In today’s economic climate it is even more important to keep your focus on sales and the steady growth of your business. As competitors find it difficult and scale back there will be more opportunities for you, if they don’t make it then there will be more customers for you. As the saying goes “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”.
For many businesses they don’t have the need, the budget, or the desire to take the risk of hiring a full-time Sales Director or Manager to manage the Sales team. The reality is that your best Sales person is not necessarily the best person to move into this role as the Sales team gets bigger or more geographically dispersed. After all inevitably he or she will be spending less time “selling” and more time “managing”. This is not good news when Sales are harder.
What we have been doing over the last three years is providing interim and part time Sales Directors to performance manage the Sales teams in client companies and we really believe this is a long term solution for companies not able to hire full time Sales Management. The benefits are numerous:
- More cost effective paying for 1-2 days per week rather than 5 days
- Less intrusive for the Sales team so they become more independent
- Reduce the need for management to get involved in Sales performance
- Real experience of managing, developing, building and motivating successful sales people
- Flexible resource that can be turned on or off as needed
- Sales team learn new skills from experienced Sales Directors
- Consolidate and streamline Sales reporting and pipeline management
- Meeting and call shadowing to improve presentation, communication, and negotiation skills
- Proper coaching and mentoring of Sales team
- Assistance in identifying poor performers and Sales people in the wrong job
- Making sure that motivation and incentives reflect the Sales market-place
- Helping with strategic direction of company and growth objectives
- Using executive Global 500 network to assist with Sales
We have helped all sorts of Business to Business companies; some on a project basis getting them in better shape for sale or merger; some to assist the Managing Director start a new business or reorganise a function; some with start up funding but no Sales management structure, and many others to improve Sales systems, Sales processes and the performance of their Sales People.
Please call us to discuss your challenge, it is more than likely that we have heard it all before and have examples of solutions we have provided to reassure you that we can help.
