Managing a team is no easy task. It’s your responsibility to lead, motivate and support your team to achieve results and meet the long-term goals of your business.
It’s true that every manager has their own style but to be an effective leader, you’ll first need to master these five strategies.
1.Find Out What Motivates Your Team
Assuming that your team are only working towards the bottom line can be a costly oversight. While competitive pay and benefits are important, you’d be surprised to learn what other motivating factors drive them and how uncovering these factors can help you be a better manager.
Sit down with each of your team members and ask them some key questions:
What strengths do they think they bring to the team?
What are three qualities that they think a strong team should have?
What goals have they set for themselves?
How do they define success?
What role do they feel that management plays in their success?
Whether it be recognition, knowledge or even early retirement, you can take what drives your team and use it to keep them feeling motivated and valued.
2.Don’t Manage Everyone the Same Way
The number one sin in management is expecting your team to adjust to your management style instead of tailoring your approach to best support each individual.
Developing an Employee Assessment Program to learn more about your employees and providing each of them insight into their strengths and areas for improvement can be extremely beneficial. It helps improve communication and coaching from management while also establishing goals for the collective team.
Not sure where to start? We can work with you to build a customizable program with your industry and market-specific challenges in mind.
3.Be Friendly, Not Everyone’s Best Friend
As a manager, making tough choices is a big part of the job description—but making choices based on congeniality instead of what’s best for the team is never a good strategy. Being approachable, respectful and supportive is important, but being well-liked is just a bonus.
It’s key that you establish boundaries and stay consistent, especially in times when you need to be firm with your reps. If you’ve only recently moved into the role of sales manager, this can be a particularly difficult transition and you may feel uncomfortable being “the boss”. Remember that you set the tone and respect is a two-way street.
4.Let Your Reps Get Their Hands Dirty
Sometimes the best lessons come out of failure. That’s not to say that you should set up your sales reps to fail, but giving them a chance to get their hands dirty in situations when the result of their actions are minimal, will help prepare them to manage difficult, high-risk situations in the future.
You can probably remember a sales call or two during your time that forced you to reflect on your strengths and weakness or switch up your approach. If you see a sales rep heading down a path that landed you in hot water in the past, let them figure it out for themselves. Even with the best intentions, always jumping in to save the day can make your team feel like you don’t trust their judgement.
5.Look for Opportunities for Growth and Learning
Investing the time and resources into sales training will help keep your team at the top of their game—but don’t forget to look for opportunities for yourself. Not only will you be modelling good habits, you’ll also learn new ways to lead and get the results from your team that you’re looking for.
While these tips can improve your skills as a manager, there’s no one-size fits all strategy for success.
We’ll work with you to create a custom program for strengthening day-to-day operations and guiding where to focus your energy and resources. Let’s get started.