Part-Time Sale Management: For Small Business Sales Teams

By Rene Zamora

This sales management book is written for small business owners that don't have much time and need a little sales management know how. Part-Time Sales Management is a proven approach to growing your company sales while spending only 10-20 hours a month in sales management. Using the Part-Time Sales Management System will help you develop a sales team that will help you grow your company the way you want.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sales Manager Now
• Release date: May 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781732487512

Book preview

PART 1

WHY PART-TIME SALES MANAGEMENT?

CHAPTER 1

Solving the Small Business Sales Management Dilemma

It’s well documented that 50 percent of small businesses with employees fail within five years of opening (Small Business Administration). By year 15 that number is up to 75 percent. This book won’t address all the reasons this happens, but it does address a few. Lack of capital and inadequate cash flow is a well-known contributor to many business failures. And yet, knowing that getting more sales from a sales team is part of solving the cash flow problem, sales teams are most often left on their own, with little or no leadership to guide them to greatness. In truth, most small businesses do not have a sales manager, and if you, the business owner, are the one in charge of sales, finding sustained results might still be illusive. I’ve come to understand two factors that keep sales results stalled when owners are managing sales: Time Challenges and Know-How. Most business owners don’t have the time to dedicate to the sales team, or so it seems, and if sales management has not been part of their career, know-how is probably lacking. This book can solve these two problems.

WHAT IS THE SMALL BUSINESS SALES MANAGEMENT DILEMMA?

Why is it that more small businesses don’t hire a sales manager so the owner doesn’t have to manage the team? It’s not due to lack of desire of many business owners. Rather, it is due to just being a small business with a small sales team. This circumstance creates what I’ve coined as a Small Business Sales Management Dilemma, which makes it nearly impossible to find the right sales manager to grow your business.

My company, Sales Manager Now, is making a dent in this dilemma by helping small businesses grow through part-time sales management. My hope is you can do the same by implementing the system that I’ve been using with other businesses—and have laid out in this book.

In these pages, you’ll learn what it takes to grow your business through a sales team you can count on—and to do it in only 10 to 20 hours a month. Unlike many books on sales management, it’s not designed to meet the needs of Corporate America or Fortune 500 sales managers. This book is for you, the business owner, written with the understanding of the daily challenges and time demands you face while running your company. I also understand that some of you are naturals at selling and others are not. Sales ability is not required for you to be an effective Part-Time Sales Manager. Managing and selling are two separate skill sets.

You might be wondering if it would be easier to simply bite the bullet and hire a sales manager rather than learn how to better manage the team yourself. There is a big reason why I’m not writing an ebook on hiring your next sales manager, and it’s part of the Small Business Sales Management Dilemma. Let me explain.

Why it’s hard to find a full-time professional sales manager

There are two existing circumstances that make it difficult to hire a full-time sales manager for a small business. They are:

The compensation level for the sales manager needed to grow the business is usually more than most owners are comfortable paying.

When owners are willing to invest in the right sales manager, it’s still hard to find the right person because the job at a small business is not challenging enough to attract the professional talent needed.

A sales manager is needed for the business to grow, but the circumstances I stated make it just about impossible to hire one. That’s the Small Business Sales Management Dilemma.

What sales management options are left?

This dilemma leaves you, the small business owner, with few options: You could leave the team to its own devices, letting it operate without a manager and hoping salespeople will perform for you. Alternatively, you might have one salesperson supervise the others on the team while also continuing to produce sales. Lastly, you could oversee or manage the team yourself.

What can you expect if you pursue any of these options?

Leaving the team unmanaged is not a great idea. It’s convenient, and if you are using this approach, you might be struggling with growth, or experiencing high turnover with salespeople. Having a salesperson manage the team can work, but only if that person knows how to be unselfish and manage time well—and is also able to maintain his or her own personal sales volume. This strategy doesn’t always work because a rep can often earn more by selling than by supervising others—so the supervision of the team suffers. It also creates a competitive challenge for the salesperson who is the manager. The last option is for you, the owner to become the sales manager. You have the greatest interest in the success of your salespeople and you have the authority to lead them. The problem most owners face, however, is finding the time to work with the team and the right tools for managing them.

I hope you’re beginning to understand that you’re not alone in experiencing or trying to solve this dilemma. The solution I discovered and applied to my work with clients—and the one I’ll be sharing with you in this book—is the Part-Time Sales Management System.

MINIMAL SALES MANAGEMENT TIME INVESTED

Most books and programs for improving sales management are written for full-timers. Corporate sales managers are expected to put in 50 plus hours of work a week on their sales management duties. By contrast, this book is written to help you realize the greatest business growth possible through managing a productive sales team, while putting in the least amount of time doing it. The focus of every step is to build a self-managing sales team, so your invested sales management hours can shrink over time.

