Working in MSP sales can be a high-pressure job and the success of your sales team relies on the skills your sales manager has and employs. If your team is underperforming it can be down to many reasons, but one of them may be the ability of the sales manager to encourage and coach your team. If you aren’t happy with sales for whatever reason, try to make sure these mistakes aren’t being made.
Encouragement
It can become a habit to focus on past deals with the sales reps and whether targets have been achieved or not. While mention should be made of this, it is usually blindingly obvious to the team member involved and it does not work to dwell unnecessarily on these failures. Instead, a plan of how improvements could be made with suggested goals and even specific coaching for missing skills would be more conducive to a successful result.
A good manager should also be aware of what motivates each particular salesperson, for example, some people respond to monetary incentives while others work better with positive recognition. If the manager can tailor this to encourage each team member, it can help to improve morale and hopefully sales as well.
Weed Out Problems
No one likes having to let someone go, but if a team member is constantly underperforming and efforts have been made to bridge the gap but, still, nothing is working, sometimes it is necessary. It takes a strong manager to be able to make that decision and go through with it, but when your overall responsibility is for the success of the team, those unfortunate choices sometimes have to be made.
Work with Other Departments
An MSP sales team doesn’t work alone. They are the people who are best placed to know what appeals to customers, what makes them buy and which of your products makes them the most interested. Armed with this knowledge a good manager should be liaising with both marketing and product development so that everyone is on the same page. Marketing can only be improved by the insider knowledge of what will attract customers, and if there is a particular product that excites, or even a part of a product, more can be made of this with each new release.
Don’t Demoralize
It can be very easy for a sales manager to delegate everything and then sit around waiting for the sales team to do all the work, or alternatively dip into their territory and try to set up leads themselves. Unfortunately, neither of these approaches will endear a manager to a sales team. They want a manager to be setting an example and actually working hard like they are, but not when it comes to stepping on their toes and setting up the leads that they should be working on. It can be hard to find a happy medium, but it will be essential for morale to do so.
Conclusion
To ensure your MSP sales team has continued success, try to encourage your sales manager to employ these tactics if they aren’t already. A happy sales team is essential to being a successful one, and if sales targets are being reached or even surpassed, that can only be good for business.
