As a business leader, you can’t do it all. You must have the right people in the right roles to grow, especially in sales, your revenue engine. It’s the most critical function of the business. Employee decisions are difficult. Who is ready for the next level? Who has the capability to lead? What criteria should I use to measure? All too often, our unconscious biases, combined with hope, cause us to put people in the wrong role. Inaccurate conclusions are made from logical information. Then it’s months or even years, and in some cases, we realize we not only hamstrung the growth but also did a disservice to our employees. These mistakes are costly and regretful.
Been there?
What if you had a crystal ball and could accurately identify the most critical skills necessary to perform in the defined role and measure those skills weighted by your business model before you made the potential mistake of putting someone in a sales leader role?
This is precisely what we did with one of our newer clients. We contracted with the client to help them expand their sales force. No, we are not recruiters; we are sales experts who use our experience and proprietary sales hiring selection process to prevent sales hiring mistakes. As part of this process, we always measure the sales managers’ capabilities, skills, grit, and unconscious biases. ‘A Players’ won’t work for ‘B Managers’. This is a big piece of the growth puzzle often missed when preventing and eliminating sales turnover.
Take a look at the email we received after our Sales Manager’s due diligence and our counsel to our client.
Thank you very much for the honesty and transparency, Marci. I love it. I just met with our Sales Managers and briefly discussed her results and the fact that it would take a great deal of time, money, and effort to get her up to an A+ level manager. Then I asked some of the questions you coached me to ask, including: Do you “REALLY want to be our Team Sales Manager, and do you look forward to the role and responsibility,” and WOW! She said “no” right away (to my surprise). I could see a huge sense of relief in her eyes as she said it. She felt this was necessary to get our numbers back up. And that she also sees it as stealing from her time/focus in her current role. She wants to be able to focus on operations and management of operations to really show off her strengths.
We just dodged a significant leadership error thanks to you and your honesty. Now, I am hitting the drawing board to get our Sales Management fixed. I have a plan and would like to work with you to define it further and make sure we don’t make any more unforeseen growth mistakes.
To prevent your next sales role from becoming a disaster, contact us today. We’ll guide you on avoiding potential pitfalls. Email: rocky@salesdevelopmentexpert.com or marci@salesdevelopmentexpert.com