EVALUATION PRODUCTS

Critical Sales Management

Strong sales managers are surprisingly few and far between, and sales management skills are frequently neglected in development programmes.

• Were your sales managers promoted to their positions precisely because they were your top salespeople?
• Do your sales managers know how to evaluate the performance of their team members and coach them individually to fill their skill gaps?
• Could your sales managers create a team-wide training programme that overcomes the specific skills deficiencies of each salesperson?

The truth is that a good salesperson is not always a good sales manager. In fact, the skills needed for the two roles are often diametrically opposed.

Stronger sales performance cannot be achieved without effective sales management – particularly if sales skills need to be radically improved under time pressure. Managers and directors must be empowered to coach and develop the team. If new-found skills are not practised in the field, much of your investment in sales training will go to waste.

Silent Edge’s initial priority is to achieve a precise understanding of the action required from the sales management team in order to strengthen performance.

We start by assessing their skills with a set of objective electronic scorecards, further observational assessment and interviews. Only then do we recommend training and development programmes, specifically tailored to drive performance by leveraging the skills and achievements of the entire sales team.

Vitally, we ensure that the managers have a clear picture of the agenda for their own personal development. Each sales manager and director must be motivated into changing his or her behaviour. Only then can a training programme have maximum effect.

Our evaluation will produce

• a benchmarking assessment of your sales managers’ skills
• recommended training programmes to strengthen their performance as sales managers.

The areas for assessment include:

• Reporting to a director
• Running a sales meeting
• Capabilities as a coach
• Revenue and forecasting ability
• Below is a sample of the output of the evaluation.
  

The evaluation is followed with a skills development programme tailored to the needs of your sales management team.
It starts with the Critical Sales Management Workshop. Other elements of our development programme include:

• An overview of the Critical Elements of sales management
• Understanding and managing the corporate context for sales
• Formulating and refining sales strategy
• Setting up the salesforce
• Directing marketing and customer service to fill the sales pipeline
• Process management
• Performance management
• Time management
• Managing meetings
• Self-evaluation
• Executive coaching