What knowledge do you need to be a sales manager?

If you have more contact with enterprises, especially private enterprises, you will find several very common situations. First, many enterprises have been operating for more than ten years, but their sales are only tens of thousands or tens of millions. , the company always fails to grow; secondly, the marketing managers (some are general managers, some are not general managers) are very busy and tired, and the business cannot be done without them; thirdly, some people think that only they can do it, and they are a big hero, but they are not They believe that their subordinates or salespeople can get the orders back; fourth, some managers always feel that they have low education, no culture, and that they are not good enough. Since the quality of marketing performance determines the life, death and development of an enterprise, it can be said that the working, behavioral and decision-making methods of our marketing managers play a key role in the development of the enterprise. The way of working, behavior and decision-making depend on managers’ understanding and grasp of their own roles.

Marketing managers must understand their role. Modern marketing managers have the following three major roles.

1. Don’t do it yourself, but organize everyone to do it

Dongguan Electrical and Mechanical Co., Ltd. is a professional company specializing in the production and sales of high and low voltage power distribution control equipment. It was established in 1990. In the mid-1990s, the company currently has more than 30 employees and 3 sales staff. The market area is mainly in the Pan-Pearl River Delta. The customers are mainly real estate, new factories, installation companies, water and electricity companies, and power supply companies. The sales method is to use the relationship between the boss and The company has never trained marketing personnel on sales promotion. In 2003, the annual sales volume was 15 million yuan.

A company in Huizhou is a company established in the mid-1990s that specializes in the production and sales of stage lighting. It mainly sells for export. The company has been committed to sales in the domestic market for many years. There is one vice president of marketing and two clerks in the domestic market. The company's main business is carried out by two general managers and vice presidents of marketing. Both the general manager and the vice president of marketing are good at doing business. But so far, in the domestic market, Sales are only a few million yuan.

A high-tech company in Beijing is a supplier of highway, telecommunications and other toll collection systems. The company's vice president of marketing says he is very busy and tired every time he communicates with the author. The author asked him why, and he said that his annual personal performance exceeds 100 million yuan. Because of his good quality and high cultural level, most of his customers get their orders back through him. He said that customers all want to see him and are willing to communicate with him. He said that because the people in this industry who come into contact are directors, division directors, and CEOs, and the customer level is very high, he cannot handle other personnel. I asked him again if the company's performance could be better. He said it was absolutely possible, but due to lack of time and limited energy, he could only do this.

From the above three cases, we see that marketing managers (general managers) work very hard and are good at using relationships. The company is mainly supported by their personal performance. However, unfortunately The performance achieved by the first two companies after many years of hard work is hard to praise. In the past ten years, the performance has been several million yuan, up to more than 10 million yuan. Can the performance of the third company be even greater? The fundamental problem they have is that marketing managers position their roles as big salesmen. They tend to go to the front line, face customers directly, get orders back and do it themselves. It can be said that a very important reason why enterprises cannot grow big and industrialize on a large scale is that these managers made a fatal mistake, that is, they have an organization but do not use the organization. They stand in the position of the organizer and Without organization, we have been using the power of individuals rather than the power of the organization.

While we applaud these individual managers for bringing huge business to the company, we do find that they have also delayed the company, may have restricted and affected the company's development, and have become the sinners of the company. Because the market is infinite, but their time, energy and abilities are limited, the company's performance and performance can only stay within the limited scope of the managers' personal time, energy and abilities. Let’s imagine here, if these managers actually organize, direct, and lead a group of people to do business, even if this group of people is not as good as him, but a group of people are doing the market, what will be the result? It used to be done by one person, but now it is done by 500 people. With 500 people working against one person, it is entirely possible for the performance to grow exponentially.

Therefore, one of the roles of modern marketing managers is not to do it themselves, but to organize everyone to do it, recruiting, training, managing, and directing, and achieving greater success in the market through a team.

Organizing everyone and utilizing the power of the organization is the only way to grow the market and the enterprise!

