15 Questions New Sales Managers Need to Ask In Order to Succeed

Self-improvement guru Tony Robbins once said “successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.” If you’ve just taken over an inside sales team, consider making this quote your mantra. We recently published an eBook entitled The 90-Day Inside Sales Success Plan. Inside, we interviewed some of the world’s top sales trainers, authors and executives. I was happy to see that some of the sales leaders offered new sales managers some sound questions to ask themselves and their team.

Want to lead your inside sales team successfully? Start by asking these 15 crucial questions:

Questions to Help Complete a Gap Analysis

A Sales Guy’s Jim Keenan recommends that you begin by learning “everything you can about the team, the environment, the objectives, your boss, your boss’ boss, the customers, the systems, etc. Then ask the following questions.

• Is this the team I need to hit my goals?
• Do I have the resources I need?
• Does the current strategy support the goals?
• Do I have the right processes to be successful?

Questions to Help Develop a Sales Process

Wendy Weiss, The Queen of Cold Calling™, advocates having a specific process in place in order to make your team more efficient and effective. According to Wendy, the process should include (but not be limited to) asking the following questions:

• What are the parameters that define a qualified prospect?
• Which sales process best practices do we need to prioritize?
• What is the goal for each type of call an inside sales representative is making?
• How many times should reps call any one contact?
• What should reps do with contacts that are never reached and who never respond to a voicemail or email?
• Which cold calling scripts are we using and can we surface them in real time?

Questions to Ask Reps Before Giving Them Feedback

Sales trainer Alice Kemper revealed how important it is to listen to reps’ sales pitch. You can either listen in on calls or listen to call recordings. Before giving reps feedback, it can help to ask them some questions including:

• What did they think went well on the last 20 minutes of conversations?
• What did they think was particularly challenging?
• What will it take to remove or overcome the challenges?
• What actions are they willing to commit to?

Questions to Ask Before Hiring New Reps

Even John Wooden couldn’t have coached a team to victory without having the right talent on board. Part of leading an inside sales team successfully will always be recruiting the right talent. According to QuotaFactory CEO Pete Gracey, before hiring a new rep, managers need to ask themselves these three questions:

• Can I train them to do this job (including using a conversational sales platform)?
• Will they love doing this job?
• Can I tolerate working with them (operative word is tolerate..not love)?