What does a Digital Sales Manager do?

In a previous article, we answered the question “What is digital sales management?” We established that digital sales management is a key component of your business because, unless you can manage your leads and actually get them to buy from you, you’ve wasted a lot of money on your digital marketing efforts.

The person who leads the digital sales team is the digital sales manager. He or she is an incredibly important part of the process as they are responsible for leading the team and driving digital sales. In this article, we take a more in-depth look into what a digital sales manager actually does.

Digital sales manager responsibilities

Develop a digital sales strategy   

The first thing that this person will do is to develop a digital sales strategy. This is the roadmap which shows how the company is going to achieve sales online.

For this strategy to be effective, it needs to speak very clearly to the digital marketing strategy. Why do we say this? Very simply because the strategy for marketing online will have identified a specific person that they feel will buy from them. They will have developed a buyer persona which is based on the demographic and psychographic characteristics of previous customers. This buyer persona drills down into minute details such as:

• What car does the person drive?
• What movies do they like to watch?
• What type of restaurants do they like visiting?

Digital sales will then need to take this information and – when the marketers feed the sales team leads – they have to know what the best way is to convert them to sales. For example, if the buyer persona that the digital marketing department has developed says that the customers which are going to be fed into the sales department are busy executives, the sales department needs to develop a strategy for closing the sale which doesn’t involve long-drawn-out sales pitches. The prospects are short on time and they need to respect this if they want to have any hope of reaching them.

Manage the digital sales team

A very important task of a digital sales manager is managing the team of sales executives under them. They need to keep them constantly motivated to reach their targets and exceed them. The sales team is at the coalface of the business: if they don’t make money, the business doesn’t make money. This means that the team needs to constantly be pushing.

There are a number of ways in which the digital sales manager can motivate their staff members. One of these ways – which can be seen among sales departments all over the world – is a commission structure. What this means is that for every sale a sales executive makes, he or she will receive a percentage of that sale on top of their basic salary. This means that the more sales that the sales executive makes, the more money they will earn. Some companies go so far as to not pay their sales staff a basic salary and say that their salary is purely based on commission. However, these cases are few and far between, with most companies giving sales executives a basic salary and adding the commission on top of this.

Accurate reporting to management

The digital sales manager must provide accurate and detailed reports to management of monthly sales. So if the company did well over a period, it is the duty of the sales manager to ensure that this is reported to management. By the same token, if digital sales weren’t great one month they will have to show management what plans they have in place to rectify this situation. Ultimately, the buck stops with them.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

Being a digital sales manager can be a very stressful job. However, if you like numbers and enjoy dealing with people, you will succeed at this! The Digital School of Marketing’s latest educational offering – the Sales and Digital Marketing Course – will teach you everything you need to know about helping to convert a prospect to a solid lead. For more information and this and out other online digital marketing courses, please visit our website.