Great news. You’ve got proof of concept, found your ICP, and gotten some funding. Now it’s time to build out your BDR team.
Bad news. Once you win the war for talent, the real work of sales training begins. Since most SaaS startups aren’t hiring classes of 15 reps and a trainer, you get the task of onboarding one or two at a time. And then again. And again. And again.
Here are some sales manager tips to save your sanity when onboarding new BDRs:
Start a Google Doc now with everything they’ll need to know. Brainstorm in the following categories:
Industry acumen
Product knowledge – feature, function, benefit
Customer knowledge
Ideal customer situations
Business acumen
Competitor acumen
System logins and skills
Company info – who’s who, relevant background, etc.
Questions to uncover ideal customer situations and challenges
Call recordings to hear good, bad, and ugly calls
Phone sales skills like leaving good voicemails, intros, uncovering contacts, and delivering value props on the phone
Wherever possible, start hyperlinking to internal and external sites, videos, and resources so reps can self-serve for the info. Why go back and re-find that email 20 times?
Now identify what you can outsource. Trust me, if you try to hire, train, coach, and lead the team you will either explode or mess a few of these up in a serious way.
Buy the system training if your vendor offers it or go find free forums and videos to link to.
Sales skills are another area. Your job is to coach them, not teach them from scratch. Outsource the heavy lifting and stick to leading the team and coaching the delivery. The Sales Bar has hundreds of phone sales resources for new BDRs and Managers. They’ll also want some basic LinkedIn skills. I like Vengreso or Frontline.
Find internal experts. Use your CEO, product geeks, and past customers and get them to do a video or recorded webinar to teach key points. Keep them short and on track with some guidelines during your request; these folks typically aren’t natural trainers! And if they do it live, get it recorded, I promise they won’t be available every time. Where you can’t record, set up a lunch or coffee chat vs. a formal presentation. Get your new rep to record it, plus their notes!
Start a schedule and get your document in chronological order with about 6 hours of learning work/day to start. Make the schedule about 2 weeks long and ramp the training time down while call time goes up. So by the end of the second week, they may be doing 1-2 hours of training/day and 6 hours of work. Show that training doesn’t stop and they have some assignments every month! Bonus: show a path to the next level in their career, even if it’s just a footnote. In addition to the learning, your schedule should include:
Call shadowing with you or other reps. Bonus: have them score it using your coaching form. Side note: get a coaching form
Calls to past customers to hear their stories and happy outcomes
Research on their own – e.g. top features of competitors
Outbound calling – even if it’s just to capture contacts, qualify accounts, data cleanse, etc.
LOTS of time with you where they bring their questions, you talk shop, build a relationship, and make your newbie feel important
Hook them up with a buddy/mentor. Reps who build strong friendships at work are happier and stay longer according to Gallup. With the average lifespan of a BDR under 18 months, it’s worth the effort. Pay for their first lunch and ask them to get together weekly for the rep’s first month. If it doesn’t stick after that, you’ve at least planted some seeds. Bonus: they’ll come to you less often for their questions when they have a buddy.
This approach will help your reps be more independent while saving you at least twenty hours per rep. Each hire can help make the document better and old hires can support the new.
Make updating the document and improving it part of their work assignment so it stays current and off your to-do list.
May this also help you resist the temptation to hand your new rep a script and wish them good luck on the phone. Millennials are searching for career development and time with their boss at work, and they make their employment decisions based on this. Spend a few bucks, give them some structure, buy them some training, and you’ll see the payoff in their faster success and tenure!
Want some help onboarding new BDRs?
We’ve got your back! Contact us today to learn how you can incorporate sales training into your new BDR onboarding process to speed ramp time and improve retention.
Fact: Sales management is the busiest job in the world. Okay, maybe that’s not a real fact, but if you’re a sales manager, you probably feel like it is. Chances are, you’ve got a pretty tremendous and stressful workload. According to the American Institute of Stress, 39% of stress reported amongst employees in the US is caused by an overwhelming amount of work.
So, what happens when you can’t get it all done? For starters: you go home later, you feel less satisfied with your accomplishments, and you add an extra level of anxiety to your plate. Let’s get some of that time back in your day.
Here are our top 8 sales management productivity tips:
1. Make Proactivity the Goal
Start by leaving your reactive self in the past. How? First, we need to identify your priorities. I get it, you received 100 emails just in the time you are reading this blog. But you were not hired to write emails. So, let’s take a closer look at what you were hired to do and what your priority should be. Next, set your daily goal to hit that priority. Setting (and hitting) that goal will make you feel a lot more productive and will make it easier for you to stay on track. Finally, we need to learn how to recognize whether the new things that come our way each day are proactive versus reactive. This will help you say “no” at the right times and help you prioritize the things that you really NEED to get accomplished.
