How to organize the work of a sales department in a company. Formation of a sales department from scratch Department make

Is it worth spending your valuable time on sales, but at the same time sacrificing promoting your brand and company? Or is it better to organize sales department, which will help establish effective sales without consequences for other areas of the company?

1. Understanding the current situation

How do you know that now is the time to create a sales department? When the director of the company comes to the conclusion that he can no longer control all sales on his own. Even small businesses, when the market is broad and interesting, need a sales department from the very beginning of the enterprise. The management function is more difficult to delegate at the initial stage compared to sales itself. Therefore, owners usually attract a team of sales managers, which they can manage themselves, acting as a “field commander.”

2. Development of sales department standards (download the list of sales department standards at the end of the article)

An important step in organizing the work of the sales department is the development of standards. The entire work of the company depends on the correct formation of standards. Practice confirms that each sales department employee needs appropriate training in the basic rules of work. With sales department standards, employees can avoid confusion and confusion.

What should the company's sales department standards include:

• introduction of the manager to the company;
• information about the product and customers;
• information on how work with clients should be structured;
• how your company will reward the manager for doing the job and punish him for mistakes.

3. Search and attraction of employees

After determining the standards of sales departments, you should smoothly move on to searching for employees. The first thing to do is to draw up a portrait of the seller who, from your point of view, is ideal for the company. You need to determine whether you plan to rely on young workers full of excitement, or on professionals who have significant experience in your industry and have a perfect understanding of the market: they do not need to be trained, just provided with the tools for the job. Typically, managers and business owners prefer the second option. After all, you won’t need additional time and effort for training.

Pay attention to what kind of sales, “long” or “short”, the candidate can do. Let's look at two examples.

Example 1. Company “N” hired a manager who had previously worked for a large corporation in the sales systems market. The company had a fairly long sales cycle, but the responsibilities of managers were limited to consulting clients, maintaining contacts with them, and supporting transactions. This specialist, who was accepted into company N, faced serious discomfort - there were difficulties with “short” sales, when you need to achieve results in literally 1-2 conversations with the client. As a result, he was transferred to another non-sales position.

Example 2. In company "Z" trading floor a talented salesman worked. He was able to easily make a first impression, find a common language with the buyer, convincing them to buy a certain product, etc. Then he moved to a B2B company operating in the market wholesale sales. The manager was lost in this segment: he did not have enough patience to bring sales to completion. After all, he was used to acting quickly, but here a long process with serious preparatory work lay ahead. He was forced to leave this company.

To create a successful sales department, we recommend not taking into account the age and gender of candidates. Age and gender do not affect the ability to sell successfully. Of course, there are exceptions (for example, young people are better at selling youth clothing), but generally successful salesman skills depend on character, but not on age.

The candidate’s portrait must be drawn up taking into account a number of parameters:

• segment of the company’s work (b2b or b2c);
• what it sells;
• average deal size;
• duration of the sales cycle;
• functions of sellers, including the obligation to support concluded transactions, availability of business trips, etc.;
• what results the company should provide after a certain time.

16 atypical interview questions for candidates

Magazine " General manager» prepared the most non-standard questions for a candidate for a position in your company, with the help of which you can identify strengths and weaknesses his character. The best employees are selected in the same way at Google, IKEA and Microsoft.

1. Check the availability of loans. As a rule, the financial difficulties of employees eventually lead to worries for the manager. After all, the employee will be focused not on work, but on his life circumstances. Therefore, ask the applicant about his financial situation, whether he has loans, whether he rents an apartment or owns it, whether he is married or not. The fewer problems in a person’s life, the easier it will be for him to concentrate on work issues.

2. “Sell me a pen.” At the interview, first of all, you need to assess the ability to sell - it is important that the manager is sufficiently decisive, passionate, to a certain extent arrogant, and ready to play. If, in response to an offer to sell a pen, you hear: “Oh, you know, I can’t handle a pen, I’m used to selling expensive equipment,” this is a bad sign.

3. Train sales managers. It is important for good salespeople to be able to effectively present your company's products and interact well with customers.

4. Trainee Corps. A two-week program for employees to join the sales department works well: they work in the trainee corps. However, this principle differs from an internship, when an employee immediately begins to work. The employee will not only have to become familiar with the product, but also master sales technologies and perform various tasks. It’s better to talk about this right away during the interview.

