This is a guest post from my friend Bill Cook, SVP of Sales for CareSouth

Priority #1: Teaching, Training and Motivating Sales Staff while Riding Along with them in the Field to Ensure Quota Attainment

Working with your reps is your top priority and where 60% or more of work time should be spent. This means being in the passenger seat of your reps’ cars three full days a week or more–every week.  This also means that while you are with them, you are theirs and not everyone else’s.  You should focus on them by putting your phone on silent and not taking and making calls all day long.  You actively listen and seek ways to help them improve their performance.  You ask them questions and get them thinking about new ways to approach difficult accounts and situations.  You inspire and challenge them, fill out a ride along analysis when you are done, and make sure that you have added value to them before you leave.  If they are not performing per company policy, you implement a success plan quickly and see it through until they improve or exit the organization.

Priority #2: Partnering with your Operations counterpart so that Sales and Operations Work as a Team

You should be tied at the hip with your operations counterpart, working closely and effectively to ensure that communication and teamwork happen at every level.  Occasionally, we fail to complete an assignment, or someone makes a mistake.  When this happens, you will have to rely on a strong relationship in order to see the conflict or problem through to resolution or improvement.  Teams that have mutual respect and cooperation simply do better; make sure you do your part to build a close working relationship.  Here are several ways to ensure this:

• Attend staff meetings when possible.
• Invite operational staff to lunches and appointments.
• Do a blitz once per quarter to build teamwork and have fun, as well as to increase business!
• Make sure you stay within your budgeted expenses to help operations meet their bottom line.

Priority #3: Recruiting, Hiring, Training and Retaining Sales Staff

Looking for talent is a never-ending part of being a sales manager.  You need to have a stable of potential recruits to fill vacancies that inevitably come up.  Sales turnover in most industries is typically between 25% and 35% annually.  So, always be recruiting because the odds are that you will have an opening or two at some point during the year.  Implement a rigorous hiring policy that includes behavior and performance based questioning techniques, multiple interviews and personality profiles.

Give your new hires a great orientation and training program and make sure they fully understand your services and processes.  Set up periodic refresher courses for existing staff.  Listening well and providing fair and firm guidance to everyone on your team will also help you to retain an excellent staff.

Priority #4: Running Effective Sales Meetings

As a sales manager, you simply must bring your sales reps together periodically, usually monthly or at least every 6 weeks, and only for a day.  A day that includes role-playing situations and programs that you need all of our reps to be proficient with.  This is critically important to increasing sales effectiveness and to creating a culture of improvement and winning.   Your responsibility is to plan the meetings to start and end on time, to assign pre-work and to appoint members of your team to lead segments.  Think of your sales meeting in the same way you want your reps would think of a sales call—and if you aren’t prepared for your meetings then don’t expect your reps to be prepared for their sales calls!

Priority #5: Analyzing Call Quality and Quantity

You probably have at least a decent CRM or call tracking program that will help you monitor the number of calls your reps are making as well as the depth of the calls. You simply must take some office time each week to review each rep’s call activity and to talk to them about what you are seeing.  The other key piece to this is to look at the frequency of visits to certain accounts and the volume of business that is being generated—is the rep focusing on the right accounts?  Why do they spend so much time at some accounts and not others?  This exercise leads you to the next priority…

Priority #6: Monitoring and Adjusting Business Credit and Accounts

This should be another weekly task that you do during office time. Make sure you work with your operational staff to ensure credit is be assigned properly throughout the month.  This will save you a lot of time at the end of each month, and will minimize potential squabbles between your reps.  You will also need to periodically change account assignments – especially if you have a rep that is not generating results in an account. Typically, you should evaluate account success every quarter, and make changes in strategy or even in personnel if goals are not being reached.

Priority #7: Planning your Time

Set a monthly calendar in advance and communicate the days you will be in the field with your team in an email to all of them.  They need to know when you are going to work in the field with them and that you are working with their peers as well.  Set your sales meeting well in advance.  Submit a weekly sales management report to your supervisor on time each week and copy your operations counterpart.

Priority #8: Knowing Your Numbers and Preparing for Conference Calls

Do not get on call or go to a meeting where senior management will be present unless you know your current numbers, by location and by rep.  You are the sales leader and must know your business.  Be ready to account for any drops in volume, and likewise, be ready to explain why things are growing if that’s the case.  Be on time for conference calls and meetings, and speak up at events – give positive and helpful comments based in truth and with the intention of increasing understanding.

Priority #9: Practicing the Intangibles

Having a great attitude is incredibly important to your effectiveness as a leader, and offering solutions to any issues or problems that you bring up is just as important and critical to your success.  Work on these attributes and develop them in your reps—they are proven characteristics of top salespeople:

1) Don’t take “no” personally,

2) Accept 100% responsibility for results

3) Develop a deep desire to succeed

4) Be empathetic and put yourself in others’ shoes

5) Be intensely goal-oriented

6) Be self-disciplined and determined and persistent

7) Be impeccably honest, and

8) Practice approaching people you don’t know, it’s a great skill that always helps you.

You and your reps will excel if you study, concentrate, and focus on your performance!

Priority #10: Committing to your Own Professional Development

Get out into the field once per year to work with the people who deliver your service or build your product–it will do you a world of good.  Perspective, ideas, stories, and gratitude will all come from a day in the field with the people you represent.  Attend a seminar, read a book, listen to a CD; they all will help you stay on track with your goals and will rub off on your team as well.

I hope you have found these Top Ten Priorities useful and helpful.  I wish you and your sales team much success in the year ahead!  Bill

Bill Cook is a senior-level health care sales leader who has built and led many high performing sales teams.  Bill enjoys developing strategies, designing incentive compensation plans, and inspiring others to produce exceptional results quickly.  In his current role as Senior Vice President of Sales at CareSouth, he led the sales team to five record-breaking months last year on the way to the company’s best year ever.  He is an excellent public speaker and a passionate home health care ambassador.  Follow his blog at http://www.billcookonline.com or catch him on twitter: http://twitter.com/billcookonline