Cemetery Sales Manager Importance & Responsibilities:
Conventional sales wisdom says that increasing sales is best accomplished by improving the quality of the sales manager and team. Large consolidators, investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in training, recruiting and paying top-tier talent is a viable strategy.
For mid-sized and smaller cemeteries, “buying your way out of the problem” is not a viable option. So how do you improve performance of the sales function and keep the sales team you have?
It’s not easy, but it is possible. We have managed and studied top-performing cemetery sales teams of 10 or less and discovered hundreds of best practices that allow them to perform like Fortune 500 teams for a fraction of the cost.
Great cemetery sales managers are hard to find and extremely valuable and difficult to keep.
With cemeteries struggling to maintain continuity in sales force leadership, it’s important to understand the importance of soft skills. Hard skills are trainable and most soft skills aren’t.
What are soft sales skills?
- Strong Work Ethic
- Self motivated
- Positive Attitude
- Good Communication Skills
- Time Management Abilities
- Problem-Solving Skills
- Acting as a Team Player
- Self-Confidence
What makes a good sales manager great?
Research shows that the best sales managers exhibit slightly different characteristics than average ones.
Top sales managers are more likely than average sales managers to be:
- High achieving, ambitious, and results-oriented
- Decisive and comfortable making decisions quickly
- Competitive
Hard Skills are trainable:
- Recruiting, coaching and performance monitoring of sales counselors
- Achieving annual growth revenues and hitting sales goals by successfully managing the sales team
- Designing and implementing a strategic marketing plan that expands company’s at-need and pre-need sales targets
Hard skills are specific, teachable abilities that can be defined and measured, such as presentation, handling objections, how to conduct a sales meeting, reading and the ability to use software programs.
A cemetery sales organization has as much chance of succeeding without a sales manager as a baseball team without a coach — zero chance, to be exact.
Sales managers manage, motivate, and undertake a host of other activities that keep sales teams on task and advancing in terms of revenue production and skills.