marketing and sales strategy quickly or switching technology tools and methods when it’s not working.
5. Collaborating with other managers: You’ll work with marketing managers to qualify leads, and with the customer service manager to get ideas on how sales can improve customer experience.
7. Recruiting and interviewing: Whether you plan to hire internally or externally, you need to always be thinking about where your next sales rep is going to come from.
8. Performance management: This means finding reps who are underperforming and giving them feedback, pairing them with a mentor, and giving them an opportunity to improve.
In addition to all that, inside sales managers find the most promising opportunities to look for new business and then implement strategies to go after them. This could be a website, geographical location, or niche audience. You’ll use reports from your marketing, customer service, and sales teams to make a decision on where to look.
What makes a great inside sales manager?
To be an outstanding inside sales manager, you need to know how to manage many personalities at once. You’ll understand some sales reps may need their hand held throughout the day, while others want you off their backs. A good manager understands that everyone in their team is different.
It’s just like selling: every person has different motivators and different pain points. Some reps are motivated by fear (they don’t want to lose their jobs), while others are motivated by success (they want to get the Sales Rep of the Year Award and win that trip to Hawaii). Finally, a good manager leads by example. If you’re asking your people to work together as a team, make sure you model teamwork and in your interactions with managers in other departments.
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