By Gretchen Gordon
The most productive, world-class organizations have dedicated sales managers, but not every CEO understands how to make the most of this very important role. Here are four things executives need to understand about the role of a dedicated sales manager.
1. Think before you promote your best sales rep to a management role. The role of sales manager requires a significantly different skill set from the role of a salesperson. In salespeople, we are seeking some combination of skills that might include hunting, qualifying, selling consultatively, closing, farming, and account managing. In sales managers, we seek the skills of coaching, motivating, holding salespeople accountable to behaviors, and recruiting. Evaluate sales-manager candidates for specific sales manager skill sets.
2. Hold your sales manager accountable. Both you and your sales manager need to focus on four disciplines: goals, pipeline management, activity, and coaching – but at different levels. For example, when the sales manager asks each salesperson about items in the pipeline, you need to request that the sales manager report back to you about the health and predictability of the pipeline. Make sure he or she supports each opportunity’s position in the pipeline. Ask the sales manager specific questions regarding the activity of the team. (For example, ask if the team had 20 first appointments this week. If not, why not? What is going to be done differently next week?) This reinforces the questions the sales manager should be asking of each salesperson each week.
3. Be smart about the way you compensate your sales manager. It’s rarely productive to ask sales managers to sell in addition to manage a team. If it is more lucrative for the sales manager to close his or her own deals as opposed to growing revenue through the team, then the manager will be conflicted about where to spend his or her time. The manager may even compete with salespeople for deals. As CEO, you must be the sales manager to your sales manager, with scheduled weekly meetings about his or her behavior as a salesperson in addition to the scheduled meetings to discuss sales-management results. If you want the company to grow and the revenue base to increase, you will need to compensate the manager more for driving results through the team than for individual production. Here is a case study about how a sales manager who was also the top seller eclipsed the sales team until we helped realign his effort to drive more business through the team.
4. When necessary, know how to fill the role yourself. In smaller organizations, sometimes the CEO must function as the sales manager (click here for the CEO as Sales Manager Toolkit). To perform successfully in this role, you MUST
- work with each salesperson to calculate what his or her activities need to be, and get agreement on a specific activity plan;
- have frequent, scheduled meetings with all sales team members to focus their attention on the important activities for that day or week;
- meet one-on-one with each salesperson on a weekly basis to hold each of them accountable for agreed-upon activities;
- “pre-brief “and debrief sales calls to help team members improve;
- go on sales calls to help coach team members (but refrain from taking over the call);
- review each salesperson’s pipeline with him or her on a regular basis, and ask probing questions about each opportunity, e.g., “What is the agreed-to next step? What two deals are you going to move next week? This deal has been sitting here a long time; either move it or blow it up.”
If you cannot yet afford to employ a dedicated sales manager, make a specific, strategic plan for getting there. If you want to maximize sales growth, you must have a high-performing, dedicated sales manager.
[Image via Flickr / inertia NC]
You are so right. We have found there are actually only 9 traits that are necessary in high performing salespeople AND high performing sales managers…. out of 41 possible traits. Yikes!
This is an absolute must-read for small and midsize company CEOs who do not yet have a person in the sales manager’s role. I have often found CEOs of private companies are even afraid of their salespeople, or in awe of them, because they don’t know how to hold them accountable. Great advice, Gretchen!
Thanks for the feedback. You are so right about CEOs and holding salespeople accountable. We provide them tools to make it easier to function in that role.
Love #4 Gretchen, the toolkit is great for CEOs who need to manage their sales managers, or even a team.
Thank you. I love repeatable processes that make it easier for managers to hold salespeople accountable…whether they are CEO or Sales Manager.
Gretchen – Great advice and I so agree with #1! Everything that works well FOR a top producing salesperson often works AGAINST them when promoted to sales manager. Employee assessments can save so much pain and failure and I wish more companies would use them when promoting.