After years of hard work and perseverance you’ve been promoted to the position of Sales Manager. You are exactly where you want to be in your career – but the stress of the role eventually gets on top of you, wears you down and affects your performance. Stress is a major setback and one that could have huge implications on not just your current role but also the future of your career.
Sales Managers have one of, if not the, most stressful job in sales. While taking full accountability for the performance of their sales team, they also work long hours and have a huge amount of responsibility themselves.
But fear not, there are ways to handle this. Before you let it get on top of you, read on and find out more about combatting the sales manager stress.
Don’t forget to delegate
As a manager it can be all too easy to try and do it all yourself – but the more you try and do, the less you will actually accomplish and the more stressed you will become. And you shouldn’t have to do it all yourself, you have a team of salespeople who are more than willing to help – so make sure you delegate. Ultimately you will find that you are much more productive and a lot less stressed.
Organisation is key
Organisation is so important if you want to avoid stress and stay on top of your workload. This could be as simple as creating spreadsheets, keeping a diary up to date or making to-do lists. If tasks seem large and overwhelming this will allow you to break them down and focus on one manageable step at a time.
Manage your time effectively
As the Sales Manager it can feel like you are being pulled in so many directions at once, sorting out the issues of the team and as a result, falling behind on other work – which of course causes no end of stress. This can be done by setting goals, prioritising important tasks and taking breaks.
Utilise sales tools
Sales tools will make your life a lot easier by removing some of the more menial tasks that take up a lot of time, freeing you up to spend longer doing far more important things. This could be sales specific tool such as Salesmate, which will organise and optimise the work or your sales team. Similarly, tools such as Pipedrive will help your sales reps to sell better and faster by automating administrative tasks, such as logging calls and emails and syncing with the sales pipeline process to boost productivity.
Look after yourself
While your team may be able to switch off when they get home from a day at work, you might not. This may seem obvious, but it is so easy to overlook the little things when you feel like you don’t have any spare time. So, make sure you are eating well, getting enough sleep, exercising – which will all make you more productive and less stressed day-to-day. Organising and managing your time should mean you don’t have to work late into the night and on your days off – making the above more than possible.
Take advantage of coaching and training opportunities
This could be training for yourself, but it could also be training for your team – because if they are working more efficiently it will take a lot of the stress off you.
For yourself, take a look at our Management Coaching – this focuses on Sales Managers and leaders, aiming to deliver techniques and methods to build capability both in performance management and sales leadership. For you team, take a look at our Sales Training.
