Sales Management Assessment

The purpose of this Sales Management Assessment is to evaluate the sales environment at your company because the sales environment is a result of how the sales team and department are being managed. It’s indeed the responsibility of salespeople to sell. Still, through our work, we have realized that most salespeople respond and perform better and more consistently in a sales environment designed to support them in reaching their full potential. This is not a sales management assessment that measures the skills or performance of a sales manager but rather the results of their leadership in the environment created or designed by their attitudes and actions. The owner is probably the acting sales manager if you don’t have a designated sales manager. If not, someone is, and as a result of their involvement, your sales environment has been created. 

As Fractional Sales Managers, we enter many different industries and cultures and are asked to improve individual and team performance. Each sales process is not the same, and every company has its differences, but what is always the same is what salespeople are attracted to and respond positively to. The sales manager and the environment that they have established play a considerable role in the results your team will produce. 

This Sales Management Assessment will evaluate your environment against the five core elements we manage with at Sales Manager Now. These elements are described below if you want to learn more before taking the assessment. 

The sales management assessment will take five minutes to complete, and upon completion, you’ll be emailed your results along with our improvement recommendations. In addition, we often suggest picking up our book, Part-Time Sales Management, as a tool for those who want to have a highly effective sales team while managing effectively and efficiently.

What will the Sales Management Assessment Evaluate?

Beliefs, Expectations, Accountability, Meetings, and Conversations are five elements the Sales Management Assessment will evaluate. There is nothing sexy or innovative about these elements when they stand alone. Still, when they are consistently used in managing your sales team and worked into the design and creation of your sales environment, they can produce a sales environment that attracts and develops the sales team you’ve been hoping for.

The Five Core Elements of the Part-Times Sales Management System Explained

Beliefs

Tony Robbins, the world-famous motivational coach, tells his audiences, “Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can save their lives.” If I paraphrased it and applied it to sales management, I would say, Beliefs have the power to build or destroy a sales team. You can take your past experiences around sales and salespeople and create a meaning that holds back your sales team—or takes it to the next level. This means your beliefs have already played a part in your sales team’s performance and the design of your sales environment. 

Your beliefs do not work alone. Your attitudes, decisions, and behaviors your beliefs drive are pushing your company toward or away from more sales. Beliefs impact the other four elements of The Part-Time Sales Management System.  The Sales Management Assessment will give you a read on how much or little you believe in your salespeople. 

Expectations

Everyone has expectations, but we don’t always recognize or give voice to them until we’re disappointed. As a business owner, it can be costly to operate that way. It’s part of your job as the leader of your company not only to define your expectations and plans but also to let everyone on your staff know what you expect of them.

Sounds simple, right? You would be surprised how many companies leave their employees in the dark about top management’s expectations. In most businesses, the percentage of employees who understand the owner’s vision or expectations is very low. William Scheimann, Founder and CEO of Metrus Group, presents data that supports my claim in his contribution to the Performance Management, Putting Research into Action book. In the book, he states that only 14 percent of organizations report that their employees understand their company’s strategy and direction well. This figure comes from organizations that do have agreed-on strategies (expectations).

Here are six reasons to jump into the process of setting expectations by developing plans and defining goals:

1. It will ultimately save you time while increasing your effectiveness.
2. Goals that are written have a 70 percent greater chance of being achieved.
3. Reports and data pulled from defined objectives improve your decision-making.
4. Clear written expectations can lead to self-management by sales team members.
5. Clear expectations are required to create and sustain a culture of accountability.
6. Well-written plans motivate owners and employees.

The Sales Management Assessment will evaluate how well your processes are documented to allow your sales team to meet your expectations. 

Accountability

Accountability is the most sought-after outcome by my client owners. Like you, they probably want more sales, revenue, and cash flow. Just as important is not having to work hard to get the salespeople to do their job. During early conversations, while an owner is evaluating our services at Sales Manager Now, I hear and see their relief when I share that their sales

team will become accountable. But the word “accountability” can be a little tricky. It’s too often used as a coded message, “Do what I say!” So, of course, a business owner’s eyes light up when I talk about accountability.

Our approach to accountability is not about having salespeople do what we say. It’s about having salespeople do what “they say.” An accountable environment is established first by setting expectations and then measuring and monitoring them. A healthy and productive sales environment comprises salespeople who hold themselves accountable to the expectations that are defined and shared. 

In summary, here are the reasons why it’s important to set up Accountability Measurements in your company:

1. To emphasize the importance of your business priorities and expectations around the sales team’s performance.
2. To provide objective information for making decisions and adjustments to improve performance.
3. To spend less time guessing and being frustrated and more time coaching and managing toward results.
4. To help teach your salespeople to monitor their performance and manage themselves.

The Sales Management Assessment will evaluate how well you track and monitor your expectations to allow for better accountability. 

Meetings

Would you believe me if I told you that having weekly meetings with your sales team can save you time? I know it’s counterintuitive to make that statement, considering the general belief about meetings. Unfortunately, many of us in business have experienced meetings that waste our time. Some meetings seem to go on forever, and nothing is decided or accomplished. Those experiences sap everyone’s energy and give meetings a bad rep. I argue, however, that it’s not the gathering of people that wastes time—how that gathering is managed determines whether a meeting is productive. It also determines how well meetings positively contribute to your sales environment, and the Sales Management Assessment will also evaluate this. 

If you’re not having regular—or any—sales meetings now, I can imagine scheduling meetings weekly might look like it will use more of your time rather than less. So it may seem, but it’s not true. When leading meetings in The Part-Time Sales Management System, you’ll begin to experience a return on your time investment. When you conduct meetings consistently and manage them well, you will find more productive time in your day and realize more sales.

Geno Wickman, the author of “Traction” and founder of the Entrepreneurial Operating System “EOS” for small businesses, says, “The Meeting Pulse, like a heartbeat, creates a consistent flow that keeps the company healthy. Put another way; the Meeting Pulse creates a consistent cadence that keeps the organization in step.” He also believes that meetings are an element that contributes to the traction a company realizes with its plans and vision. Lack of traction is a sign of a sales environment that is not as effective as it can be. 

The Sales Management Assessment will evaluate how consistent and effective your meetings are. 

Conversations

Lou Holtz, the legendary Notre Dame coach and motivational speaker, says employees or team members want to know three things about their manager or coach:

1. Can I trust you?
2. Are you committed to excellence?
3. Do you care about me?

Your sales employees will find answers to those questions through your conversations with them. Your conversations reveal how much they can trust you, how much you care about them, and what you are committed to achieving with your business. When your team believes you care, their level of commitment will rise. When they know you care, your conversations will strengthen all the other aspects of your work with them. For lack of a better metaphor, conversations are like an engine lubricant. Without the oil lubricant, even the best-designed and most powerful engine will freeze up and crack. Conversations allow the other core elements of the Part-Time Sales Management System to work fluidly and effectively to produce the influence with your team designed to build a great sales environment. 

The Sales Management Assessment will help you understand how you are doing with these five core sales management elements and guide you in making quick improvements. If you’d like to build a growing sales team, order our book, Part-Times Sales Management, or schedule a time to learn how we manage other small business sales teams. 

In 2006 we were Fractional Sales Management pioneers, so much so we didn’t even call ourselves that. Today we are considered experts who are passionate about helping salespeople grow!