Sales manager duties! It's one of those topics discussed at length, late into the night at the conference bar as well as in sales manager meetings. The duties of sales managers have always been broad ranging and encompassed multiple responsibilities, each one competing for your, “the sales manager’s time”.

In these tough economic times, what will be the focus of sales manager duties in the coming year or two, considering that as sales managers you will still be expected to deliver results!

From, setting goals, to having a plan and implementing it, to inspiring and motivating your team, coaching them to achieve their goals, monitoring progress and performance. These are just a few of the duties that will contribute significantly to a sales manager’s success.

Which sales manager duties you decide to invest your energy and time in could be critical in determining your success this year and beyond.

This Hub will explore which sales manager duties will support you in achieving your results in these economically challenging times and how you can still gain a competitive advantage and be at the top of your game.

As you may now realise, which duties as a sales manager, you invest your time in will be crucial to your success, more now than ever before.
Knowing exactly what is expected of you and your team in terms of quotas/targets and activity is a must. Also by when do you need to achieve the quotas and with what resources.

One of the most important sales manager duties is how to inspire and motivate your team. Everyone, whether you are a sales person or an athlete, is motivated by things that are important to us. Find out what’s important to each of your team.
You may find that at such challenging times there are a few things that are especially important to them. Use this knowledge to remind your sales team that by doing the thingsyou are asking of them, they will get to achieve what’s important to them as well as hit their sales quotas and sales targets. You can also use this information to influence individuals to develop their skills, knowledge and attitudes.

It’s reasonable to say, that many sales managers will be expected to achieve quotas this year with fewer sales representatives and few other resources.

What this means is that the sales team you have will need to be even more skilled at selling, getting their existing customers to buy more and more frequently as well as creating new accounts.

So is individual sales coaching worth it?. YES Let's be honest it is vital to your success. If your team can't sell. Nothing will happen. Perhaps with the exception of you being replaced! Sorry to be so blunt yet in this day and age this is a fact.

As a result, one of the most critical duties for sales managers will be to coach each member of your sales team. Developing your sales coaching skills is going to be a must.

If you want the optimal results for your business this year think about this option. Clear out your in-basket and commit to investing no less than 50% of your time, assessing, training and doing individual sales coaching with
your team.

As you know, there are numerous duties you could invest your time in as a sales manager. Clearly there are other sales manager duties that you will be required to do in addition to the ones discussed.

Regardless of the economic times, it is a fact that as a sales manager you need to know what your quota is and have a plan to achieve it. You must be able to inspire and motivate your team to achieve these sales targets.

In addition, highly successful sales managers all measure and monitor performance and address areas of under performance quickly.

What will give you a distinct competitive advantage over your peers however, is the decision over the amount of time you invest in these duties. If you are serious about being a top performer, or you want to “just” be on target in these tough times,do something different.

Decide to invest no less than 50% of your time, assessing, coaching and training your sales team. You see, financially, your business grows to the degree you grow as a person.

Ask yourself, “who is growing your business for you and how much are they growing?”

Then ask yourself, “how much do you want them to grow the business and how much are you willing to invest to grow them?”

It is anticipated that it is more important this year than ever before to invest in coaching and training your sales team. Do it this week. No! Do it today!