A crucial role for any business looking to expand and grow is a sales manager role. This role can vary between companies but roughly revolves around the organisation, motivation, and leadership of a sales team.
Sales teams are located in a number of businesses that provide products or services either straight to consumers or other businesses. It is up to the sales team to sell these products and services either reactively (Inbound – taking sales) or proactively (Outbound – pushing sales).
There are a variety of different sectors that employ sales managers; these can include the pharmaceutical and finance sectors, as well as fast moving consumer goods. FMCG are non-durable retail goods that are used or replaced within days, weeks or months, such as grocery items.
The sales manager is therefore responsible for selling these products and services and will have a team of sales representatives to help them. Depending on the sector and the company that you work for, your role may vary. As a sales manager you may be responsible for a particular product or service, or you could be responsible for a set area or specific customers.
A sales manager would be involved with the following duties:
Set targets/goals
The sales manager takes the responsibility for the combined performance of the sales team. Therefore, they must ensure that all sales representatives hit their targets and goals. These targets may be set by themselves or trickled down from their manager, e.g. a regional sales manager or sales director.
As a way of incentivising performance, a sales manager is also responsible for motivating the team to hit their targets. They usually organise and implement schemes to enable their sales representatives to reach these targets and even exceed them.
Recruitment
Being responsible for your own sales team means that as a Sales Manager you will also be responsible for the hiring and firing of staff. Therefore, you need to constantly assess the volume of sales and the work load of your staff.
Establish training programmes
Once a sales representative has been employed and throughout their employment they will need training. This may be in the form of initial training, such as the basic selling techniques right up to more comprehensive training such as sales strategies or management courses.
Co-ordinating sales team
This is where a Sales Manager would need to allocate different areas to the sales representatives. This could be in the form of a geographical area or a specific product or type of customer.
Developing sales strategies
As part of co-ordinating a sales team and setting targets for them to reach, a Sales Manager is fundamentally responsible for creating a sales strategy for their team to adhere to. The strategy may be a combined effort with other staff such as a sales supervisor or even more senior staff such as a regional sales manager.
Collecting data and reporting
A large section of this role is to collect sales data and information and report back to senior managers. The data that is collected could come in the form of sales performance of the sales team, or it could be customer information such as the volume of products sold to specific demographics. This information is then used as part of future sales strategies or as market research.
As you can see there are many different roles that a Sales Manager may be responsible for. Fundamentally they need to make sure they organise, motivate and lead their sales team. Depending on the size of the business, a Sales Manager may find that they are in direct competition with another Sales Manager working for a different area of the company. They may be the only sales manager of the company in which case their direct competition includes competitor companies and businesses in the same sector.
