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Submitted by davidleeheyman on
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I'm about to move from being a outside sales IC to being the manager of the sales team. Over the past year and a half the team has had 8 months of no direct management and 10 months of an unfortunate hire.  The team I will take over has one veteran sales person, with whom I have a great collaborative relationship, and three who are less than two months in the role and just starting to take on accounts after their enablement. I'll also be tasked with hiring several new salespeople and ramping them up.

The first rule it just fit in. But there isn't much structure at this point for me to continue. I would certainly like to put in place MT 1:1s ASAP (starting 3-4 weeks from introducing). Additionally I need to get the new hires off to a good start and coach them in their roles while also maintaining the sales forecast for cross function and upward reporting and collaboration.

So I think this is what I need to put in place.

  • 30 minute 1:1s with each direct, not to be used for forecast/deal discussions unless they raise this in their section.
  • 30 minute weekly team meeting with time for each team member to call out their current forecast, deals in/out, help needed.
  • 1 hour weekly with each new hire to go over more deeply the deals they are working on, coach them and review progress. This is in addition to joining their sales calls to support them and reviewing their Gong recordings to help suggest improvements.
  • For the veteran employee I think 30 mins weekly will be sufficient.
  • Monthly team meeting for broader content, how we improve as a team, cross functional guest speakers, etc.

As there isn't much existing structure to fit into, and I need to pass off to the three new hires opportunities and relationships that I've been working, it seems to me that I should go ahead and get this all in place within the first 3 weeks.

I plan to use the MT Roadmap tool for the step by step introduction of the MT Trinity.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Any specific tips for making this more effective for sales management?

jrb3's picture
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It gives some necessary structure for the "management" portion of your work.  Can't think of any obvious additions or alterations (given my own background from technical side).

Perhaps you'll find you want to have the veteran do some coaching as well -- which might mean spending more time overall with the veteran, part as sales-coaching and part as coach-coaching.  It seems like he'd also default to be your #2, so there'd be some additional dedicated time there.  Just keep the different functions in separate time-blocks as best you can, so you can keep track that you're really on top of each facet.

As time wears on, you'll make adjustments.  (Maybe a part-time assistant to the entire team?  Develop an okay producer into a manager of a small team, siphoning off an excess of directs as skips?)  Keep track of the improvement ideas you and the team come up with, which seem promising but not simple enough to immediately implement.  They'll be great seeds for brainstorming later.

Have fun with it!

pwalker73's picture

Just a comment to say, you're solid in terms of starting out - kudos to you. What you need to do next will be learned from the time you're setting up with them.

One add may be to consider clients in your mix - will you set up some 'ride alongs' or some 121 discussions with key customers to sense check what you pick up internally is the same as the customer perception. I have found that useful in past new roles - cuts through any posturing.

Enjoy the new role!