One of the most rewarding jobs a Sales Manager can perform is achieving big sales growth gains for his or her company. The Pure Growth Sales Manager’s primary function is to expand the customer base and drive more revenue back to the company. Period.
This usually means that maintaining existing customers is less important. Not because recurring revenue is not important (it is). But, the company may have an account management team or a retention team to interact with customer and keep attrition low.
Define Your Priorities
The Pure Growth Sales Manager is tasked with achieving specific sales growth goals through new business acquisition. The focus is primarily on these five (5) priorities:
- Defining or refining the Ideal Customer Profile
- Implementing a robust lead generation strategy
- Training and coaching sales reps on the lead generation strategy
- Monitoring and holding the sales reps to the sales process
- Gaining market share in the face of competitors and new product roll-outs
Know Your Metrics
This is a very metrics-driven role. The numbers will tell the story about how well the Pure Growth Sales Manager’s strategy and sales team are doing. Here are a few examples, such as the number of:
- phone calls
- face-to-face calls
- web leads
- social media leads
- 1st appointments
- proposals
- closes
In addition, they also look at:
- average size of transaction
- total sales per day/week/month
As the Sales Manager collects the data, they can pinpoint exactly where they’re successful and what needs to be addressed. In some cases, they may find that the leads are pouring in, but the close rate is quite low. It may be due to poor quality engagement on the part of the sales reps or lack of a solid qualifying process. There can be any number of reasons why this occurs. But the Pure Growth Sales Manager’s responsibility is to find out and fix the broken link in the process to ensure that the sales goals will be achieved in the required time frame.
If you find yourself in a Pure Growth Sales Manager role, be sure to understand what the sales growth goals are and the deadline for achieving them. Never leave these important metrics ambiguous. Next, negotiate with your boss the resources needed to acquire and retain top sales talent to ensure you’ll be successful. A good in-depth sales assessment will help you identify top sales candidates, as well as identify the caliber of your existing sales team members.