The Top 5 Habits of Highly Successful Sales Directors
Natterbox Team
Dipen Ormsby, Director, EMEA Sales at Natterbox
The pandemic has changed the way we all work, and sales directors are no different. We’ve all had to rapidly adapt through the most financially uncertain period for a long time. Whether selling to businesses or consumers, the people on the other end of their phone calls have sometimes been struggling too, making sales all that more challenging. Now we are returning to some semblance of normality, companies and sales teams should be working to capitalize on the economic bounceback.
Fortunately, even through such a tumultuous period, the fundamentals of the jobs have largely remained consistent – they simply need to be applied differently to suit our new ways of working.
So, what key habits do sales directors need to be successful?
- Be Goal Oriented
- Be a Leader not a Manager
- Hire and Develop the Best Talent
- Communicate Clearly and Lay a Path to Success
- Think Big and Think Long Term
1. Be Goal Oriented
From top line goals to activity KPIs, sales directors and their teams are the backbone of any business, and they must be target oriented to drive the new business a business needs to grow. So, being able to monitor performance against targets is crucial.
Fortunately, Natterbox makes monitoring metrics simple. The available metrics on our platform include basic KPIs such as number of calls made and total talk time, along with more sophisticated measurements such as conversations by outcome and flagged calls.
The simple dialer also makes salespeople more efficient, with click to dial functionality, and the freedom to make calls from anywhere on any device. As it’s fully embedded in Salesforce, you and your team can drastically cut admin and reporting time. This in turn helps the sales team make more calls, more sales and drive more revenue for the business.
2. Be a Leader not a Manager
Being a good sales director is about so much more than simply monitoring numbers and offering advice from a distance on a weekly call.
You need to roll your sleeves up and get involved in deals day to day – in other words, you need to lead by example. By working alongside your team to sell and handle objections, you foster collaboration and a teamwork mentality, encouraging and motivating your team to work to the best of their ability. Natterbox makes mentoring remotely as simple as if you were both in the office, with features such as whisper coaching helping sales directors teach their staff on the job.
3. Hire and Develop the Best Talent
A sales director is only as good as their team. But hiring the right people is just half the battle. Sales staff must be trained to reflect the company’s ethos and sales directors must ensure the businesses is providing them with the best coaching and sales tools to do their job as efficiently as possible.
Natterbox supports these efforts no matter whether your staff are in the office or working remotely. For example, Natterbox Insight‘s intuitive search functionality means that it is easy for sales directors to create powerful searches in order to provide targeted training. For example, directors can search all calls where sales agents spoke to a gatekeeper but failed to progress the call. At this point, directors can quickly upskill new agents on gatekeeper strategy, directly using Insight through Salesforce. This can result in a reduction of time needed to train new agents, identification of poor performing agents and increased sales.
4. Communicate Clearly and Lay a Path to Success
To lead a sales conversation, you need to communicate detail clearly, while also emphasizing the big picture process and next steps. Similarly, to lead a team you need to communicate what success looks like and how you are going to get there. Recent research found that 63% of sales leaders believe virtual meetings are just as or more effective than in person meetings, but the key factor will always be communication.
Sales directors must communicate with their teams regularly and clearly. If you do not, how can you expect to set the right expectations, track their progress and motivate them to achieve their targets.
5. Think Big and Think Long Term
Finally, sales directors must look to leverage customer data when making long term, strategic decisions. Considerations must include new markets, new verticals, or new countries amongst many other factors.
Natterbox can help by capturing essential information required to make these big decisions such as long term trend analysis, granting sales directors the freedom to be bold and ambitious.
No matter how difficult the circumstances, sales directors must never lose sight of the fundamentals to ensure they and their team thrive.