Becoming an effective sales manager: Joe’s success story

On Tuesday in my “Sales Tip of the Week” I talked about traits and qualities that makeup successful and productive sales manager. I talked about what sales manager can and cannot manage. I have a real life example of a sales manager, who had a most challenging journey to success.

I first met Joe at a networking event. When he found out that I was a sales and business adviser for emerging businesses, he shared with me the following story.

Throughout Joe’s career he was a designer for trade shows exhibits. He told me that he had recently been hired as a sales manager for a 20-year-old trade show manufacture. He soon became a leader for five sales associates. Never being directly involved in sales in the past, he soon begun to understand how demanding it is to manage and create the sort of activity to ensure business success.

When I first started to work with Joe, our main priority was to develop a successful sales management role. One of the positive things was that Joe had not developed any negative habits, so I did not have to retrain him.  When it came to developing a well-structured game plan, Joe’s optimistic attitude made up for the lack of formal training.

Working with him during the first few months, we were faced with creating doable game plan as well as working on sales concepts and strategies for his sales team. One of our key focuses was to figure out the way to differentiate their firm in a saturated market place. In a reasonable period of time, Joe was able to develop proper DNA to be an exceptional sales manager.

When issues would arise, we would go through the debriefing process, look at ways we could solve various problems, and make good decisions. He was literally learning while working on the job.

Within a relatively short period of time, he learned how to lead his team and, most importantly, how to generate more business. It took him some time to learn all the concepts, but he became a very competent sales manager. He understood what it really took to generate a profitable business.

Next week we will break down what Joe learned in the process of becoming a really effective sales manager. Stay tuned!