Management buy in: what’s the most important thing you should do daily?

Suppose you are a Sales Manager in the automotive industry at a large dealer holding company. You run a storefront and manage a number of salespeople. What is the most important thing you should do every day?

I understand that there is no single correct answer. At some dealerships, the sales manager has more responsibility than at another company. But that’s not the point, the point is that I don’t meet enough Sales Managers who manage sales.

At some dealerships, the sales manager has more responsibility than the branch manager at another company.

Management buy in: Leading sellers

To properly manage salespeople, you have to work with them. Not only in a weekly meeting, but daily. You are their manager, coach, and their trainer. In my work as an external trainer/coach at dealerships in the Netherlands, and also in other countries, I am expected to convince the salespeople that they can perform better. Even after a few sessions with sales managers. I can still see that the attention is slackening, things are getting stale with the sales team and the issues of the day reign. Cause? The manager’s disinterest in working with salespeople on a daily basis.

Many managers work upwards (bottom up); in other words they do tasks that they consider very interesting: having conversations with marketing and with management, working with imports and so on. The crux of success is attacking underneath (top down). The sales team needs daily leadership.

The crux of success is underneath (top down). The sales team needs daily leadership.

Listening back to sales calls

When I am at a dealership, and we listen back to a number of sales conversations via Calldrip, you can hear the salesperson struggling with the arguments that the customer uses when they don’t want to make an appointment. More often than not, that resistance can be removed with the right arguments from the sales team. When it comes to sales, it’s all about that physical appointment.

If you sit down with the salespeople as an external force, they become enthusiastic, they see the possibilities. Almost everyone wants to do well, in fact, better. However, the manager must also propagate and support that ambition; not in words, but in deeds.

Only the manager must also propagate and support that ambition.

So, every day you have to listen back to conversations, not to check, but to be able to properly inspire your sales force. I know managers who make their salespeople better every day by giving small tips based on the conversations they’ve heard.

Dealing with opportunities

The opportunities are there for the taking, but often the sales team can become too lackadaisical in this seller’s market. If the first customer doesn’t buy the car, the second will. That is now, but when the market changes and becomes a buyers’ market again, you need a sales team who knows how to convert opportunities and interest into a sale.

Insight into opportunities

In our Calldrip Dashboards, the Sales Manager can easily view the opportunities of the previous day, see example below. A real conversation between seller and potential buyer that has not resulted in an appointment is reported as ‘Missed opportunity.’

This is where the Sales Manager can be of added value on a daily basis. Show the salesperson through coaching where they could have been sharper. Call the customer back and inspire a dealership visit. An Excel spreadsheet shows the end result; your salespeople’s performance is a good indicator of whether or not you are a successful manager!

Show the salesperson through coaching where they could have been sharper. Call the customer back and inspire a dealership visit.