Can You Manage? You're the salesperson and the boss. First thing to do? Get organized!

A few years ago, a sales manager at an Atlanta industrialdistributor was relating the difficulties of dealing with his topsalesperson, who was late to meetings, rarely completed callreports on time, ignored most sales promotions and was a generalpain in the neck. In fact, it had become so bad that the two partedways, with the salesperson deciding to represent a competitor'sproduct line while working from home.

The salesperson admitted that, in his opinion, meetings, callreports and the like stood in the way of getting orders. If he wasdoing those things, he wasn't performing the one task he shouldbe: selling. Six months of working from home, however, made himrealize there was something to his old sales manager's methods.Working on his own, he could no longer count on assistants andcustomer service people to keep track of all the information heneeded to know. The salesperson also admitted even someone as goodas he occasionally needs a pep talk. In other words, he could use asales manager.

The first step to being your own sales manager is to becomebetter organized. When working for someone else, you probablydidn't have an organization problem when it came to your ownaccounts. You knew whom to call on and when, right down to the nameof every personal assistant you came in contact with at a company.Now, however, you'll have to keep more detailed writtenrecords.