Hint: Reading emails = Reactive. Helping reps with questions that pop up = Reactive. Calling a strategy meeting to help a rep hit their goal = Proactive! Creating a new KPI report = Proactive!
2. Rethink Meetings
Your meeting cadence is the process that organizes your team’s regular interactions. When scheduled properly, the cadence will prevent you from handling a series of reactive “fires” every day. Create the cadence that works best for you and your team. We’ve taken a bit of time to dive into the 8 essential sales manager meetings. Check out this deep dive and learn which meetings are short, which are long, which are 1:1, and which should be done in a group. Read more here: 8 Essential Manager Meetings. While you’re working on your meeting cadence you can also perfect your 1:1 meetings.
3. Live in the Matrix
Have you used the Eisenhower Matrix before? If not, it all starts by asking yourself 2 critical questions. Is it urgent? Is it important? From there we break things down into 4 groups.
Is this a Fire Drill?
An item to Schedule?
An item to Delegate?
Or an item to Trash?
Let’s dive in a little deeper to see how these questions help us categorize each task. First are the urgent items. Urgent means time-sensitive and goal-related. Maybe the customer is on the phone and needs an answer to close the deal, or maybe the contract department is reviewing your deal in 1 hour and you need to tie up a few loose ends first.
Next are the important items. Important means it is critical to the mission but it is not time-sensitive. These important things can be scheduled out. This might be mapping out a strategy for a certain campaign, or reviewing the team\’s numbers to ensure they will hit goal.
Now, let’s see how the two questions help us categorize our tasks
Important + Urgent = Fire Drill – do it ASAP
Important + Not Urgent = Schedule – put some time on your calendar to complete the task
Not Important + Urgent = Delegate – find the right member of your team to handle this task
Not Important + Not Urgent = Trash – remove it from your plate
4. Start Saying “No.” A LOT
Spoiler alert: You’re about to find out that 3 out of 4 requests aren’t urgent OR important. Oftentimes, they’re actually something your rep can figure out on their own. So, we need to get REALLY good at pushing pop-up requests to meetings, delegating to others, and taking them off your plate!
Here’s how we’ll do it:
Identify the proactive tasks
Categorize tasks according to urgency and importance
Properly respond to requests. It looks something like this…
“Hey, (Rep) this sounds AWESOME! But I’m late on a deadline right now, could you bring the story and the call recording to our call coaching session next week?”
OR
“Whoa, (Rep), I need to stop you a moment. This sounds important and I want to give it the time it deserves. Please put it on the agenda for our 1:1 next week?”
If you’re on Slack, it could sound like this…
Manager: What’s up?
Rep: Got a minute?
Manager: I have 30 seconds right now, or 15 minutes at 2pm. Hit me back then if you still need help?
Here we are putting the action item back on them. You’re not saying you will call them at 2pm, you’re saying call me if you can’t figure out a solution to your problem.
OR
Rep: Got a minute?
Manager: Sorry, in a meeting. Can you reach out to Bob, please?
Here we are delegating to someone else to help the rep.
5. Get COACHN℠
I probably spent 3 hours preparing for my first team meeting. From the scheduling, to figuring out what to say, to deciding what I needed, to realizing I forgot really important things, it was draining, to say the least. What I realized is that if I streamlined the process and prepared for each meeting the same way, I could save myself HOURS of previously wasted time (I only say wasted because those hours were not helping my team reach goal).
Through that painful process, we developed the COACHN Model™. This acronym is about to make your meeting preparation SO MUCH EASIER!
COACHN℠ stands for:
C: Clarify Expectations – This sets the tone for the meeting. “Last time you decided to work on your intros and I know we have a few calls scored. Let’s see how you’re improving.”
O: Observed Behavior – You start first, lay out facts, and list your observations before you…
A: Ask Questions – Great leaders talk in questions. Have them prepared before your meeting.
C: Commit to Actions – Your number of action items should be 0-1, their action items can be anywhere from 1-4
H: How Can I Help – This helps the rep learn to trust you. Growth is good, but we cannot grow unless we can admit that we need help!
N: Next Steps – We are agreeing at the end. “You own this, I own that, we’re going to meet again ______. Will you (rep) please send the invite!”
