Managing vendors and proposal writers has been described as a kind of cat herding. That seems a bit unfair to the cats, frankly. Cats can’t help themselves. Salespeople and proposal writers, on the other hand, choose not to hold management to the level of infallibility that management would like.

However, management and sales representatives can work together to improve sales. And, when they’re not working together, management can at least choose methods that do as little damage as possible to the already fragile egos of salespeople and proposal writers. Here are some tricks I recommend.

Trick #1: Follow Up

When a salesperson returns from visiting a prospect, the sales manager should send a handwritten letter, or at least an email, to the prospect to thank them for the courtesy shown to the sales rep. It doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it can be the same every time:

“Dear Sam-

Dave asked us to thank him for the courtesy he showed him when he visited about…”

Of course, the salesperson should do their own follow up, but it should be about the prospect and what they need. This is designed to simply be a friendly note to say thank you. And that simplicity is the key.

First, by thanking the prospect for his courtesy, the prospect sees himself as a courteous person. This is not only flattering, but the prospect will now act consistently with that label. You lead the way for the materials that follow. To do otherwise would be inconsistent.

Second, and more importantly, by emphasizing courtesy, you mean that it is a quality that you value. It also indicates that your company is made up of humans who appreciate decency and are easy to work with. All of those things help the prospect trust you more.

Third, there is an additional effect. The prospect who was courteous to the salesperson likes to know that they have been recognized and worth enough to mention to a sales manager. This generates a report, and the prospect will be even happier to see the salesperson the next time they return.

What if the prospect wasn’t courteous? That is why it must be handwritten and come from the sales manager. If it’s coming from the salesperson, it sounds passive aggressive. If it’s an email, it’s all too easy to return a sarcastic reply. But if the sales manager says so in the letter, and this is a prospect you really want to do business with, then the rude prospect will be stuck admitting the mistake in his dealings with the salesperson. Chances are good that the next time the salesperson calls the prospect, the prospect will go out of his way to prove that he is a good person.

Trick #2: The Tickle

Most customer relationship management software includes or supports reminders, little reminders that a customer or prospect should be contacted. But ticklers are also useful for sales managers, not just salespeople.

If the sales manager is receiving reminders, then the manager can go to the salesperson and politely request a report. If, as usual, the salesperson doesn’t have a report to make because he ignored his own prompt system, then the sales manager can configure the system to remind him again the next day. When the next day comes, the manager comes out to get a report politely. This procedure continues until the salesperson realizes that it’s easier to just call the prospect than it is to look across his desk at his manager every evening, trying to come up with a new set of excuses.

Trick #3: The Ego Protector

It’s no secret that the egos of salespeople and proposal writers are tricky things. Not only the ego, but also the always fragile relationship between the manager and the salesperson can be damaged by a negative email about some trivial little detail the salesperson missed on a Miller Heiman blue sheet or other report. The deflating morale and resentment it produces along with receiving a critical email undermines all your desire to sell. It can cost the company hundreds or thousands of times what it would have been worth to fill out the blue sheet correctly. Despite this, I see managers continue to send these kinds of emails day after day, even at supposedly enlightened firms.

But, these managers argue, salespeople must fill out the blue sheets correctly, or else the rest of the organization can’t do their job.

That’s true as far as it goes, so this is the approach I recommend, for example, when salespeople are required to fill out specific forms about the customer, their needs, their pain points, etc.

The blue sheets themselves are easy enough for the salesperson to understand as they have been trained in Strategic Selling. So the salesperson knows whether or not his Blue Sheet gives him the information he needs.

Although it is possible for the manager to send a condescending email every time the Blue Sheet is filled out superficially, it is not a good idea. It’s too easy to damage the relationship with the seller, damage the company through decreased sales, etc.

Instead, the manager should simply return a copy of the poor blue sheet with a small star next to the questionable part. It is a symbol, which the seller immediately recognizes, that more depth or more information is required. If the next version of the Blue Sheet doesn’t fix the problem, a copy is returned, this time with a question mark next to the star. If a third point is needed, an exclamation point can be added and added and added, until there is a series of exclamation points for as many iterations of the blue sheet as the vendor requires before he tires of the game and fills out the form . form correctly.

A salesperson can leave because he feels mistreated by the manager, but he can’t leave because you put too many exclamation points on his blue sheet. However, he knows that he was careless and he knows that the manager knows it. The end result is much more effective than a nasty email.

Trick #4: Customer Eggs

One of the most important roles a sales manager can play, but is rarely done, is making sure the business has a variety of customer types. Just as he shouldn’t put all his eggs in one basket, he shouldn’t base all of his income on one sector. If he sold only to real estate companies in the early 2000s, his company went down the drain as fast as real estate agents did. More recently, if your client was just working-class people, the long recession left you in as bad a shape as they did. A “one client type” business is just as risky as a retirement plan that only holds shares in one company.

Instead, your sales manager needs to check your customers by their industries, and going a step further, you need to check if those industries are correlated. If your clients are in software and construction, you are safe. If they’re in real estate and construction, you’re asking for trouble. Try to keep some elasticity with your products and your sales force, so that if one area starts to take a hit, you can seamlessly switch to another.

Bonus Tip: Competencies Are Not Always What You Want

As a final trick, consider the question of whether to run sales contests. In this case, the trick is not what to do or not to do, but what to consider. The problem here is that if you offer prizes to the best sellers or proposal writers for a particular month, you may end up doing more harm than good. Not losers, as one might expect, but winners.

There is no doubt that competitions work. If you offer one, sellers will go crazy to win the prizes. You will see energy that you have not seen in months.

The problem comes once the competition is over. It can ruin the winners. The winners will be some of your best salespeople. However, once the contest is complete, they now know that they are your best sellers. And unfortunately it can happen that it goes to their heads, they create friction with other sellers and their sales start to fall immediately. They begin to rest on their reputations. They often cannot psychologically recover from the blinding of temporary glory.

So before you offer a sales contest, take a good look at your vendors. Can they bear to lose it? Can they handle winning it?

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Keep these tips and tricks in mind and your organization will see more sales, higher proposal success rates, and a happy and efficient sales team.