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Sales Managers should harness the collective experience and success of the sales team in this ever-changing selling environment. This is done by encouraging the team to collaborate on live deals, business challenges, stalled deals and even wins and losses. This can be done a number of ways. Here are some ideas. Please feel free to comment and add more ideas to create a collaborative environment where the entire team weighs in instead of just the Sales Manager.
Idea #1: When a business problem is brought up on a team conference call, Sales Managers should resist the urge to give their opinion immediately. Instead, say something like “I will be happy to share my experience and opinion. Before I do that, Jim, would you mind sharing what you think?” Get Jim’s opinion and Sally’s opinion and so on. The person who raised the question will have a much richer answer because of the additional input.
Idea #2: When a salesperson calls the Sales Manager on a live deal for help (negotiation, strategy, problem, etc), ask them to call one or two teammates to gather their input and then call the Sales Manager back for the discussion. Again, they will have a more comprehensive approach to problem solving and will be encouraged to lean on teammates more moving forward.
Please share your ideas, also.
