While it starts like many old jokes (“A sales manager walks into a company…”), to anyone who has been there, it certainly isn’t one. A sales manager new on the job is expected to take the sales team—and the company bottom line—to new heights.

1. "A Sales Manager
Walks Into a Company..."
Pain Points of Sales Management and How to Overcome Them

2. Nikolaus Kimla
Email: n.kimla@pipelinersales.com
Website: www.pipelinersales.com
CEO at Pipelinersales Inc.
Written by...

3. While it starts like many old jokes (“A sales manager
walks into a company…”), to anyone who has been there,
it certainly isn’t one. A sales manager new on the job is
expected to take the sales team—and the company
bottom line—to new heights.
What are the pain points specific to this scenario,
and how are they dealt with?

4. Making That Quota
The first thing any new sales manager will be concerned with is making
that quota. Everything else is more or less secondary.

5. Closing Ratios
In order to get a quota realistically set, the sales
manager will have to know the closing ratios for all
sales reps, and then the closing ratio for the whole
team. Hopefully they have already been calculated, but if
not the sales manager must do so.

6. Number of Opportunities
Closing ratios will be used to figure out the next raw
figure the sales manager will need: the number of
opportunities that will be needed in the pipeline, and
their value, in order to make this quota.

7. Number of Opportunities
Example:
If the quota for a quarter is $2 million, and the sales
team closing ratio is 25%, then they will need $8 million
in potential opportunities in the pipeline in order to make
that quota. Let’s say that the average opportunity is
$25,000. That would mean there would need to be 320
opportunities in the pipeline.

8. Number of Leads
Opportunities come from leads. The sales manager,
knowing how many opportunities need to be in the
pipeline for the quota to be met, now needs to work
back and make sure there are enough leads to convert
to those opportunities.

9. Number of Leads
To calculate the number of leads needed, the sales
manager will need to know the lead conversion ratio.
Example:
If the lead conversion ratio for the sales team is 1 in 10,
then to achieve 320 opportunities in the pipeline, the
sales team would need to run through 3,200 leads—960
leads per month.

10. With the above elements worked out—closing ratios,
number of leads and number of opportunities—the sales
manager can have the team off and running
to meet that quota.

11. Marketing Support
While the sales manager is getting the quota figured out, there is another aspect
they should be checking on right away, and that is marketing support.

12. Marketing Support
A sales manager must make sure that
marketing is totally there to back up
the sales team.
This is done in (at least) 2 key ways:
A healthy portion of the leads—inbound leads—are
created by marketing, and should be in enough quantity to
keep the sales pipeline full.
Sales reps need marketing collateral materials, customer
case studies, competitor studies, price sheets,
and many other materials in order to help close
sales. These also come from marketing.
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13. Support from Support
A sales manager should also ensure that tech support is fully backing up sales.
The last thing needed when making a sale is for the trial version, or the product or
service, to have issues for a prospect. When Tech Support is needed in such an
instance, it has to be fast and it has to be good.

14. Additionally and most importantly, support has to be
great all the way down the line. If something goes
wrong, support has to be very good. If not, repeat
business isn’t going to happen. If it’s a
subscription-based service (like SaaS), you’re going to
lose renewals and get cancellations.
Support from Support

15. The Pipeline
Now, while all this is going on, the sales manager should also start paying strict
attention to the structure of the sales pipeline itself. By this we mean the sales
process, and all of its stages.

16. Is your sales process correct?
You can gauge its effectiveness by the number of sales
that make it through to a close. A sales process starts
losing its efficiency when there are 1 or more stages
where opportunities tend to stall, or which have become
outmoded and salespeople tend to bypass that stage
or stages.
The Pipeline

17. A sales process is often evolved from actions taken by
a company’s most successful reps—and this is the
advice most often given in how to evolve a sales
process.
But a sales process should always begin on a *trial*
basis, and should be rapidly corrected when found to be
faulty. That is the only way a really effective sales
process can be evolved.
The Pipeline

18. The Dynamic Sales Pipeline
Sales is a dynamic activity—it is constantly subject to change. The same is true of
your business, of markets, and even of economies. It’s also true of your products
and services, which also evolve.

19. All of this means that your sales process will have to
have changes as it moves through time, too. That
means your sales pipeline needs to be as dynamic as
the environment through which it flows.
The Dynamic Sales Pipeline

20. If you are responsible for multiple product lines, then
you have multiple dynamic sales processes. And
Pipeliner will keep up with that as well—allowing you to
have as many processes as you need, all sharing a
common database.
The Dynamic Sales Pipeline

21. To learn more about the subject of sales processes,
check out these further resources:
A Precise Sales Process: The Key to Successful Sales Management
The Pipeliner Selling System: A Practical Approach to a Sales Process
CRM Solutions: A Sales Funnel or a Pipeline?

22. NEXT SLIDESHARE IN THIS SERIES:
Making Accurate Sales Forecasting
a Part of Sales Management

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