Once you’ve got your sales team up and running, you need a good manager to keep the engine going smoothly.
I get asked a lot about how to hire, train and maintain a good sales manager, so here are tips from 16 years of running my company.
Quick Intro: I’m Eric Horwitz and I scaled my service business from $1.3M to $10.2M in 19 months and it takes me half day a week to manage. Now, I help service companies grow fast while working less. Just visit winwinwitheric.com to book a call.
- Prepare Three SOPs that matter
A good SOP is the start on HOW to make sales for your team. They should be on
- Cold Calling To Set FTAs (First Time Appointments)
- How to execute an effective FTA
- How to write a proposal, follow-up and close
In those SOPs, there will be explanations on how to talk to gatekeepers, prospective clients and much more. They’d also go over how to use the sales software effectively for tracking and reminders.
These SOPs are about 4-6 pages each, on google docs, and contain bullet points and short video tutorials.
2) Track The Key Sales Numbers
Only four numbers matter when it comes to sales.
Contacts Made: This is you calling a prospect or returning client, leaving a voicemail and logging what happens. The goal is to set an FTA when they’re next available. We require an email to follow every call, because some people prefer emails to phone calls.
FTAs done: A “First Time Appointment” is a meeting with a prospect or recurring client that lasts about 20-40 minutes and ends with a proposal with a number value attached. It could involve talking to a prospect, identifying a problem, and pitching a few pricing options.
Proposal $: Now that you’ve completed some FTAs, each one needs to be tracked. I like to track the dollar value of proposals. If in a week a rep has a $10k, $30k and $40k proposal, that were created that week, he or she would report $80k in new proposals.
Signed Clients $: Proposals get followed up 1-2x per week until they become a “signed client” or someone “says no.” We move their proposals around accordingly.
You then track these four numbers Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Annually
It’s not that hard, and you can use a google sheet for everything.
3) Spend 20% of your week doing Roleplay and LIVE calling with the individuals on your team.
If you have 6 sales people, a good manager will spend, in a 40 hour work week, 8-10 hours role playing and being on live calls.
This could be 30 minutes with each person, twice a week. In those chunks of time, you can sit on zoom and watch as each sales rep calls clients, tracks notes in your sales software, leads an FTA, or you can practice any of these activities as a roleplay.
Imagine how good your team would be if 10-hours a week were spent on individual training and improvement?
4) Record LIVE calls for review
You can use a simple software like Loom.com, that screen records effortlessly, to save live calls. So often, we forget that no matter how good the numbers are, it’s important to see how well your team is doing their job.
In the sales software, you can have each FTA recorded.
I like to have my team record a Loom each day for 15-20 minutes if they’re making regular calls.
It’s saved in their file for review.
You can share it with the leadership team, other sales reps and even admin that need to know key details.
In a call, you can check for tonality, objection handling and so much more.
5) Encourage the A-players
You’ll find sales reps that are amazing! You might think to yourself, “If I have 8 of these, I’d be unstoppable.”
These people deserve recognition, and I advise you give them a “shout out” publicly when you can.
Sales people sometimes run out of steam, but if you treat them right, pay them well and show that they’re making a difference in the lives of their clients and the team, they’ll stick around.
6) Have the courage to remove the low performers
Not everyone is cut out of sales. Sometimes, sales people do really well, and then start to slack.
We’ve had seemingly A-players slow down for no reason. They make very few calls. They are dipping out of work too early.
As I tell my consulting clients, this is a business and we need people to do their jobs.
If they can’t (or won’t) do their job, there are plenty of others who will.
As long as we’ve been clear on the responsibilities and have good training and SOPs, there’s no reason not to give it your all and stay with a good company for a while.
But you’ll see sales reps who are just not getting results…or trying hard but just not closing what they need to.
These are “good people”…but just not good sales reps for your company. Gently let them go, and go find a great team.
But have the courage to do what’s best for your company: remove them
7) Have a quick, daily huddle with a report
Every day, my sales team reports on a google sheet the four key numbers from the previous day.
We also have a live call where they verbalize yesterday’s numbers and can talk to anyone on the team if they have questions.
This keeps them accountable and on top of what’s important: calls, FTAs and signed clients.
“What gets measured, improves.”
8) The Noah’s Arc Idea: They come in paris
When you have a service to sell, never just have “one sales rep.” I find you get too many excuses.
“It’s hard to close!”
“The client says they don’t have the budget!”
Are these true?
Maybe.
But when you put two sales reps focusing on the same type of prospect (meaning the region is the same) you get a competitive burst of energy.
One may do well, while the other doesn’t. Even though their leads are nearly identical.
This allows the good ones to show themselves from the pack.
What do you do with the other one? Train them up, give them a few warnings …and then go to Point No. 6
This “Noah’s Arc” principal is also important because there is a decent amount of volatility in sales. You never know when a sales rep might quit or you might let one go.
