In most organizations, sales managers are the essential bridge between the company’s sales goals and the realization of those goals. The gritty day-to-day interactions between the salespeople and their customers are frequently filtered through the perspective of the sales manager on their way up the ladder. The aspirations and strategies of the company’s management must be imprinted by the realism of the sales manager as they come down from above. Sales managers are the conductors who carefully orchestrate the tentative entanglement of the salespeople with their management.
It’s an incredibly important and difficult job. Unfortunately, it is often the most under-trained job in the entire organization. Instead of providing information on the best practices and processes of the job, most companies hope that their sales managers will have learned enough during their days as a field salesperson to provide some roadmap as to how to do this job well.
Alas, only a small percentage of untrained sales managers ever really figure it out, arriving by trial and error and after hours of study at the best practices of an effective sales manager. The overwhelming majority find themselves caught up in the urgencies of the moment, the tempting details of all the transactions, and the continuing onslaught of crises and are never able to set in place a systematic blueprint for their success.
The net result? Few salespeople are effectively managed. All parties: executive management, sales manager and salespeople, bounce from one frustration to another. Company objectives are met frequently by happenstance, salespeople are not developed to their fullest potential and sales managers lurch from one crisis to another.
Certain common mistakes often arise out of this unhealthy situation. As a long time consultant and educator of salespeople and sales managers, I frequently see these three most common maladies suffered by sales managers.
1. Lack of a focused sales structure.
This is such a foreign concept to many companies that the term itself is unfamiliar. The structure of a sales force consists of all the articulated and unspoken rules, policies and procedures that shape the behavior of the salesperson. It consists of such things as:
* the way sales territories are defined
* the way salespeople go about their jobs
* the way markets and customers are targeted
* the way salespeople are compensated
* the methods the manager uses to communicate with the salespeople
* the expectations for the sales force
* the training and development system of the company
* the expectation for information collecting by the salespeople
* the frequency and agenda...
