The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Being a media sales manager in 2015 is not an easy job. Chances are your sales team and every other media company you compete with sell some combination of digital solutions (search, social, mobile, video, display, etc.) in addition to your core products. To further complicate the sales process, lead generation strategies that worked well 10 years ago are now obsolete—the B2B buying cycle has changed.   

That being said, there are new strategies and tools that can be used to make media sales managers' lives (and their salespeoples') much easier. These tools help waste less time and lead to increases in revenue.

In an earlier post, we talked about being a judge on the Sales Voice and how to listen for great talent. Now let’s talk about coaching on the Sales Voice. 

So you decided to push your button and turned your chair. Now what?!

Predicting what the future will look like has become a pop culture phenomena. Movies like Tomorrowland, Terminator, Wall-E and Back to the Future have each provided us with the writers’ take on what the future holds for us and what we can change today to impact tomorrow.

As a sales manager, if you knew the future, wouldn’t you want to make changes today that drastically change the future prospects of your entire sales team?

How do you know when you have the perfect candidate for a sales position? Is it their stellar resume? Do they look professional? Do they come highly recommended? That is what most managers look for when hiring. It’s the way it has always been done, right? 

What if you looked at hiring for your next sales position differently? Pretend for a moment that you are Blake Shelton or Adam Levine on The Voice and your chair is completely turned around. Now what?

I passed by a drink display at the grocery store the other day and one of the Coke cans caught my eye. In big bold letters it screamed out to shoppers the word, “Superstar.” You have probably seen the Coca-Cola can labels with the descriptions on them. The “Superstar” can was sitting between a can that said, “Friend” and one that said, “Dreamer.”

At first glance, all the cans looked exactly alike, but when you looked closer, they all had a different label.

It made me think about helping managers identify sales talent. Resumes today are often built using templates or professional assistance and they can make anyone look like a superstar. And, when you meet candidates in person, they look pretty similar on the outside, but when you look closer and ask the right questions, you can get a glimpse of how the person is wired, and whether or not he or she has a natural ability for sales. 

I have noticed that many leaders I work with tend to retreat, decide, and dictate when the stakes are high and the stress is intense. True confession: I actually do this as well, but it’s easier to see how screwed up it is when I see others doing it! Right. I’m talking about times like budgeting for the new year or creating a new compensation plan to drive intended behaviors.

Here’s the irony. One of the common needs I hear expressed by those in the top sales leadership role in a company (business owners, VP Sales, Director of Sales, etc.) is how to develop the other sales managers in their organization. The ironic part is the greatest growth opportunities are these high stakes moments that fall on the top sales leader. Instead of retreating, deciding, and dictating, consider Socraticship. I know Socraticship is not really a word, but maybe it should be. Socraticship is Leadership that leads with questions, instead of answers.

As digital marketing continues to grow, so does the demand for demonstrating an ROI. Marketers want to know that the dollars they are spending are making an impact on their business. They are looking for ways to use all of the available data in the digital space to help them correlate the dollars spent to tangible results. 

While there are a variety of website analytic tools that businesses can use, a good number of them are using Google Analytics. And why shouldn’t they? A free tool that can provide some great insights into how potential customers use a business website… seems like a no-brainer. 

As a leader, I am regularly called upon to make clear, focused decisions. I am also called upon to constantly survey new information to determine if anything might call recent decisions into question. I bet you find yourself in the same situation. Leaders have to learn how to live in this space.

Given how busy Sales Managers are, sometimes recruiting candidates and developing a Talent Bank seems like one thing too many. Many managers we talk to are so swamped with daily tasks that the idea of recruiting and interviewing people for a job opening that doesn’t exist yet seems like a complete waste of time. But the question is, does it feel like a waste of time when you have an unexpected opening?