Are You A Rainy Day Sales Manager?

"There's absolutely no heat on sales, or reason for me to do anything other than keep warm key accounts, and maybe chase a really big profitable project that I might come across." -- Anonymous Sales Manager

What!  Sitting around waiting for something to happen isn't a selling strategy.  If you're not selling every day, then you're not serous about sustainable business growth.

It's a sales manager's duty to push the selling process toward business growth everyday (when business is good and business is bad); it's the only sound sales strategy available.  You can't choose to sell only when you need too.

This is what's called a rainy day sales manager, only waiting till it really hurts to start the selling process instead of keeping your pipeline full all the time.  What does this really do to your business?

First, the common excuse, "I'm too busy with current projects to sell."  The same person who would say that is crying months later that they don't have enough business to keep the doors open.  That's a dangerous roller coaster to be riding as a sales manager!

It's easier to find people to perform work than it is to find customers.  It's your sales manager duty is to keep new sales coming everyday whether you need the customers or not.  Then what happens when work gets backed up because you have more customers than resources to serve them?

When you have more customers than you need, then create a backlog.  In the services business this means scheduling projects further out, in the products business it means creating a backorder.  In every business having more work than you can handle is called stability.

If you aren't selling daily, you create peaks and valleys in your revenue instead of the consistent growth necessary for stability.  You'll find yourself cash crunched or struggling at the end of a quarter to meet numbers.  Is that where you really want to be?

Selling everyday is sound advice for your sales people too. 

Anything can change, a new account could fall through, and in today's competitive market this selling strategy (behavior) gives you options.  What will you do when the bottom falls out of a seemingly strong contract, and you don't have anything in the sales funnel?

A sounds sales strategy for every sales manager is to encourage activity throughout your selling process daily!

Marketing, listen up!  Even if the sales department is slacking off, it's critical to keep generating leads and qualifying prospective buyers daily.  Don't let those sales people take a break, playing catch up isn't productive.

Do you really have capacity problems?  If you are really at peak capacity and can't handle anymore business, then look at profitable customer strategies to cultivate those most profitable accounts and subcontracting (but turning away less profitable ones requires fewer resources.)

No matter what you do it's a core sales manager duty and sound selling strategy to ... never, never, ever stop selling!