Butch Bellah

Being a successful sales manager means so much more than being a good sales person (although that certainly is a big part of it). You have to be skilled at identifying new talent, know how to run an effective sales meeting, and set and track the progress of goals for your team. Nobody said the job was easy, but it's certainly never dull.

In your position as sales manager you will be asked from time-to-time to produce a sales forecast for the coming year or financial period. Even though a forecast is all subjective, the more accurately you can predict your future sales the more valuable the information is to others making decisions within your company.

Early in your tenure as a new sales manager, it's important to establish and communicate your expectations to each member of your sales organization. Some have their own ideas of where the lines are drawn, a few may be living in the past with your predecessor, and still others may have no preconceived notions and need the direction immediately.

In many cases, being a new sales manager means you were recently a member of the sales team — your friends, your buddies, your girlfriends. Well, not anymore. One of the changes you must make as you accept your new position is that you can no longer have the same type of relationship with your salespeople as you did before.

Your sales meeting should be almost sacred ground. You're there for an honorable purpose: to improve the knowledge and skills of your sales team. And, therefore some things just aren't welcome. It's absolutely acceptable to publish a brief sales meeting rules and regulations outlining what you expect. You can make it fun, but get your point across as seen in the following example.

You can't operate at your best if you're mentally fried (that's a medical term). You need to keep this in mind as a sales manager, for yourself as well as your team. Many times your top performers possess a drive that is almost insatiable. They're so driven and laser focused that they fail to take care of themselves — until they crash.

A good manager inspires her staff to be better. In order to really inspire your sales superstars to achieve more and continue to outperform the rest of your team and their competition, you need to give them special treatment. If one of your sales team puts in the effort to achieve a certain goal or attain a certain level of customer satisfaction and gets the same treatment as the person who underperforms, it's not going to take long for her to become very demotivated.

It's time for management and sales teams to dig in and really take a look at how to establish your team's sales goals. Now's the time when you shoot for the moon, go for the gusto, and all those other tired old clichés. As a manager, require each of your salespeople to turn in her sales goals for the coming year.

As a new sales manager, try thinking of hiring new salespeople in the same way as sports teams do. When a sports team look to bring in a new short stop or a quarterback, they don't put an ad in the newspaper, do they? No, they scout out players they want. So, why can't you find the person you want instead of letting the person find you?