5. Exchange of experience between sellers. To help your managers improve their skills, you can record their achievements on video, photos, audio, or in text format with a description of best practices. It is important that you stick to your best practices; there is often a strong desire to benefit from the experience of other organizations. But in practice it is much more effective to learn from own examples, because they fit the requirements and characteristics of your business.

• Interviewing a job seeker: 7 reliable methods of personnel selection

4. Control and management of the sales department

The key to a successful sales department is a control system. Control is necessary for even the most successful managers, but it should not be intrusive so that employees justify themselves. I am categorically against reports that are filled out just for the sake of formality. It is necessary to generate any reports automatically, which will contain the information actually necessary for work. Modern CRM systems allow you to effectively solve this problem.

Weekly monitoring instead of monthly. We summarize the results of individual sales, compare the results obtained, and make adjustments to plans every week within general meeting. When control, for example, is carried out once a month, employees are in a relaxed state during the first 2 weeks, expecting to “catch up” with normal indicators at the end of the reporting period.

Atmosphere of excitement. To keep the team engaged and excited, the director must provide control using game elements. Because it is difficult to expect to achieve ideal results with monotonous activities.

Cooperation within the team instead of competition. The negative effect of competition is to shift the focus from team results towards individual achievements. To prevent such a situation, our manager motivation system includes incentives for general and personal results.

The motivation system is the heart of the management and organization of the sales department. You must motivate employees to “deeds.” But in any case, it’s worth remembering: it’s not enough to dangle a big carrot for an employee to strive for it. A system for building a sales department is successful when favorable conditions are created in which the manager will be able to reach for this carrot by performing the actions for which he is trained.

Introducing the sales manager to the company

Ideally, training for sales managers is carried out within a month. The relevant standards must be recorded in the “Training Program” document. This document contains 4 parts. The first part of the document contains general materials that a beginner will have to study. The remaining parts of the document are devoted to the development of new products. The following information is included here:

1. Where to find basic materials about the product.
2. A list of recommended additional materials - for example, employee responses to real questions from clients.
3. List of classes and their duration.
4. Who is responsible for training employees on a specific product?
5. List of questions for certification - 20 questions for each company product.

Standards of communication with clients

First of all, you should determine the criteria by which you receive applications from clients and who can receive them. One of the sections in the standard for communication with clients “ General description execution of the process."

Describe in detail the actions when receiving telephone calls and non-telephone requests, distributing calls, requests by email. Actions during initial contact and the end of each conversation are also regulated. You can indicate in the document and script of the dialogue with the client: how to respond to objections, make presentations and “press” the conclusion of the deal.

• Customer service standards that sellers must comply with

General Director speaks

Natalya Kozlova, General Director of the company “Glavmosstroy-real estate”, Moscow

Usually the first time our clients contact us is by telephone, so I will pay special attention to this type of negotiation.

1. Greetings. The first call is received by a call center employee. Must use precise and concise greeting phrases. You should name the company (avoiding acronyms and abbreviations whenever possible) when greeting the caller, introducing yourself and finding out the reasons for the call.
2. Forwarding. Ask the caller to wait on the line for one minute. “One second - now I’ll connect you with a specialist on your issue.” The set of sentences may vary, but you should stick to short phrases that reflect the essence of your message.
3. Quick response. The response time deserves special attention: a call center employee must pick up the phone no later than one ring; in the sales department - no more than after 2 rings. There should not be more than two switches.
4. Transferring the client's call to the sales department. When switching, the call center employee must briefly outline the essence of the request to the sales department manager.
5. Greeting the client by the manager. The manager’s first phrase will sound like “Good afternoon, Sergey! My name is Olga. You are interested in a property in Yekaterinburg. What questions would you like to clarify?
6. Repeating the client's name and the manager's name. According to the rules of communication, the manager should address the client by name 6 times during the conversation - the interlocutor will have a feeling of trust.
7. Prohibition of denial. When speaking, you cannot use particles and words of negation - “not”, “no”.
8. Unification of information. It is necessary to unify the presentation of certain information (for example, in our case this is technical information, pricing, data on competitors), some information in the standards should be adjusted as the project changes - in particular, deadlines, as well as their dependence on certain events.
9. Ending the conversation. The standards should describe how an employee should complete a conversation depending on the desired result and further actions.

