12 Habits of Highly Successful Home Improvement Sales Managers

In the highly competitive world of home improvement contracting, effective sales management is crucial for your company's success.

Here are 12 habits of highly successful home improvement sales managers to help you elevate your sales management game and improve the performance of your sales reps.
 

1. Commitment to Company Values

A commitment to company values should be uncompromising, and a sales manager should be hiring, training, and disciplining to those values. Every member of the sales team must believe in and be committed to the company’s values for maximum success.
 

2. Best Practices in Staffing

Always staff above capacity. Sales reps get sick, take vacations, and sometimes leave a company suddenly. You never want to compromise your speed to getting in front of homeowners as quickly as possible. This is a common reason for missing your sales revenue goals, so it's important to always be recruiting top sales reps and focusing on turning your B players into A players.
 

3. A Strong Onboarding Strategy

Proper sales rep onboarding is critical to your company’s success. Follow a proven methodology with no shortcuts, and train to a specific and proven sales process that every rep must follow. Set the proper expectations, utilize role-playing, and graduate them after a proper onboarding.
 

4. Commitment to Yourself

As a sales manager, you should be focused on continuous improvement. We can always be better than we are today. Take care of yourself mentally and physically, be a part of a community, and ask for help when you need it.

A sales manager should be confident and eager to develop more leaders as your company grows.

5. Commitment to Selling Profitable Jobs

It's critically important to eliminate firewall issues and create a predictable business model with profitable jobs. Be confident about your price and ensure that you have a strong unique value proposition that will justify the higher prices you need to make money on every job. Always look for ways to reduce sales rep tension on commissions and improve your sales team's buy-in on pricing.
 

6. Set Great Expectations

Setting great expectations is critically important with five key stakeholders: prospects, recruits, customers, your team, and business partners. Your sales team needs to know what is expected from them so they can work toward their goals. 
 

7. Provide Ongoing Feedback

All salespeople deserve ongoing feedback. Do regular ride-and-guides and embrace technology to assess your sales reps’ demos even when you're unable to be with them. There are solutions in our industry that use analytics and AI to generate this data for you. Finally, hold one-to-one meetings with members of your sales team in addition to your regular sales team meetings.
 

8. Keepers of Culture

A sales manager's impact on team culture is significant. Your behavior affects your entire sales team. Remember that your employees own culture and it is your job as a manager to foster it.
 

9. Mindset

Mindset has a material impact on your success. The keys to improving your mindset are understanding, challenging, resetting, and reinforcing your desired mindset. You also need to help shape the mindsets of your sales team members in the same fashion. The right mindset has a positive impact on business outcomes.
 

10. Develop Future Leaders

All good leaders develop future leaders. A sales manager should be confident and eager to develop more leaders as your company grows. This will help to improve culture and retention.
 

11. Break Down Barriers

Break down and remove unnecessary barriers. It's important to keep things simple for your sales team. Embrace technology, engage in training, utilize great processes, and always practice effective communication.
 

12. Think Like an Owner

Always employ the mindset that you are the business owner when managing your sales team. Embrace an entrepreneurial spirit and be transparent about how you make decisions. Have your sales reps set their own goals that are reasonable and achievable, yet outside of their comfort zones to promote growth. Be intentional with every conversation.