6. Have One Source of Truth Within the Organization
Use a standard coaching form. Define what “good” is across the company. If people move or shift, you don’t need to retrain or redefine these elements. If you need a place to start, you can grab our Call Coaching Activities here to help you prioritize and plan your coaching sessions.
7. Stop Proving, Start Delegating
It’s time to put your reps in charge. I get it, you want to help them. But you need to stop giving the fish away. Stop solving all of the problems and owning all of the actions. It’s time to teach those reps to fish instead!
Here are 6 easy things you can delegate TODAY:
Grading their own call recordings and creating a list of skills to improve
Sales huddles – Not all of them, but maybe 1 per week
Notes from all meetings (actions, decisions, and deliverables)
Their PIP actions and check-ins
Scheduling follow-up meetings
Team meeting training
This one will require a bit more guidance, but instead of running every training session, let\’s open up a few for peer training. You will need to double-check their work beforehand (no one wants a 2-hour “look at me” session). But if you have a top rep that is CRUSHING prospecting or brush-offs, let them show the rest of the team how they do it.
8. You Cannot Control How Much Other People Care
This was a tough one for me to really wrap my head around in the beginning. But the truth is that there is a reason that you were promoted to manager. There is a reason that other people will remain as a rep. You cannot control how much other people care. When you care more about their job than they do, it will cause numerous problems.
Let me tell you a little story. Back at the beginning of my sales career, I had a rep, let’s call him “George.” Well, George just could not seem to get himself to work on time. I got one excuse after another. There was a part of me that felt guilty that I didn’t have car trouble and that I could afford a new alarm clock, etc. One Thursday during lunch I left work to go across the street to buy George a new alarm clock (I know, I know). That was when it hit me. What the hell was I doing? If George didn’t care enough to figure out how to get an alarm clock on his phone or borrow a buddy’s clock, or heck, go to Goodwill and buy a used one, then why did I care so much? That was my “ah-ha” moment. I was caring more than George and no amount of new alarm clocks was going to force him to care more.
You need to stay within your span of control. You can control your schedule, your reactions to things, and your time. You don’t control your team, you can’t control a pricing increase, you don’t control what the customer’s going to say, you just don’t. You can influence your team’s skill level, activity, and focus, but you can’t control it. There are a lot of things under your concern, but that you can’t control. There is very little you can actually control. So, stop spinning your wheels and stressing out about it. You can provide coaching and help when appropriate, but “George” is either going to make it or he’s not.
BONUS!
Kill all of your notifications! All of those Instagram posts and text messages can wait until your lunch break. These notifications will only distract you and make completing your tasks take much longer.
Time block goal actions on your calendar. Block out checking your email, your phone messages, etc.
Keep tasks in the same place. Your meetings and your time-blocked tasks are on your calendar. But I’m betting you also have a bunch of other things to do. Compile all of those to-dos into one list. Whether it’s an app or a paper list, keep everything in the same place so nothing slips through the cracks.
Set a time for similar actions and tasks. If you have 3 tasks on your to-do list that require emails, complete those tasks during your time block to check emails. If you need to go pick something up, do it at the same time you need to go to the post office. By grouping similar tasks together, your mind will be able to focus more efficiently and complete those tasks faster.
I know this was A LOT of information and your inbox has probably increased by 200 emails now, but if you take the time to start implementing at least some of these sales management productivity hacks that we talked about here, it will make a difference: in both your success and your happiness! You will feel and be more productive. It will just take a little practice!
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Recently, one of the awesome women in #GirlsClub shared that she wanted to move all the way up the sales ladder before trying management. She wanted to be credible to her future team. She had also learned the hard way that just because she could DO sales didn’t mean she could TEACH sales. I was so freaking proud of her at that moment. She knew her strengths and she was not blindly reaching for the promotion. It also gave me pause.
Do we need to do every role in sales before managing? I didn’t. I sold for a short time and then leap-frogged into sales (see my story here).
Truth is, management is not a fit for everyone – regardless of your sales prowess. In fact, maybe because of your sales prowess. I’ve seen top reps make horrible managers and “B” reps be amazing coaches.
It’s really more about your natural behaviors and values than skills. Our (amaaaazing) Marketing Director at Factor 8 is very actively NOT seeking a management role. My bestie says the same thing, “Hell no! Life is better when I’m in charge of my own destiny and not in charge of anyone else’s crap.” My bestie may have a mouth like mine. 😉
So if you’re wondering, “Is sales management right for me?”, start by asking yourself a few questions:
Am I a natural teacher? If you love mentoring the new kid, lending a helping hand, and being shadowed, this is absolutely your first clue that management is a good direction.