Standards of Practice customer base

The corresponding document called “Rules for filling out the client database” contains three parts:

1. Mandatory contact information (full name of the contact person, his phone number, also the phone number of the company he represents, city, email).
2. Mandatory information about the transaction (who initiated the contact - the client or the manager, the essence of each conversation or correspondence with the client, the amount of the transaction, what decision is required)
3. Desired data. For example, the following data:

• factors that can positively influence your client's decision;
• the reasons that prompted the client to contact the company. By analyzing the answers to this question, the company will be able to more accurately formulate its proposal;
• clarification - which additional services or the client does not have enough products to effectively solve his problems, which would be useful to supplement the offer for him;
• memorable dates to which communication with the client can be dated - birthdays of management, birthday of the company, etc.);
• a list of employees of the client company who can influence the decision on the transaction.

Motivation and punishment for non-compliance with standards

We recommend entering in KPI system for compliance with standards and pay bonuses for this. If standards are not met, managers should be punished, including by reducing bonuses, public reprimand, etc.

But it is worth remembering that not every deviation will be negative for the company. For example, management believes that managers should request additional customer information for marketing purposes. But workers ignore this requirement. The analysis of the conversation records made it possible to establish that sometimes such a question about additional information is not appropriate or the data received does not correspond to the goals. Therefore, in such a situation, you should clearly work out conversation scenarios for different groups clients.

How to implement sales department standards

1. Dose new norms. You should not try to specify everything at once in as much detail as possible. Experience confirms that standards still need to be improved after a certain time. When implementing standards, the root causes of failure should be analyzed.
2. Use visual aids. Cheat sheets should be included in the folder describing company standards.
3. Assign responsibility for monitoring standards. If the department head is responsible for sales processes, another employee should monitor deviations.
4. Determine the frequency of monitoring.

How to identify weaknesses in the sales department

In case of dissatisfaction with the work of the sales department, the existing causes of the problem should be identified. Managers take different approaches to identifying weaknesses in the performance of their salespeople. I will focus on the two most common and effective methods in practice - direct testing and certification.

Direct test

The basis of this method is the “mystery shopper” procedure. A specially trained person approaches the company under the guise of a buyer. Based on the results of such a check, he talks about the deficiencies found. The verification process itself, if the company has a large number of employees, can turn out to be quite lengthy - then employees may guess, and this will lead to ineffective verification. That's why this technique will bring effective results when checking only one or three company employees.

Certification

Certification has proven itself to be an effective solution for organizations with large sales teams. Sellers and sales department secretaries will have to pass an appropriate exam, which will assess their ability to interact with clients. To certify 5-15 sales employees, one to three days may be enough. These certifications will allow you to determine the theoretical and practical level of employees.

Why do managers perform poorly?

They allocate their money ineffectively working hours. For an effective sales department, the following indicators are assumed.

The sales manager’s working hours should be organized so that he can hold 8-12 meetings with customers (if he goes to them himself), while making arrangements by phone for the next meetings, preparing the necessary data and materials for communicating with the client. Although the typical average is three meetings per day, it is up to management to identify and eliminate wasted time.

Fundamental distribution of clients between managers. It is necessary to analyze the distribution of clients among the sellers of your company. When classifying clients, you should be guided by the following rules:

direction of activity;

geographical location.

One tool for different clients. Collaborated with an organization selling hand tools. Focused this company was to work with car services and industrial enterprises. Wrenches in the activities of car services were only consumables, but were very highly valued in the work manufacturing enterprises. Sellers were divided into two categories - those working with enterprises and car services. The company managed not only to identify specific needs and priorities different categories buyers, but also create an individual pricing policy.

Lack of evaluation criteria. Required condition effective management The sales department receives clear criteria for assessing the activities of this department. Including control of the number of items sold, monthly financial turnover, number of clients, etc.

Secondary benefits for sellers. Poor sales performance may be due to a reluctance to sell. Sometimes it is not profitable for sellers to do quality work. Since the employer, when the seller fulfills the plan for this month, can increase it by the next. This is just one possible example of a secondary benefit for sellers.

Sellers are not always interested in decisions that benefit their company. One company was facing some pretty serious sales problems. The management was unable to correct the situation - there were no clear conditions for product shipments and commercial offers. The sellers stated that this was due to the specifics of the market and it was impossible to correct the situation. But in reality, the whole situation was invented by two employees who lobbied for the interests of their customers.

Errors in the formulation of the final goal. The manager must have a clear goal - positive and measurable. When working with a vague goal (“sell”, “search”, etc.), you often cannot count on a special sales result. It is enough to make changes to the wording (“Sell”, “Find”) to significantly change the situation. Don't criticize employees for failure if they have to work with a non-final goal. There is also your shortcoming here.

