Sales Management Shouldn't Look Like This!

By Mark Blezard

This is not sales management

The new buzzword for sales management is 'sales enablement.' For 'new' read past few years, however, during the evolution of sales enablement, we now have 'sales enablement managers & directors, it is now a recognised role.

And so, as the role evolves so does the recognition of best practices in sales enablement, what skills are required, and what success looks like. One common theme in best practice is that of being scientific with all elements of management. Gone is the anxiety, guesswork, and peeking through the blinds wondering what they are up to. This is all about being proactive, because 'reactive' in sales means firefighting, and it is nearly always too late by this point.

One excellent tool for scientific sales enablement is that of sales skills assessment tools. An excellent example is Sales Skills Audit. In less than 30 minutes you can assess over 50 essential selling skills and benchmark all of your sales executives against the global standards for sales – drawn from over 36,000 sales executives worldwide.

Armed with this data you can then map individual executives with their sales performance (percentage to annual target), and then include the cost of the sale (salary, commission, expenses). A great example of such a spreadsheet for this task can be downloaded for free here.

Now you are really starting to become scientific in your sales enablement!