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Sales Development Reps Can Save Managers’ Careers

Top 5 Difficulties Sales Managers Face Every Day

Sales managers often find themselves in a tough situation. Executives expect a lot of them. They often don’t have the breathing room they need to specialize in their main role leading a sales team. We’ve learned how using a specialized team of sales development reps eases some of those burdens. Here are the top 5 problems sales managers face, and how SDRs can help them.

5: Management Ability

Many new managers get thrown into the role because they were previously among the top performers in their sales team. Some sales directors and executives believe that this translates naturally into management ability, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Management is a different game from sales, requiring different skills. Developing those skills requires training at a minimum, and it’s helpful if the manager indeed has a natural aptitude for the job. This is one challenge that depends largely on the person who promotes the new manager into that position. They should use predictive and analytical tools to be sure that the person they’re considering for a management role is up to the task. Either way, once in that role, management training should be on the menu.

4: Recruiting New Reps

Similarly to the question of raw ability, not all managers always make the best hiring decisions. A bad hire can torpedo the effectiveness of a sales team. An excellent way to minimize the risk of disastrous hiring decisions is to work with another company that comes with focused experience hiring sales development reps. If they’ve got the process down to a science, then you can focus more on getting the new reps up to speed on the product itself.

3: Training Reps

Good sales managers should have a sales background so they know what the reps on their team face each day. They won’t necessarily be the best at sales themselves, though. Their role is to inspire, motivate, and lead; to help their team reach their goals. They may need help doing that. By working together with a team of outsourced sales development reps, a sales manager can let even more experienced sales professionals teach their team the best techniques. The manager can then focus on helping them learn the product and creating incentives for hitting targets.

2: Consistency With Reps

Every sales representative is different, with different needs and expectations, and different styles. Part of the role of a sales manager is to work around those differences while enforcing uniform standards of quality and achievement among the whole team. Inconsistent or unequal requirements between reps breed resentment and all kinds of other problems. Working with an outsourced sales development firm gives managers the freedom to let their sales team specialize in deal closing. The in-house team worries far less about initial performance indicators. Meanwhile, SDRs do the cold calling and emailing, and refer interested prospects up the chain to account executives who used to do all of that work. The SDRs are managed differently than the in-house team, which works just fine for everyone.

1: Building a Culture of Trust

The good sales manager’s paramount challenge is making sure that everyone on their team can trust them. That comes from providing useful coaching in the context of a clear vision.
One of the challenges missed by many first time sales managers is to build a culture of high performance. They are focused on fixing many of the problems they inherited. While this is important, a focus on the desired culture is critical to building long term success. Personal leadership, vision and building trust are important. A sales manager can’t coach a salesperson who doesn’t trust him or her. The first time sales manager must fully understand the difference between being a leader and a manager and the various styles of leadership and management. — Ken Thoreson

Use Sales Development Reps to Turn Vision Into Reality

Boom Demand provides a powerful way for sales managers to scale their sales operations and reach their goals faster than ever before. We provide remote teams of Sales Development Reps, who we train and manage for you. Each rep has all the skills and tools they need to generate demand for your products and services immediately. Modern communications technology makes it easy for sales managers to integrate remote reps into their team and its culture. Contact us today to scale your sales team and leap right over the biggest pitfalls everyone else is dealing with.