This way you DON’T lose traction.
But if you just had one…you’ve lost all traction and it’ll be a mess to pick up the pieces.
Hire two.
9) When it comes to salary, 60/40 is ideal
Sales people don’t cost “a lot” if you’re able to hire them remotely.
In the US, a sales person could cost, in total salary including bonuses, $100k-$200k+ a year depending on the industry.
Meanwhile, in South America, it could be $40k-$70k+
This allows you to afford two!
But you’re not paying $4k-$6k a month in the beginning.
Instead, set their salary up with 60% base and 40% commission, based off of their sales.
I.e. If they want to earn $60k a year, which is $5k a month, you’d pay them about $3k in base each month and have the other $2k arrive when certain sales quotas are hit
10) Bonuses should be based off of just ONE THING: Cash in the bank from signed clients
Don’t pay bonuses off of “signed deals,” because we all know these things can change.
Instead, bonuses are paid from each individual’s clients that they have closed AND received payment from.
If the client is $100k and you’ve only received $50k of that, then only $50k goes to their bonus plan. The other $50k, when it arrives, will be part of their bonus as well.
But only AFTER, it arrives in the bank account, not before.
This is good for cash flow.
11) Good Sales Managers Take Instructions Well
The goal of a sales manager is to ensure sales is moving forward.
There isn’t a lot of creativity, and most of their time, the focus should be helping their sales team succeed.
It’s the job of upper management to define the strategy.
There will be expansions, and new services.
A good sales manager understands the bigger picture and ensures that reps are making their calls, recording the info accurately and focusing on the key results.
The opposite of this, is if you ask for one thing to be done…or tracked a certain way…and the manager chooses a different route. That doesn’t work on my team.
12) A good sales manager takes responsibility for their team.
I make this point a lot, because it needs to be repeated.
Every week (and day) there are metrics to focus on. You need to be a bit bullish to make sure numbers are hit
The goal is “signed clients,” but often this means backtracking accordingly.
There is some flexibility, but it has to make sense.
For example, a sales rep recently asked me if she was doing well. Her calls were a bit low…but her proposals that week were over $700,000!
Obviously, she was doing great work during her FTAs and she has a bright quarter ahead.
Meanwhile, other reps were having very few FTAs AND low call volume.
Whose fault is that?
It’s that of the sales manager, because this person is in charge of each rep’s numbers.
In this case, you’d have to send a warning to the rep, and if there’s no increase, then it’s time to remove them.
The worst thing to do is blame the rep, and put up with mediocre results.
13) A good sales manager keeps the sales software accurate and alive.
We use Pipedrive to organize our sales, and it does a good job, but only if it’s “used correctly.”
I can click on any deal and see each call, email, FTA and note that was taken to know exactly how far along the sales is on its journey to a new signed client (or rejection).
This is why I love a well-kept software, it tells the story without “asking” the rep for details.
I’ve been very forward with the team on how the software has to have all of the notes.
Each week we review the top 3-5 proposals per rep and have a headline share on where they are.
It keeps people accountable and following up without lagging.
14) A good sales manager runs an effective 90-minute weekly meeting.
The weekly meeting is the time to do only 5 things:
- Share one business and one personal win from the past week
- Review the scorecard of each sales rep and the total for team
- Share headlines from the past week
- Review the top proposals
- Issue process anything.
It’s prompt, efficient and gets everyone aligned. You can see where all the leaks are as well (as well as the Wins)
15) A good manager avoids the data that doesn’t matter.
I’ve seen previous managers add so many complicated metrics, that don’t matter.
“Meetings Set:” I don’t care what’s set, I care how many meetings happen.
“Conversion of Meetings to FTAs or Proposals to Signed Clietns:” I don’t care about conversions, just what happens and what’s signed. The story is in the sale.
A good manager doesn’t overcomplicate the pipeline with too many stages. You make Calls. You have FTAs. And you have proposals, signed clients and “said no.” That’s it.
Everything fits into those categories.
Sometimes I add the stage of “Decision Maker” between Calls and FTAs. But that’s such a “relative term.” If someone speaks for two sentences, does that count? Or if they reply to an email?
It’s grey territory.
16) A good sales manager isn’t always the best sales rep
About 5 years ago, I promoted my top sales rep to be the sales manager. It was her dream position.
But she didn’t write any SOPs. She overcomplicated everything. And she spent way too much time doing sales and not delegating.
It’s not set in stone, but generally I find it to be true. Especially in this case. Great reps don’t always make good managers.
Are you ready to scale your service company? I’ve helped clinics, staffing companies, and others get past operational roadblocks, overworked CEOs, and revenue thresholds through 1-on-1 customized consulting. Book a call and I’ll diagnose your exact issue with solutions at www.winwinwitheric.com.