2. Not only can you do it yourself, but you should also guide others to do it

The marketing director of a company in Shenzhen manages more than 270 salesmen, among whom they are in charge of sales in various markets. There are nine ministers. One day, the marketing director told the author that he had a very distressing problem, that is, his subordinates rarely called him. Because he needs to understand the market conditions and feel at ease, he hopes that his subordinates will ask for more instructions and reports on the situation. At the beginning, he often called his subordinates to inquire about the situation. He hit more and his subordinates hit less. It was okay at first, but later he felt that he was losing face and felt uncomfortable if he kept doing this. He also really wanted his subordinates to call more, but It’s hard to speak directly or even give orders. The director said that these professional managers were not professional at all and he didn’t know what to do? The author asked the director whether his subordinates knew they should call you but deliberately did not call you, or did they not know they should call you? Is it possible: In fact, subordinates are also very willing to maintain good communication with their superiors, but they don’t know that you are afraid and worried that you do not understand the progress of market work and what is happening. The subordinates do not know that they should ask for more instructions and reports. . The author said that due to the short development history of China's market economy, Chinese professional managers have not yet formed, or in other words, what we call professional managers now do not fully understand what a professional manager's words and deeds should look like. At the author's suggestion, the director organized a professional manager training. Later, the director gratefully told me that his subordinates had completely changed. It turned out that it was not that his subordinates were unprofessional, but that they did not know what to do.

Ruidefeng is a professional supplier of compound pesticides. In the past, the management of sales personnel in the market was very rough and rough. Later, the company formulated the "80 Implementation Rules for Sales Personnel to Visit Customers". In the "80 Articles", clear regulations are formulated for business personnel to find stores, enter the store, leave the store, customer visits, deliver goods to the counter, store publicity, information feedback and daily work, requiring business personnel to follow the "80 Articles" Standardize words and deeds and carry out work. For example, there are 10 things to do when entering a store: first say hello; second, introduce yourself, give business cards, and give small gifts; third, find topics to communicate with the other party; fourth, visit retail stores to understand the size of the store; fifth, recommend new varieties; sixth, ..., since 2000, sales of tens of millions of yuan have been achieved in the Pearl River Delta market alone every year, placing Ruidefeng at the top of the industry.

EBO watch ranked tenth in the watch industry three years ago. In the past two years, EBO watch has implemented consultative marketing, that is, when customers purchase products, it guides customers to consume and introduces the company and other competing products in detail. Advantages and disadvantages, help customers clarify their needs, enable customers to make their own choices based on a comprehensive understanding of the product, completely changing the past sales model and method that was mainly based on sales promotion. But what to do when faced with a marketing team of more than 500 people? Since 2002, EBO Watch has worked with marketing experts to formulate the "Everbright EBO Specialty Salesperson Work Manual", which covers the salesperson's work attitude, skills, knowledge, appearance and clothing, body language, civilized language and psychological quality, etc. Once it was clear, the sales staff were drilled and trained in batches until they were well mastered, making EBO watch the industry leader.

Speaking of Huawei, everyone knows it, but when it comes to the "Excellent Account Manager Model" formulated by Huawei in 1999, I am afraid that not many non-Huawei employees know about it. Open the "Excellent Account Manager Model" and read it carefully. You will immediately understand what you should do as a salesperson in Huawei and what you should do to become an excellent account manager in Huawei. This model provides a comprehensive and systematic interpretation of sales staff mission, marketing department culture, roles and work, assessment and evaluation, life, quality, necessary knowledge, behavioral norms and professional ethics, skills and performance, career pathways, development and innovation. Once a salesperson has the "Excellent Account Manager Model", he will have a direction and a benchmark, and he will follow the model, take less detours, and no longer "cross the river by feeling for the stones", and the company will also avoid Because too many people have increased time costs and opportunity costs due to confused exploration, companies no longer rely on the merits of personal qualities to achieve unguaranteed performance.

Looking at the companies around us, there is a fatal situation that too many companies only provide simple training on product knowledge and onboarding after recruiting salesmen, and some have no training at all. Just send salesmen to the front lines of the market.