• Motivation of sales managers: everything you need to know if you are a sales director

How to get managers to work at 100%

Organization of work. The work of your team must be organized so that employees devote 90% of their time to working with the client. All accompanying work (including letters, invoices, documents) can be carried out by less qualified personnel.

Employee competence. Some have a real talent for selling, others require training. To achieve the ideal effect, periodic training and training is required.

Motivation. Even with excellent knowledge and work skills, an employee will not be able to achieve the expected result without proper motivation.

Control of results. Activity control is one of the the most important parameters evaluating the work of your employees. Activities in many areas are monitored. The main criterion is whether the results achieved correspond to the plans and how working hours are planned. Everything else is usually additional parameters.

"IN modern world There's no business benefit to being a creative thinker if you can't sell what you create. Managers don't recognize good ideas, unless they are presented to them by a good salesperson.”

David Ogilvy

Process formation of a sales department from scratch - quite labor-intensive, requiring certain skills and knowledge.

You can create a sales department in different ways:

hire

good, experienced sellers, and sales will come on their own because they have the necessary skills and know how to sell. It will not be difficult for them to independently create all the necessary conditions for themselves;

take advantage professional services“turnkey”;

do all this work on one's own.

Let's look at what steps you need to take to create a sales department yourself.

To begin with, decide whatfinancial resources You have it. This includes the organization of the workplace, rental of premises, salary, communication services.. Then determine temporary resources - how long should the sales department be formed. Well then - human resources: you need to know how many managers a company can afford in financially and in terms of sales of goods sold.

Create regulations all sales processes, namely: attracting new customers, preparing commercial offers, interaction with the purchasing and accounting departments, as well as customer support. Regulations should work 80% of the time. Implement standards and norms daily work, as well as sales technologies.

Develop a personnel policy. That is, decide who will be relied on when selecting sales managers: young people or professionals with work experience. It is best to have a sales team of at least 5 people.

Sales department functions - what is meant here is not actions or processes, but the results that are required. Namely: increasing the number of large orders, expanding the customer base, building customer trust, creating the company’s image, professional and personal development of department employees.

Decide on control. It is simply necessary for everyone, even the most successful managers. But reports should be generated automatically.

Motivation system — material and intangible. It should help managers strive for new achievements.

Manager support by sales - monitor how they use all the necessary information in real sales.

The department structure is divided into sectors to perform different tasks:

Typical mistakes when forming a sales department are as follows:

You can't save money on personnel selection, otherwise you will recruit incompetent employees who are also poorly trained;

Don't offer low salary;

90% of managers do not know how to handle objections, the main thing for them is to impose the product on the buyer and get maximum salary, therefore they are not able to adequately represent your company;

Sales specialists should not be competitors, but partners;

Don't forget that even the most successful and talented salespeople need rest, but if they recycle, then it’s worth the reward.

P.S. For any business, no sales - no future. That's why it is necessary to very clearly build a sales system in the company. To avoid making mistakes and increase your profits, take part in Test drive of the program integrated development for small and medium-sized businesses Business Coaching. The result is guaranteed.

Any business that does not have a sales department is at great risk of going bankrupt, because without a well-functioning sales department there is nothing to do in a 21st century business. Competition, quality of service, quality of goods is growing every day, and those who sell more successfully conquer markets, while others also successfully leave them.

Over the past 2 years, we have seen a very sad picture - hundreds of thousands of companies across Russia are closing because they are experiencing financial difficulties. If we look at them internal organization, then in most companies we will see that they did not have a well-functioning marketing or sales department, because the managers were confident that " word of mouth“This is the best sales channel and it will allow you to pull a company through a crisis. But the reality is completely different: the sundress no longer works as effectively as it did 10-15 years ago, because the number of companies and competition have grown hundreds of times and the client chooses those companies that stand out from others. Without competent marketing and sales department, this can no longer be achieved. By the way, in the picture above you can see the main basic things that are necessary for success. marketing strategy.