Does answering lots of questions annoy me? If your daily highlight is being the go-to person, it’s another good clue. (In contrast, my bestie says, “Stop freaking Slacking me! Figure it out yourself! What am I, your mom!?” Not so much someone who’ll love management…)
How important is control to me? This one’s a double-edged sword. Most great managers have a high “D” factor in the DISC assessment or “A” factor in Predictive Index. Those behavior traits that say things like, “driver, in charge, authoritative, assertive” (in my case…competitive, pioneering, sometimes arrogant. Wait, what?!) When you strive to lead, actually having the title really helps. You feel more in charge of your own destiny and less likely to go crazy based on what “they” are doing above.
Flipside: As a manager, you actually have LESS control over your daily life, workload, task list, end results, and paycheck. You’re basically being judged by and paid on the average performer on your team. If that last sentence gave you hives, keep driving your own sales car; don’t trade it in for the sales school bus.
If you’re still not sure if sales management is right for you, join me (or watch the recording) for a free session on “Tips To Get Promoted To Sales Manager” where I’ll share my top tips to help you determine if management is meant for you and, if it is, how to get that promotion.
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My first year in sales management was rough. I try hard to celebrate that sweet, young thing instead of cringing, but it’s hard some days. I remember some doozy mistakes:
Motivating over email. I had 2 reps on my new team that hit the end of their ramp and went against quota before anyone else. Chris and Melissa (no kidding, 23 years later). I thought they might need some boosting, and I never saw them as they sat way on the other side of the office as I did. So I sat down and crafted a long letter.
Go. team.
There were so many things wrong with that email!
Shall we talk about coaching? I was terrified. To be clear, I had no experience selling what they were selling, no experience managing, and had never call coached in my life. Yeah, saying I avoided it like the plague would be an understatement. Except for my tenured guy, Noonan. I always tried to coach with him because I’d learn something. Guess who REALLY didn’t want my novice help? (he’d applied for my job)
Bingo.
Meeting management. Looking back I think I managed everything ad-hoc except for our team meetings. Those would go on for HOURS because I crammed everything into one. I’d prepare for DAYS. I’d still go long. THEN the guest speaker would come in.
Nightmare.
Yeah, these are real stories. It took me about six months to figure out the job and for my team to excel. And we did. We became number one in the division in those 6 months. Most days I think they did it in spite of me! And because I still feel the embarrassment, frustration, and exhaustion in my body as I type this, I’ve spent my career trying to fix it for others.
Factor 8 management curriculum is literally job training for sales managers. Not leadership training with a few sales role-plays, it’s how to do the freaking job. Like I wish someone would have taught me. It’s one of the key 3 ingredients in the over 100+ promotions we’ve earned with our #GirlsClub communities! Here are a few nuggets we teach and share. If you’re a new manager or an aspiring one, I hope you’ll take one (or a few) of our online management courses or programs. They’re bite-sized versions of our Fortune 1000 corporate programs.
Tip 1:
Get your house in order. A manager’s cadence is akin to a rep’s sales process. It’s the dance steps, the framework, the skeleton on which you’ll hang your management suit. Get it locked down. We teach about six essential manager meetings:
The performance 1:1
The sales huddle
The quarterly review
The team pipeline meeting
The sales strategy meeting
The team meeting
Each of these has different goals, timelines, and preparation actions, but once you lock these in you’re halfway home to getting a hold of your day. If you’d like to see your family or some daylight hours during your first year, believe me, this is key!
Tip 2:
Delegate everything you can to these meetings. Keep the line away from your desk and work through needs in their appropriate meeting. It’s like getting file folders for all the crap on your desk. Be clear:
Sales Reps are like water. We will ALWAYS flow to the path of least resistance.
Asking you to help or do it for me will always be easier than me looking it up or figuring it out. Resist, dear friend, resist. Fish. Teaching. Eating. You get it, right? Remember, daylight hours! When we spend all day with a “line at our desk” (remote equivalent: Slack blowing up), we feel GREAT we helped people all day and we had some answers, but then we get to keep working all night to do our real job.
Tip 3:
Get really clear on your job role. You’re going to WANT to solve everything for your team because this validates you. We all feel nervous in these new roles and it’s hard to immediately strike the right balance of power. New leaders are either baby tyrants or mother hens. Leading through telling or leading through helping. Find the middle ground. On two sides of the paper, fill them up. Now you know what NOT to do.
