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    The Successful Sales Manager: A Sales Manager's Handbook For Building Great Sales Performance
    The Successful Sales Manager: A Sales Manager's Handbook For Building Great Sales Performance
    The Successful Sales Manager: A Sales Manager's Handbook For Building Great Sales Performance
    Ebook137 pages1 hour

    The Successful Sales Manager: A Sales Manager's Handbook For Building Great Sales Performance

    By Dustin Ruge

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    About this ebook

    The Successful Sales Manager: A Sales Manager's Handbook for Building Great Sales Performance is a new book published by industry veteran Dustin W Ruge.

    In the book, Dustin covers the critical aspects as to why so many sales organizations fail and how to successfully move from bad sales management performance to great sales leaders and results.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublishereBookIt.com
    Release dateApr 26, 2016
    ISBN9780990504610
    The Successful Sales Manager: A Sales Manager's Handbook For Building Great Sales Performance

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      Book preview

      The Successful Sales Manager - Dustin Ruge

      Life

      PREFACE

      • • •

      I will never forget the first time I considered a career in sales. I had studied business and finance in college yet when I considered my first full-time sales position, I felt a need to first confer with a mentor of mine because I was concerned. I wanted to know if selling meant I had to sell my soul first. I had met people who claimed to be able to sell an ice cube to an Eskimo and I’d witnessed a constant barrage of TV salespeople who could seemingly sell any piece-of-crap product on TV for the low, low price of $19.95 or $29.95. Or how about those five easy payments of $19.95; has anybody figured out what an easy payment is yet? I was willing to make compromises to grow in my life journey, but the one thing I was not willing to compromise was my integrity. That was my fear: Would sales make me become something that I was not?

      Reflection through maturity and experience has shown me that my initial fear of sales was largely unfounded. The reality is that each and every one of us will deal with buying-and-selling decisions in nearly every aspect of our daily lives—both personally and professionally. We may not consciously know it, but when we go out on dates; dine out; apply for jobs; meet new people; buy clothing, food, and gas, etc., we are all inherently participating in a calculated and methodical buying-and-selling process. That fact that I was once concerned about going into sales as a profession was ignorant of the fact that I was already there in everyday life.

      After years of sales and sales management experience, I have come to realize why I am so attracted to and passionate about sales as a profession. I have been deeply competitive and have had an unfettered desire to learn and achieve all my life. Looking back at my childhood, I did not live what many would consider to be a normal childhood. I earned the rank of Eagle Scout, competed in archery and roping, played nearly every seasonal sport there was, and could play a full day of Monopoly when necessary if it meant a chance to win. Later I received a NASCAR driver’s license the same year I obtained a regular driver’s license. While my friends were out riding skateboards, I was building racing cars and competing at speeds and within danger levels that many grown men couldn’t handle at any age.

      Like most successful salespeople, I am highly competitive by nature. I have a desire to achieve, set goals that are beyond the norm, and will do nearly anything to achieve them. To me, the only thing worse than not winning is not having the ability to learn from my mistakes and try to win again. This is the same psychological state of mind that drives all successful salespeople that I have worked with over the years and what many who have failed in sales lack at the core.

      Sales allows me to satisfy my own internal competitive needs while at the same time interacting with people and being able to help them solve their own problems and achieve their goals. In short, a sale allows me to compete and achieve by helping others to do the same. I do not aspire to be able to sell an ice cube to an Eskimo—that is for people who sell for other reasons that I cannot relate to. I do not study the buying behaviors of other people so I can simply sell them what I want to sell them to satisfy my own needs alone. I sell so I can more effectively help myself by helping others at the same time. This is what drives me to love sales as a profession and what ultimately led me into sales management.

      I wrote this book for one simple reason: to help other sales managers better solve their own problems, grow, compete, and achieve as sales leaders. When better sales leaders are created, better salespeople are hired and developed, better organizational success is achieved, and better results are obtained—from the companies down to the customers. Everybody wins; which is why I got into sales and sales management to begin with.

      INTRODUCTION

      • • •

      Consider the following: 55 percent of businesses will fail in five years. Of the original Fortune 500 companies listed in 1955, 87 percent are now gone from that list. In 2011, turnover in sales management exceeded 28 percent across all industries. 52 percent of VPs of sales have indicated that they are dissatisfied with their sales managers, and 63 percent of sales managers have indicated that they are not satisfied with their current sales management jobs and are looking for new ones.¹

      These are the types of numbers that keep companies and sales managers up at night; and it doesn’t have to be this way.

      There are financial benefits and opportunity costs associated with effective salespeople as well as sales managers. Much like with good and bad salespeople, there are also good and bad sales managers. If you have a bad salesperson, the total opportunity cost and impact of that person to your organization is limited to only the percentage of the sales force they represent; the larger the organization, the smaller the impact and vice versa. But with sales managers, the impact tends to be much greater.

      We hire sales managers to help develop, support, and grow sales activity and results. They are, in effect, force multipliers: one or more people in charge of producing sales results through the actions of multiple others. Because of the greater impact they have over a sales organization, sales managers have a far greater impact on an organization’s sales, growth, and survival than individual salespeople alone. In many organizations, it is not uncommon to see a 20 percent-plus increase in sales when a bad manager is removed. Additionally, great managers will commonly produce sales that are 20–30 percent higher than a company average. Putting these numbers together, by replacing a bad manager with a great manager, companies can potentially increase total sales by as much as 40–60 percent!²

      So why do some sales managers succeed while many do not?

      In 1906, an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto made an observation that 80 percent of the land in Italy was owned by only 20 percent of the population. This imbalance of distribution was later applied to many aspects of our lives and business and became known as Pareto’s Law. In many businesses today, Pareto’s Law commonly tells us that around 80 percent of our business comes from only 20 percent of our customers, and 20 percent of our people account for 80 percent of our revenues. In sales, it is also common to find that on average, only 20 percent of our salespeople account for 80 percent of our sales. This means that within sales organizations today, most have only reached 20 percent of their total sales potential. This is why effective and successful sales management is so important.³

      The goal of this book is to help solve our sales management problems, develop more effective and productive sales managers, and help businesses grow. Depending on your own industry or organization, some or all of the following advice provided herein can be used to help make you a more effective sales manager and produce great results.

      Are you ready to take your sales management career and results to the next level? If so, read on and enjoy…

      —Chapter 1—

      WHAT MAKES A GREAT SALES MANAGER

      • • •

      Today, a skilled manager makes more than the owner. And owners fight each other to get the skilled managers.

      —Mikhail Khodorkovsky

      Great managers are recognized through the achievements of their teams.

      —Phyllis Kirouac

      "We have great managers who have never spent a day in management school. Do we have great surgeons that have never spent a day in surgical

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