11 main mistakes when building a sales department

• You are not searching for and hiring new sales managers. The sales department is the most dynamic department with the most frequently changing personnel. In this regard, if you do not constantly search and expand your sales department, then sooner or later you will be left without a sales department, which will lead to the loss of the company. Advice: if 3 employees are profitable, then start scaling and recruit 3 more new employees. This will keep the sales department on its toes, because existing managers will feel the competition and will work even more efficiently.
• You don't have scripts for the sales department. You believe that managers themselves will develop their own effective scripts, which they will apply in practice. You do not identify the features of the scripts of the most effective managers. As a result, this will lead to the fact that the most effective ones will sell more and will feel that your business depends on them, and therefore they will dictate terms to you. Also, the lack of proven scripts will not allow you to effectively expand your sales department, since there will be no training system for new managers. If effective managers leave you, then you will not be able to quickly train new recruits. Sales scripts are a distillation of the best techniques that allow you to work effectively with your clients.
• No sales plan. Every manager must clearly understand how much he should sell. The sales plan must be feasible, otherwise managers will lose incentive.
• No plan for the day. If you don't set a plan for the day, most managers will commit minimum quantity new contacts, which will lead to their ineffectiveness. In most business segments, the minimum manager call plan per day is 40. If your managers make fewer new contacts, then sales effectiveness will be minimal. It is worth noting that this does not depend on the manager’s skills, because even a beginner, making a given number of calls, will be able to fulfill the plan in a month. If a manager does not make a plan for the day, then he will not receive a salary.
• The seller has extra responsibilities other than sales. If you distract a sales manager with other tasks, then he will do everything except sales. Do not combine purchasing and sales departments under any circumstances.
• The sales manager accompanies the client after concluding an agreement with him. This is one of the most common mistakes that managers make when, instead of selling, the manager continues to accompany clients and receives a percentage of each transaction for this. This should not happen in the right sales department. You should separate the sales department and the support department. The sales department manager receives interest only on the first transaction; the remaining contracts with the current client must be concluded by the support department managers. Otherwise, the sales manager will work with 10-20 of his existing clients and will not bring in new ones. The sales department's job is to work with new clients.
• Payment of salaries and bonuses even if the sales plan is not met. Very often, managers believe that if the manager is paid the entire salary with bonuses, even if the manager did not cope with the plan, then he will work more efficiently next month. No. This won't happen. The manager will work the same or even worse, because he will understand that he will still be paid a good salary and bonuses.
• Large salary and small interest on the transaction. Never tie a manager's salary to a high salary, otherwise you will deprive him of motivation. Motivation is exactly what allows a manager to be stimulated. If a manager receives a large salary and small percentages, then he has no incentive to sell more. You can make a higher salary for the first two months (subject to fulfillment of daily plans) and a smaller percentage of the transaction, and in the 3rd month transfer to a standard salary +% of transactions, because in 3 months the manager will be able to gain the necessary experience and close the required number of transactions.
• Non-transparent system for calculating bonuses and interest. It often happens that a company has developed a calculator that allows a manager to calculate his salary independently. This calculator is often opaque and illogical. I remember a case when a manager came to us and told us that at my previous job, the more I had to work, the lower the salary. Also, the salary was reduced if the working day fell on the last day of the month, and therefore none of the sales people wanted to go out on that day. Management also could not explain the logic behind salary calculation.
• Lack of training and mentoring in the sales department. If you haven't developed a system of training and mentoring, then new sales employees will be ineffective. Managers often assume that managers will train themselves and will sell effectively.
• It takes a long time to fire ineffective managers. Very often, heads of companies or sales departments expect miracles from newcomers or existing “burnt out” managers who do not fulfill the plan and, often, do not even pay for themselves. This is a very big mistake, because if a manager does not pay for himself within 2 months, then he should be fired without hesitation, because in the end such managers disorganize more productive employees and bring losses to the company. Also, if a manager after employment does not show the necessary indicators even in the 3rd month after being hired, then this is also a reason to think about his qualifications.

Sales department plan

Having a plan in the sales department significantly increases sales and also allows you to monitor the effectiveness of managers. What is the reason for this, since each manager is personally interested in his effectiveness, because he receives a percentage of sales? Unfortunately, if a manager does not understand how much he needs to sell, he will sell less. Only a few managers exceed the “plan”.

How to set a realistic sales plan?

• Based on business needs (business plan). You must make up detailed business plan, which reflects all costs, which will allow you to clearly understand how many goods or services need to be sold in order to start earning money. Unfortunately, very often managers do not know the company's costs and estimate only the gross profit, thinking that this is enough. But gross profit is "dirty" money that has nothing to do with the company's profit.
• Once you have your sales team up and running and are profitable, you can evaluate your best salespeople and set a more realistic plan. You shouldn’t set a plan based on indicators best managers, because in every company there are always stars and outsiders. It is recommended that the plan be approximately 50%-70% of the best sales figures.