Tip 4:
Stop doing your old job. The Peter principle is a real thing. It means you’ll keep getting promoted until you reach your limit of competence. Translated, that means until you quit learning the new job and we find you still doing your old job. Don’t fizzle out at the first leadership rung. No, you can’t keep any accounts. No! Uh-uh! Zip! None. Give it to a rep on your team and help them be great instead.
Tip 5:
Celebrate failures and wins. Every week come together as a team to talk about the week’s highlights. It keeps you all focused on the W’s, motivated to do it again, and builds unity. Keep it short, but be sure it also includes failures. The best sellers and managers see sales as a sport in which they’ll continuously improve. That means failing. No’s. Lost deals. Hang-ups. For you it means upset. Missed opportunities. Stepping in it with your boss. Share these with your team too. If you can vulnerably share your journey to being the best leader you can be for them, they’ll cheer you on your journey.
So will I.
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In 1998 I moved to Phoenix to take my first Inside Sales Management job at Insight (NYSE: NSIT). We resold technology to the Fortune 500. Mine was a new team with a new leader building new books of business. Read: It suuuuuucked.
There aren’t a lot of “un-tried” leads in the Fortune 500, and my brand new team and I were all struggling. The memory of it is still pretty vivid for me – feeling completely overwhelmed. The frustration at constantly saying “I don’t know,” twenty seven times a day, and the very late nights trying to figure out what I should be doing and then just doing email instead. . .
Today I remember these times to help me guide the Factor 8 team in developing and delivering Management and Leadership training for Inside Sales Managers. As most of you know, we don’t go for BS theory classes at Factor 8, we try very hard to solve real-life problems and impart immediately-applicable skills in class.
Man I wish I’d had that training back then. Scary that some of you out there were BORN when I was doing this. Sometimes I still feel like that 23 year old trying to pretend I knew what I was doing (But I digress).
So what do you remember? I’ll get the ball rolling with the top five things I didn’t know, should have known, wish I’d known. Please share one of yours. What’s a key skill for sales managers that someone should teach them in year one? (Or, if you’re living this right now, what is something you wish they would teach you??) Can’t wait to see the list!!
The management screens and responsibilities in CRM (seriously, tell me I had to release orders, that might have helped)
Meeting prep. I spent 8 hours preparing for my first team meeting. Ridiculous.
Motivation tactics. Month one I sent out emails to rally the troops behind our first quota . Awful. Really? Email?
Cadence. What meetings should I be having? When? 1:1 or group?
Who’s who in the zoo? Who do I call to get a credit line extended? A product ordered? An account moved?
PS: My old boss from 1998 interviewed me for his Management / Leadership Blog last year. We talked about my first year in leadership and how to be successful. Here’s the link: https://managermojo.com/make-people-successful/.
PSS: And if you want to see what Factor 8 does with live training for managers and leaders, contact us at info@factor8.com.
Once the excitement wears off, there’s a good chance that your new manager is nervous and even a little scared about their ability to succeed.
Here are 10 things running through their head that they’re afraid to tell you (from the point of view of a typical newly-promoted Inside Sales Manager):
It’s impossibly hard to be the boss of my old team. Who do I go to lunch with?
Half the skills that made me an awesome rep (competitive? High maintenance?) make me a pretty awful manager
Um, how DO you run a pipeline meeting?
I’m not actually sure how to coach, so I just take over the call or give my team scripts of how I did it
Truth is, I’m actually hanging on to a few accounts (cuz if you’ll let me, I’ll try to keep doing my old job)
If it doesn’t work out, you’re down a manager AND a top performer (because I’m not going back on the phones – humiliating!)
If an unengaged rep can ruin 200 customer relationships, I can ultimately ruin over 2000!
What AM I supposed to cover in a 1:1??
When I run out of candidates that look just like me, I’m not sure how to hire.
I don’t know how to explain how I did it. It’s an ART not a science! How do I teach that?
I’m sure I missed a few. What was running through your head once you got settled into your first Inside Sales Management position?
Folks, training your managers is critical. Jump out to our YouTube page to learn more about what training to provide, why train managers first, and the online job training we recommend when face-to-face training isn’t feasible. You can also follow Factor 8 here on LinkedIn or at Factor8.com
Lauren Bailey (LB) is the President of Factor 8, and has been recognized by the AA-ISP as one of the “Top 25 Most Influential Leaders in Inside Sales” for 4 years running. You can connect with LB on LinkedIn, Twitter (@Factor8Sales), or the newly launched website – www.Factor8.com.