Sales Leadership
As your sales managers go, so go your salespeople. Salespeople will generally not do more than sales managers ask them to, and sales managers cannot coach them beyond their own personal capabilities to sell.
The skills and effectiveness of sales management lie in the areas of coaching, motivating, recruiting, and holding salespeople accountable. See below for more information on these 5 critical areas.
You should also know that when sales leadership training and development is provided to your salespeople, your sales managers must be able to coach their salespeople to the new sales process, strategies, skills and tactics, as well as hold them accountable for change.
You should also know that when sales leadership training and development is provided to your salespeople, your sales managers must be able to coach their salespeople to the new sales process, strategies, skills and tactics, as well as hold them accountable for change.
From a sales management perspective, growing a sales organization consists of coaching, motivating and recruiting salespeople; while holding them accountable for performing at the highest possible levels of achievement. Together with a sales force development plan, these four sales management competencies form a sales manager’s ability to develop talent. Aside from making sure that the revenue and profit goals are met, talent development is the most desirable outcome.
- Some sales managers are expected to spend some of their time on direct sales.
- Some sales managers are expected to close deals on behalf of their salespeople.
- Some sales managers aren’t all that interested in coaching.
- Some sales managers don’t know the appropriate times to coach.
- Some sales managers don’t know the proper approaches for coaching.
- Most sales managers have not created a sales environment or culture that is conducive to coaching.
- Most sales managers are simply not very effective when it comes to coaching salespeople.
Another significant challenge facing today’s sales managers is the expansion of the sales force. Unlike days past when the entire sales force met in the office each morning, salespeople are now working remotely. The variations include:
- A regional salesperson working in a territory
- A local salesperson working virtually from home
- A national sales force strategically deployed in major cities across the country
- A global sales force dispersed around the world
As a result, many sales managers must also meet the challenge of how to work effectively with remote salespeople. In doing so they must be certain that the remote salespeople are focused on the job at hand, while providing the necessary sales support for them to perform which is why sales leadership training is so critical.
At Sales Development Expert the process of coaching salespeople consists of an ongoing dialog that includes, but isn’t limited to, pre-call strategizing and post-call debriefing with each salesperson. Under ideal conditions, this takes place on a daily basis.
When managers are ineffective at coaching their salespeople, it is often because they aren’t spending enough time performing their coaching activities. On some occasions, well-intentioned managers perform the activities , but poorly, when they have not created the proper environment for productive and effective sales coaching. Salespeople must have a good business relationship with their managers, trust their intentions, believe in their advice, and respect their expertise. Salespeople must be open to change and sales managers must be rep-focused rather than self-focused.
Motivating salespeople is an ongoing process where on those days that a salesperson isn’t able to “self-start” sales management can step in and provide external motivation. Unfortunately, those days are far more common than anyone realizes and sales management can only be effective when aware of what will uniquely motivate each salesperson.
The factors that contribute to sales management’s effectiveness when motivating salespeople include:
- Sales manager’s percentage of motivational skills
- Sales manager’s effectiveness using those skills
- Possible reasons for their effectiveness or lack thereof, including:
Do Salespeople Have Personal Goals and a Plan?
Are Salespeople Motivated?
Do Salespeople Have Strong Desire?
Are Salespeople Committed?
Is Enough Time Spent Motivating?
Holding salespeople accountable is perhaps the most feared part of sales management, despite the fact that it isn’t that difficult. It is also the most important component of sales management. In addition to quota, it requires clear, mutual expectations for each salesperson’s required activity on a daily basis. Activities, which if performed, would result in the revenue goals being met.
The factors that impact sales management’s ability to hold salespeople are:
- Does the Sales Manager need to be liked by salespeople?
- Does the Sales Manager have difficulty recovering from rejection?
- Does the Sales Manager allow excuse making?
- Is enough time spent holding salespeople accountable?
* Much of this content is derived from my favorite mentor and Sales Thought Leader, Dave Kurlan.
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