What difficulties did you encounter when forming a sales department? How do you formulate a plan? Write in the comments.

In this article we will look at how to organize a sales department from scratch. There are many important points, on which it depends whether your sales people will move your business up, or vice versa - drag it down.

• Why do 90% of small businesses never set up a sales department?
• 3 Worst Ways to Organize a Sales Department
• The second stage of building a sales department

Where to start building a sales department?

The first thing you need to have on hand are numbers. You need a sales plan before you even start doing any recruiting activities.

The sales plan is how much money you want to earn, how many transactions you need to make in a month for this, and how many sales managers you will need for this.

Business leaders often have the dangerous illusion in their heads that they can start small and that they don’t have to hire a bunch of salespeople right away. Like, at first we will take only one manager, and we ourselves will sell together with him, and this will be enough for us for now. And then, when we get going, we can build a full-fledged department.

In fact, this should never be done. Now I will give you some numbers and you will understand why.

Why is it necessary to hire 4-5 managers?

Firstly, sales managers have the highest turnover in the market. If you hire only one salesperson, then after a week you will have to hire another one. And then another one. As a result, you will spend all your time interviewing and training managers instead of selling.

Secondly, one sales manager cannot give you anything. Today there are such statistics on the effectiveness of a sales manager.

• You need to make about 20 cold calls to schedule 2-3 meetings.
• In one day, one salesperson can make no more than 3 full meetings
• 30% of scheduled meetings fail for one reason or another
• Only 30% of meetings will result in a deal

And this is all provided that you are selling relatively inexpensive goods or services. If you have something large and expensive, the cycle of one transaction can last for several months. Thus, one sales manager (even if you are lucky to find a smart and hard-working one) will be able to close approximately one deal per week. Most likely this won't bother you.

In addition, he will not take one trade per week. If you have only one sales manager, then he does not feel any competition. There is nothing to be afraid of, because he is the only one. They spent time on him, trained him, and they are afraid of losing him. Accordingly, he feels like the master of the situation.

This is another argument in favor of the fact that you need to immediately organize a real sales department, and not limit yourself to half measures. And if the thought of a real and full-fledged sales department now scares you, then you’re not alone.

Why do 90% of small businesses never set up a sales department?

I have many familiar married couples who have been living without children for 5 - 10 - 15 years. Their health is fine, and even their financial situation is better than many others. But nevertheless, they cannot decide to have children.

And there is only one reason for this, in my opinion: they don’t trust each other, and they don’t trust themselves. Having children is a very big responsibility. Here you should already be 100% confident in your partner and in the reliability of your family. But they don’t have that confidence. Accordingly, they prefer to “sit on suitcases” all their lives. Like, if anything happens, I’ll just leave, and there’ll be no problems.

It's the same with small businesses. Often a business owner lacks confidence that his business is truly reliable. It is especially difficult if he manages everything alone, without partners. In this case, he also acts as a “single mother” if he decides to have employees.

But here's my opinion. A family without children is not a family. A business without employees is not a business. The problem is that sales managers are very “difficult teenagers.” You have to be tough with them. But many leaders are not ready for this. Very often they themselves are not salespeople, but product specialists (manufacturers). And everything related to commerce is alien and incomprehensible to them.

This is where the heap of problems arises when they hired employees for the sales department, assigned them a salary 10 times higher than required, but they still do nothing. And then they also go to competitors along with your client base.

To prevent this from happening, you need to hire at least five (!) sales managers at once. And don’t be afraid that you won’t be able to raise the salary for all five of you at once.

Why shouldn't you be afraid that you won't succeed?

If you already have your own business, then you know that you must officially “register” an employee within a week of starting work. And you must give him the first payment only in a month.

So, by the end of the first week you will have no more than three employees left. And by the end of the first month, you will most likely need to carry out another additional recruitment in order to retain at least three. This is the reality, most managers will never have to pay you.

Therefore, please do not hope that one golden manager will come and make everything right for you right away. Most likely, he will do everything bad for you, and you will have to deal with it for a long time.

Let's look at the options for how and where you can find a sales manager. To get you started, here are the three worst ways to hire sales managers.

3 Worst Ways to Organize a Sales Department

#1 – Look for “good” sellers

Often business owners decide that they will find some particularly good sellers. Like, let us pay them more than the market average, but they will do really high-quality work and will bring us a hundred times more money than we spend on them.

