One of the best feelings that I would have at the end of the day as a sales leader is knowing how much I helped my sales team throughout the course of the day. You have to do a lot more than just collect numbers and ask for updates on deals. You have to help and help like it was going out of style! As the manager of the team, you are a member of the team. You are not above them. You are in the trenches helping your team win deals every single day. It is your responsibility for helping your team in real-time with whatever they need. You don’t stop until they get the help that they need in order to move things forward with a deal or with anything that they need. Let me give you an example.
In the software business, we would often conduct many software demonstrations to our clients, showing specific features & functionality. These demonstrations often involved the salesperson, a sales engineer (possibly more than one), and the client. Oftentimes technical questions would be asked by the client and as much knowledge as our sales engineers and solution architects had, they might not have all the answers readily available. As the manager, I would join these demonstrations and when I heard the client ask a question that we couldn’t immediately answer, I would be using my Skype messenger tool and my email to be sending out messages for urgent help asking the question that the client was inquiring about. Within a few minutes, I would get the answer that we needed. I would then unmute myself at an appropriate time, and let the customer know the answer to their question. I would take it a step further and let the client know that I heard them ask the question and while my guys continued on with the demonstration, that I was checking with our army of sales engineers, to which they provided the right answer and within just a few minutes.
Doing these small things like the above, can really help and it shows your salespeople how much you want to see this deal advance and eventually be won. Here is another example. I made it a habit, a routine, to always “sequester” all the people we needed in the company in order to solve a problem or approve something that we needed to deliver to the client, and I would do this in real time. Meaning, if the salesperson needed a laundry list of requests for a particular deal, I would call the rep, itemize what we needed, who we needed, and then start getting the emails and the calendar invites out. And for that SAME DAY! We wouldn’t lose any time by tripping over ourselves on internal delays and politics. We acted FAST. Speed and ease are both two key ingredients that salespeople love to see in their leader.
In sum, go above and beyond with helping your reps and with providing them “air cover.” They need you. They need your support and they need it now. Impress them with your abilities. That’s right- impress them. Here is a phrase that will help you remember this very important practice. Ask yourself and ask several times throughout the course of the day, “What’s the one thing that I can do right now to help?” You will soon start thinking about your team, who is working on what, and what they may need. This will lead you to uncover things that you can help with. Give them that air cover. They need it!
-Happy Selling!