Empowering a sales person to make there own choices

Something I’ve seen a lot in my career is a manager forcing reps to get approval on little things that drastically delay the process- I myself have also been on the receiving side of this


To me it’s demoralizing, and definitely a way to kill the morale of anyone working in sales, and it holds up the sale process.


Personally with my teams in the past I took a very entrepreneurial approach “if you were me what would you do”, and I’ve noticed this has not only made teams more receptive to sales but also the amount of my time that’s become freed up was game changing.


im curious what other people’s thoughts are when it comes to wanting people to come to management for approval on small things like 5% discount, or free shipping.

2
YoungGoat
Opinionated
2
Surgical Technology Specialist
I’ve been bugging my managers about this for a while. I’m pushing for them to put a framework in place where certain discounts are pre-approved/automatically approved based on the deal. Only if we want to go outside the box would we have to go to them for approval. 

ex. Automatically have up to a 10% discount available for deals over a certain size.

then also put in place some sort of review process quarterly to see how the system is working and adjust accordingly.
NeverEverStopSelling
Member
3
Sales Manager, Mid-Market
This is how we have it set up. A "deal desk" doc where AEs can approve some things themselves (they just are advised to act like everything requires approvals anyway) like a free month, semiannual billing, 5-30% discounts depending on size, etc. Definitely speeds things up and empowers reps without creating too much chaos or loss of control on things like price integrity
YoungGoat
Opinionated
0
Surgical Technology Specialist
I love that approach. I wish more companies adopted that strategy.
Sales4what
Opinionated
0
Co-Founder & VP Sales @ PLURiTy
That’s what I’m saying! It speeds up the sales process, it boosts morales and has a higher close rate.

I worked in a wholesale jewelry company a long time ago- and jewelry is a high ticket. High margin, on a 10,000 bracelet we made 8,600 in profit. Dude wrote me up for waiving 20 dollar shipping to close the sale.

Doing my own thing now, I’ve given my team what our landed cost is on the bags we’re selling and left them to figure out what to sell for, “as long as we’re in the green i don’t care what you sell it for”


SalesPharaoh
Big Shot
1
Senior Account Executive
well I'm facing this, the way I dealt with it is to circumvent it. I would be like oh yea I didn't know I already agreed to this if I didn't he would go to competition. I was under pressure to present offer in 48Hrs before bids close. 
Sales4what
Opinionated
0
Co-Founder & VP Sales @ PLURiTy
Yeah, it’s crazy in my opinion how many managers don’t give there team
the freedoms to just make decisions. In the past I’ve opted to make them, close the deal and just deal with whatever they may decide 

SalesPharaoh
Big Shot
0
Senior Account Executive
there will always be this divide between sales and process oriented non sales persons.
goose
Politicker
0
Sales Executive
Approval is not about authority (in my opinion).  It's more about learning how the rep processes information, evaluates factors and thinks critically.  If someone gives 5% without processing factors then what are they learning?
CuriousFox
WR Officer
0
🦊
You need good processes in place to be successful. Key word being good.
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