Not a bad plan. but unreal. Because “good” sales managers do not exist in nature. In any case, you will have to deal not with “suitable” candidates, but with the least “unsuitable” ones. That is, none of the applicants will be suitable for work in your company. And it will be your task to make a real team out of them.

#2 - Poach managers from competitors

Perhaps the idea of ​​luring sellers from your competitors will come to your mind. In fact, why look for and train someone from scratch if you can just hire ready-made professionals who already know how to do everything. and who know our market? All that remains is to offer them a higher salary.

But this is also a wrong strategy. A true professional, who is doing well at work, will never exchange his golden place for something else. He knows everything there, he already has an established client base from which he feeds well. And you still don’t know what will happen.

If one of your competitor’s sellers agrees to “defect” with you, then most likely it will not be the best professional. And he will probably ditch you in the same way at the first opportunity as he did with his previous employer. We don't need such employees.

#3 – Ask a recruitment agency for help

The next mistake that business owners often make is “delegating” the hiring of employees to various recruitment agencies. Why waste time and nerves yourself if there are specially trained people with knowledge bases who can quickly select ten of the most suitable candidates for us.

But firstly, as we have already said, there are no suitable ones in principle. And secondly, the recruitment agency has its own interests. They want to force you to pay as high an employee salary as possible. Simply because their earnings directly depend on how much you pay the person they found.

Therefore, they will do their best to force you to set your salary higher, and threaten that otherwise they will never be able to find anyone for you, and that people simply will not take such a low-paid job.

And even if you set a high salary, then recruitment agency will offer you only one or two people. And we have already figured out above why you should never hire only one sales person.

Thus, our only option for organizing a sales department is to hire salespeople from scratch, from the free market. That is, we must recruit candidates ourselves, organize a competition, and then train those who remain. Only in this case will you have a real sales team. And this will be the second stage of building a sales department.

Any rapidly growing company, sooner or later, is faced with the fact that one or two managers are not enough to ensure a high level of sales. Then managers think about organizing a sales department. Read our article about how to create a division, the stages of building it from scratch and what functions it will perform.

How to organize a sales department from scratch

Create a sales department from scratch – the task is quite difficult, requiring time, financial costs, certain knowledge and organizational skills.

Of course, the relevant specialists can be “puzzled” by building a sales department – marketers or heads of sales departments with many years of experience who know exactly what “rules” the work of this department in the company is based on.

But is it possible for a manager to “create” a sales department from scratch on his own? Experts answer this question with an unequivocal “Yes!” But the construction of the sales department will be correct, and the work of the division will subsequently – effective, only on the condition that when solving this problem, the manager adheres to the correct strategy, goes through all the stages of creating an effective sales department, and correctly calculates the resources spent.

At the planning stage of creating a sales department from scratch, the manager must complete a number of basic tasks:

1. Formulate the goals of creating a future sales department;
2. Think over the structure of the sales department, work out the issue of hiring employees;
3. Determine the amount of financial resources that the company has at its disposal to create a sales department;
4. Regulate all processes in the activities of the sales department;
5. Determine the timing of the creation of a new unit;
6. Automate the work of the sales department using special services and programs.

But the most important thing in this regard – it's goal setting. That is, the manager should know what his ideal “sales department” should be like?

Here is an approximate list of requirements that are “presented” to a well-functioning sales department:

• All sales managers work equally effectively;
• The sales plan (for a week, a month, a year) is always fulfilled;
• The work of each employee for any period of the sales department can be easily assessed, that is, you can find out how many calls were made, how much the client base has expanded, and a report for each day of work “falls” on the desk of the head of the sales department;
• The level of interaction between other employees and departments with the sales department remains stable high level, the success of sales as a whole depends on working “in complex”;
• Correct working structure of the sales department. We are talking about both the correct distribution of sales stages between sales managers and interaction with clients, and about the structure within the department itself, in which tasks and functionality are clearly delineated;
• Sales of goods or services in the department are carried out stably and continuously.

This is just an approximate list of the main tasks that a manager sets for himself, which can be supplemented. In general, in many areas of business, the sales department is a division consisting of several sales managers, led by one person.

With the program for automating the work of the Business.Ru store, you can easily set plans for your subordinates and track the percentage of their completion. The motivation system will become transparent and the seller will be able to understand for himself how much he earned and for what.

Stages of building an effective sales department

Having set priorities and determined the main goals for which the sales department is being created, the head of the company or the person in charge can begin the phased implementation of this idea.