Some salesmen learn from veteran salesmen, and some rely on their own exploration. As a result, the market performance and performance of salesmen with high quality are not bad, but most of them are unsatisfactory. Some are quickly eliminated, and some find that "they can't do it." , inappropriate” and chose to leave. Often marketing managers think that sales people know what to do, but in fact, it’s not that sales people don’t want to do it or do it well, but they really don’t know how to do it. This is the current situation!

Many marketing managers spend too much time playing a game: recruiting people - letting you do it - watching you do it - discovering that you can't do it - not letting you do it - Recruit new people - let new people do it again... and keep playing.

The author’s emotion over the past 18 years is: The people who are most grateful to me are those who think they can learn from me and grow - it turns out that our subordinates are so eager for our guidance and help!

In China, the prerequisite for becoming an excellent marketing manager is: becoming a qualified and excellent mentor!

Guidance leads to sales!

3. Not to be a hero, but to be a system builder

A company in Guangdong has been engaged in the production and sales of veneer panels for more than 10 years. It began to cooperate with foreign-funded enterprises to master the Various technologies for the production of similar products were later separated from foreign investment. In the past few years, there were not many peers, and the company made a lot of money. The general manager of this company is a woman and has not graduated from high school. In recent years, as market competition has intensified, the company has hired an external general manager. Everyone thinks that the general manager has strong abilities, but his communication method with the middle and senior management is not recognized, and he left the company after less than a year of working. In 2000 and 2001, annual sales exceeded 100 million yuan. In 2002 and 2003, sales dropped for two consecutive years and profits fell sharply, making it unprofitable. There are 8 marketing staff, including 2 managers who have worked in the company for more than 5 years and have good performance. The other staff are highly mobile and unstable. The basic salary of salesmen is low and they mainly rely on commission. Expenses are basically included in the commission, and companies rarely provide training. Salesmen rarely visit customers and mainly follow orders at home. The company's business is mainly from old customers in the past. In many contacts with the author, this general manager always believed that the main reason was that he had low academic qualifications and did not understand management. Although he had participated in some training, he still believed that the company could not do it and hoped to find a professional general manager to manage the company.

This general manager drives a BMW, lives in a villa, and is worth over ten million yuan. Why does he keep saying "I can't do it"? Could it be that the general manager is pretending to be modest? The author found that this phenomenon is very common.

Why is this happening?

At the beginning of China's reform and opening up, the market was under non-competitive conditions, and most individuals and companies made money through relationships or opportunities. The main responsibility of marketing managers was to look for relationships or opportunities;

With China's entry into the WTO and the intensification of market competition, many industries are already under conditions of perfect competition. Companies already rely on systems to make money, and the main responsibility of marketing managers is to build systems. The system built by managers must have a stable source of business. This system must make money. This system can enable the enterprise to operate automatically like an assembly line. This system can maintain the stability and development balance of the enterprise.

The reason why many managers say "I can't do it" is that they actually don't understand that it's not that they are incompetent, but that the system they built is not good, or that the system has not been built at all. When enterprise systems are not built, managers will find problems everywhere. We must deeply realize that an enterprise is not supported by one person, but by the entire system. When the system is not built, managers will appear to be severely lacking in time, energy and ability, and may even be extremely tired - feeling miserable inside. It is not difficult to find that the system of the above Guangdong company has not been built. For sales to major customers, the company has not established a clear business model, and has not yet formed the ability and blood-forming function to develop the market on its own; the marketing team's capabilities, training, salary, Incentives, goal management and assessment are fragmented and unsystematic. Faced with declining performance and profits, and facing strong market competition pressure, the general manager tried his best to find that it was to no avail, and finally found an answer: "I can't do it."

As managers, we must clearly realize that the excellence of an enterprise is not the excellence of the managers individually, but the excellence of the systems they build; it is precisely because the systems built by managers are excellent that we say managers are The individual is excellent.

We say that Ren Zhengfei, Zhang Ruimin, and Liu Chuanzhi are outstanding. The deeper meaning behind this is that the system they built is outstanding.

Under the conditions of perfect competition, the competition between enterprises is ultimately the competition between enterprise systems. As a marketing manager, the important role is to build the system and the system wins!