You’d expect a book like this to show you how to accomplish more in less time, and that’s true of this one. More importantly, the Part-Time Sales Management System goes deeper than simply giving you tools for better time management. It describes exactly what you should do to build a system to support a productive sales team—in the least amount of time possible.

When salespeople are not managed or led, it can seem like they need a lot of your time and attention. The reality, however, is the opposite: the more they feel supported and cared about, the less time they need from you because they’ll be out doing their jobs, making sales. The Part-Time Sales Management System is designed to help you provide that support and care to them. A consistent dose of a little attention in the right way is far more effective than a lot of attention in the wrong way.

FIVE CORE ELEMENTS OF THE PART-TIME SALES MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

The Part-Time Sales Management System is built on five core elements: Beliefs, Expectations, Accountability, Meetings, and Conversations. There is nothing real sexy or innovative about these element titles—just think of them as butter, sugar, flour, fruit, and eggs. When applied in the right dosage and consistent manner they can produce a sales team as enjoyable as your favorite pastry. Similar to cooking, it’s not the name of the ingredients that matter but how you use them. The core elements are your Part-Time Sales Management Ingredients. The book will provide the recipe on how to use them to cook up a strong sales team using the least amount of your time.

It’s important to understand that this is a sales management system. You will be learning how to implement a system that allows for more salespeople to be successful. Understanding these five core elements and implementing the strategies that support each of them provides the groundwork for the system to create an environment where salespeople can be at their best. This new environment will not only bring out the best in your sales team, it will also be attractive to the salespeople you’ve been trying to find. Finding and working with good salespeople who flourish in a sales-supportive environment begins to make growth very easy. Here are some examples from past clients.

A 75-year-old independent insurance agency had hired full-time managers in the past without achieving the success they hoped for. After implementing the Part-Time Sales Management System, they doubled their new business sales volume to record highs over a four-year period. It also increased the number of consistently producing salespeople on the team, adding new young talent that can take the company another 30 years into the future—and the team’s not done growing yet. There are over ten salespeople now and the Part-Time Management System continues to serve them well.

A company that had not been able to find the right sales manager embraced the Part-Time Sales Management approach by having one of their senior salespeople learn the system with their CEO—and that move resulted in record growth in sales while the size of the sales team doubled. That salesperson has not seen a drop off in his personal production while he continues to fulfill his Part-Time Management duties.

During a market downturn, a distribution company reduced the sales team and executive management and brought in The Part-Time Sales Management System. For the first time since owning the business, the owner knows exactly what the salespeople are doing during the day, knows how well they are taking care of customers, and has accurate forecasts for future sales. All this without micro-management, worry, or a burden on his time. Sales are on the rise with a stronger customer base.

The five core elements themselves are each important in their own right, but the power of the system and the ability to reap time savings depends on the degree to which they are all consistently incorporated into your business. The system is built on you being disciplined around these five elements as well as being committed to utilizing them in the least amount of time required. You will focus on doing less while allowing the system to support more being done by your sales team.

CHAPTER 2

A Breakthrough Sales Management System

When I began working with my clients as an outsourced sales manager, no one had heard of the idea of Part-Time Sales Management— including me! After starting my business, I searched to find others doing the same but couldn’t find any. I found coaches who could advise owners and their sales teams on a short-term basis, as well as training programs that might provide a burst of sales—but no guarantees after that. What I didn’t find was someone willing to take ownership of achieving the sales goals of a small business like I was doing at Sales Manager Now for my clients. I’m not saying there was no one out there, I’m just saying I couldn’t find them.

THE GENESES

The Part-Time Sales Management concept was originally suggested to me by an acquaintance, Debra Gravelle, in our first and only meeting back in 2006. I had been prayerfully seeking a new direction in consulting with Bill Terry, a friend of mine for at least six months before he introduced me to Debra. That new direction was made clear to me when Debra said, Why don’t you become a sales manager for many small businesses? Without a doubt in my mind, I told her I would do it. I asked her if she knew what my company name should be. She didn’t, but she said her husband Raymond might, and he did. The day after that meeting, Sales Manager Now was born, and a week later I was working with my first client, Mike, who’ll you hear more about later in this book.

When I started Sales Manager Now, it was a breakthrough for me, and now I see this Part-Time Sales Management System is a breakthrough for all small business owners and their companies.

Since founding Sales Manager Now, I’ve been perfecting the Part-Time Sales Management System. Today, I work with four to seven small businesses simultaneously as their Part-Time Sales Manager and as a coach for business owners. Due to my sole focus on small businesses, I have a keen understanding of what will and will not work in a small business environment. In addition, working side-by-side with small business owners like you, I understand most of the challenges that come along with being an owner.

My business model is designed not only to help you build a sales team that performs consistently, but also to develop a team that will add value to