Working out the structure of the future sales department

As a rule, the sales department is built on a three-level system – this “model” of the unit’s functioning is the most optimal. These levels are based on the levels of interaction with clients:

• First level – level at which the search is carried out potential clients. This could be collecting information about city companies based on general databases, or “generating” clients from the site after they register or order a “call back”;
• The second level within the three-level sales department organization system – this is the main level at which the “processing” of potential clients is carried out, all of whose data is received by managers from the first level. Make “cold” or “warm” calls to potential buyers;
• The third level of the three-level system of the “average” sales department – These are employees who work with regular customers. All customer data is transferred to managers immediately after the first sale.

Experts recognize that the structured work of the sales department at these three levels is optimal, the costs required when building such a system are minimal, and the speed of organizing the work will be maximum.

Determining the size of financial investments

Of course, creating a new division “from scratch” will require additional costs: both one-time and monthly. One-time costs include the costs of organizing employee workplaces, including personal computers, the Internet, and telephony.

Monthly costs include renting the premises in which the sales department will work, wages each department employee, subscription fee for Internet, PBX.

According to the most rough estimates, creating a sales department per employee will cost the company between 400 and 500 thousand rubles. Payback of these costs – The issue is controversial and it depends on how effectively each newly hired sales manager will work.

How to build a sales department from scratch? Video

Regulation of all work processes of the sales department

A truly important task in creating a sales department is the regulation of all work processes, that is, the establishment of rules by which the work of the entire department will be carried out. This is necessary so that the sales process is not chaotic, where each sales manager works with clients as he pleases, records are not kept, and the areas of responsibility of each employee are not delimited.

All rules for the work of the sales department must be described in the basic regulations. These include:

• Rules for working with new clients;
• Rules for working with regular clients;
• Rules for maintaining the company's client base;
• Clarification of the boundaries of responsibility of each employee of the company, as well as the rules collaboration managers and executives;
• Rules for working in CRM programs, creating reports, maintaining statistics, etc.

All these documents should not be “theoretical”; they should be the most useful and practically applicable rules (constantly supplemented), a living and detailed description of the work of each employee at all stages. But, at the same time, all regulations for the work of the sales department should be as clear and concise as possible.

An individual approach to employees will help you find a service to automate the work of a Business.Ru store. Enter a personal daily routine for each employee, check the to-do list of your subordinates and, if necessary, adjust it.

Search for sales managers

This task is truly not easy, since it is difficult to select real professionals to work in the sales department today. Try to look for sales managers with at least minimal experience, and after the employees are hired, train them, conduct trainings, exams, try to get employees to practice more.

Another main task when organizing the work of a sales department “from scratch” – This is the appointment of a department head. They, of course, should also be either a company employee or an externally hired specialist with extensive experience in a similar position.

At the initial stages of creating and forming a sales department, the manager can work with key clients, his tasks will also include the formation of regulations, the creation of sales scripts, automation of the work of the sales department, the formation of a client base, etc.

Automation of the sales department

Next important stage in building an effective sales department – this is the automation of business processes and, first of all, we are talking about CRM systems – customer relationship management systems.

Within the framework of these programs, all business processes of the company are supported, including the collection, storage and analysis of all information about the company’s clients, databases, etc. But the most important function that CRM programs perform – This is a system for monitoring the work of sales managers.

All reports in such systems are generated automatically based on the data entered by each employee during the work process. Using a CRM program, the head of the sales department can track the work of each department employee online, know at what stage negotiations with clients are or at what stage – sales.

In addition, the manager receives an analysis of sales and profits and can evaluate the performance of each manager, the implementation of the plan, etc.

Each company can independently select a suitable CRM program or program for automating business processes, especially since today there are a great variety of them – at different prices and with different functionality.

Users have long appreciated the convenience, functionality and simplicity of the online service for automating work.

IN this service There is a built-in CRM system that allows you to manage relationships with clients, conduct productive work with leads, control mutual settlements, and also increase the efficiency of sales managers.

In the online service “Business.Ru”, the entire history of interaction with clients is stored in a special database; employees and the head of the company receive an automatic notification about a change in the status of an order; There are such features as “Tasks”, “Appeals”, “Knowledge Base”, multi-tasking calendar, built-in IP telephony, as well as the ability to send SMS and e-mail through your own email client.

The sales department of any modern company will be able to “possess” all this convenient functionality in the most short time. Anyone can try the online service “Business.ru” and evaluate all its capabilities now using a free plan, which will be available to the user for two weeks.