Sales teams operate according to a rhythm of gathering and scattering. Gathering to discuss things and scattering to do stuff. Herein lies the difficult challenge of managing a team to facilitate creativity and productivity. When do you gather? How often do you gather? Who gathers and who scatters?
Creativity depends on the quality of the conversation
Whether team gatherings are collaborative and stimulate creativity or not, depend largely on the kinds of conversations you have when you have those in-person meetings with your team. If face-to-face conversations consist simply of report backs of field activities or interrogations of call report details, it’s unlikely that anything creative will happen.
However, if the conversations are about challenges, opportunities and a collaborative sharing of new ideas, the team’s response will be creative and lead to more creativity out in the field.
What can sales team leaders do to ensure this kind of quality conversation is happening?
Mobile technology that’s changing the sales conversation
Sales managers are often torn between regularly gathering with their reps to better understand what’s happening in the field, and freeing them from meetings that keep them from spending valuable time with customers.
Skynamo’s mobile sales app brings balance to the gathering-scattering issue. Managers are constantly connected to reps and able to coach them to be more efficient in the field, while their face-to-face meetings are also more productive.
One of our customers, Interstat, reports that their reps no longer spend unnecessary time at the office but are rather out in the field selling. And when they do have weekly meetings, everyone is already on the same page and able to think through issues together.
Reps no longer need to visit the office as regularly as they used to before Skynamo. Now, they only go in once a week to touch base with management, compared to having to go in twice daily, five days a week.
Managers now receive a daily report from reps and can question matters of major importance immediately. These discussions are now a constant, everyday thing and no longer a build-up to the next sales meeting. ‘We’re constantly in contact, so our Friday meetings are relaxed times to share with each other how our weeks have been, or comparing problems we ran into and thinking through what we might need to pay attention to going forward,’ shares Lisa Joao Campbell, sales manager at Interstat.
Read the full Interstat case study here…
