Page 77 - Lighting Magazine October 2019

activity that will do more to bolster your sales performance than a hot new product or increasing awareness of your showroom. The one factor that can do more for the bottom line in a showroom or for a rep agency than anything else is time.
Time is required to perform exceptional sales management. The impact of a great sales manager can best be felt if there are four or five salespeople in the showroom or rep firm. As such, sales man- agers can create an average revenue increase of about 20 percent. That’s like adding another per- son to the team! This is a welcome result as we face a tightening labor market blended with the revenue increases we all want to see...and, of course, the need to survive.
Large showrooms may have a dedicated sales manager who exclusively works with the team, but the hurdle faced by smaller operations is that the sales managers are often the Jacks and Jills of all trades and this has ramifications felt on both the top and bottom lines.
timE is thE salEs maNagEr’s tool
For the most efficient use of time, sales managers must prepare and present daily/weekly meetings. They need time to evaluate all of the sales num- bers versus the KPIs that have been established to determine actual performance levels. It’s time to observe the individual members of the team in action, make notes, and offer immediate feedback.
With all the activity that goes on in a showroom, time is a precious commodity. It makes sense that the most critical time investment that a sales man- ager can make is one-on-one skill coaching sessions focusing on the individual sales team members. The result is that both manager and salesperson are working together to improve the results.
Evaluate how your time as a sales manager is spent. If you’re like most, you spend 10-15 percent or less of your time on personnel development; the bulk of your work time is spent on other pressing activities. The percentage of time allocated to do the job will vary with the showroom’s sales staff size, but the rewards will be worth it.
cam drivEs thE salEs maNagErs ENgiNE
CAM is an acronym for Coaching, Accountability, and Motivation.
Coaching. Think of it this way: Does the coach of your favorite sports team watch the game from a luxury box or the field? They watch from the field,
of course, making notes and reviewing plays. Do you apply the same philosophy of being present when your team is in action on the sales floor? The time on the sales floor or with a face-to-face ap- pointment with a client is the time to observe and make notes to talk about later.
Sometimes managers confuse coaching with im- mediate feedback. Constructive coaching is done on a consistently scheduled time weekly, based on KPI data and observations. Immediate feedback is done only when the salesperson is detected of- fering erroneous information, or they are about to miss a sale. Either situation is appropriate for the sales manager to get courteously involved in the presentation, either correcting the error presented or going in for the close.
In the coaching role, the sales manager puts his/ her emphasis on the specific details and activities that will provide the most positive results for the individual and the showroom. One-on-one coach- ing is the time for completely candid conversations. This time between rep and manager is the only way to change habits and introduce new ideas and techniques. These are the actions that continue
“If you don’t manage sales, then sales manages you.”
fostering personal relationships with team mem- bers. Coaching is not the time to discipline or present negative opinions. Bring “just the facts” and let the results drive a pragmatic conversation.
Performance coaching by sales managers re- quires that there is a commitment to the coaching process from ownership, management, and also the team members. Ownership and management must embrace the priority, the time it takes to do, and the increased value that strategic team devel- opment offers. Team members must be equally committed to the priority given to a coaching program and to being a coachable person. Adopt the attitude of being open-minded to new ideas and strategies, broaden your comfort zone to act outside of your box, and be accountable for the results — good or bad.
Coaching is not a one-way street. Sales manag- ers expand their knowledge base as they help team members to succeed and excel in areas that they lacked proficiency in. When coaching a team
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on the mark