Leadership or Micromanagement
I often hear from managers that their sales people are good relation managers and they fear ‘micromanaging’ their team.
Micromanager – the awful persona sales managers don’t want to be identified as and sales reps never want to be working for. Well, we have all heard the term ‘the devil is in the details’, but I believe that a critical component of good leadership is to understand that ‘success is in the details’. Setting daily, weekly and quarterly metrics and using those metrics to manage the process of selling quite naturally will drive the achievement of the bigger goal of home sales.
Being involved and coaching the activity metrics that are established is critical. It’s going to be challenging if you’ve been letting your sales team do ‘their own thing’, but creating a culture where everyone knows from day one what is expected of them and what activities it will take to hit their goals is worth the investment and pays off in the long term. In reality, managing the process and establishing key activity metrics is a framework for their success. The better the sales team understands your logic, the less people will feel micromanaged, and they’ll see that you are actually trying to set them up for success.
In establishing a ‘process oriented’ culture it’s important to reflect back on the daily metrics every day for the first few weeks, then move to a weekly review – it becomes a great time to highlight each individual’s achievements as well as understand their obstacles to achieving their goals.
Where does technology fit in? A good CRM homebuilder software system is core to making it easier for each individual sale person, and you as a leader, to execute and track the activities and communications with homebuyer prospects.
