Читать книгу The Successful Sales Manager: A Sales Manager's Handbook For Building Great Sales Performance - Dustin Ruge - Страница 4

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Consider the following: 55 percent of businesses will fail in five years. Of the original Fortune 500 companies listed in 1955, 87 percent are now gone from that list. In 2011, turnover in sales management exceeded 28 percent across all industries. 52 percent of VPs of sales have indicated that they are dissatisfied with their sales managers, and 63 percent of sales managers have indicated that they are not satisfied with their current sales management jobs and are looking for new ones.¹

These are the types of numbers that keep companies and sales managers up at night; and it doesn’t have to be this way.

There are financial benefits and opportunity costs associated with effective salespeople as well as sales managers. Much like with good and bad salespeople, there are also good and bad sales managers. If you have a bad salesperson, the total opportunity cost and impact of that person to your organization is limited to only the percentage of the sales force they represent; the larger the organization, the smaller the impact and vice versa. But with sales managers, the impact tends to be much greater.

We hire sales managers to help develop, support, and grow sales activity and results. They are, in effect, force multipliers: one or more people in charge of producing sales results through the actions of multiple others. Because of the greater impact they have over a sales organization, sales managers have a far greater impact on an organization’s sales, growth, and survival than individual salespeople alone. In many organizations, it is not uncommon to see a 20 percent-plus increase in sales when a bad manager is removed. Additionally, great managers will commonly produce sales that are 20–30 percent higher than a company average. Putting these numbers together, by replacing a bad manager with a great manager, companies can potentially increase total sales by as much as 40–60 percent!²

So why do some sales managers succeed while many do not?

In 1906, an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto made an observation that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by only 20 percent of the population. This imbalance of distribution was later applied to many aspects of our lives and business and became known as “Pareto’s Law.” In many businesses today, Pareto’s Law commonly tells us that around 80 percent of our business comes from only 20 percent of our customers, and 20 percent of our people account for 80 percent of our revenues. In sales, it is also common to find that on average, only 20 percent of our salespeople account for 80 percent of our sales. This means that within sales organizations today, most have only reached 20 percent of their total sales potential. This is why effective and successful sales management is so important.³

The goal of this book is to help solve our sales management problems, develop more effective and productive sales managers, and help businesses grow. Depending on your own industry or organization, some or all of the following advice provided herein can be used to help make you a more effective sales manager and produce great results.

Are you ready to take your sales management career and results to the next level? If so, read on and enjoy…