What makes a great sales manager?

What makes a great sales manager?  I’d suggest it’s a mix of being a visionary, setting clear objectives, getting the right people, coaching them, managing them consistently and supporting them in every way you know.  Here's six pointers to success.


Visionary


A great sales manager starts out by creating a great vision the sales team can buy into and live by.
The vision includes a number of elements –including why we’ll be successful, what we’re going to achieve, why we’re doing that and the part we play in the organisation’s success.
Note – it’s all ‘we’ – not ‘you’ or ‘I’.  Inclusion and team building are the keys to a sales vision being credible.

Clear objectives

Every sales team needs clear ‘SMART’ objectives.  In a sales team context that’s going to be numbers like orders, revenue and margin.  Depending on the context, there might be others around customer acquisition or customer satisfaction.
The objectives need to be expressed both at a team and individual level.  Critically everybody in the team must be 100% clear on exactly what is expected of them.
Many organisations fall into the trap of spending months debating sales objectives – I’ve worked in one that finally issued targets for the year in the late summer – and couldn’t figure out why motivation fell through the floor.
If new people join the team, their path to productivity needs to be clear and expectations explicit. 
In reviews and meetings, commitment should be secured on all action items and any ambiguity clarified.
The key is clarity – in a way that’s easily measurable.

The right people

Every great sales manager knows success is all about having the right people in the team.  That requires two strands of activity:

• Recruiting the right people
• Managing non-performing people appropriately

Recruiting the right people

Start out by analysing closely the profile of the successful salespeople.  Find a way of describing those people accurately – maybe some form of personality profiling for example. 
Then document the successful salespeople’s characteristics in the job description.  When you interview, do so against the job description.  Don’t even consider any individual who doesn’t fit the criteria you’ve established. 
I once worked with a very smart cookie called Cheryl.  She summed it up brilliantly.  “If people with blue noses are successful and people with red noses aren’t, why even talk to people with red noses?”

Manage non-performers

Every sales team is going to have some people whose performance doesn’t match up.  The difference between great sales managers and ordinary ones is how this is dealt with.
Every company will have performance management processes – you shouldn’t hesitate to use them.
The issue is being clear about what is expected, setting clear objectives and then taking whatever action is required.  It’s simple – if somebody doesn’t measure up, they have to go.
The longer you ignore performance issues, the worse they get.  Not only are you wasting time and money, you’re damaging your own credibility with your team.

Developing the people

Everybody needs constant support to be the best they can be.  In a sales development context, that means making sure everybody in your team has the requisite knowledge and skills to succeed.
Formal training has its place – especially when developing knowledge.  If there’s new information to be learned, a sales training meeting is the most effective way of accomplishing that.
For sales skills, it’s a different story.  Yes there’s a place for formal training – but you need to recognise the effectiveness of formal training declines rapidly.  Even after just a week, the new skills will have been dulled.
This means the great sales manager needs to be a great sales coach.  It’s the single biggest skill every successful sales manager must have.
Sales coaching needs to be regular and consistent.  It doesn’t need to be face-to-face, but it does need to follow a clear structure of agreeing goals and actions that drive improvement.
If there’s one thing that makes a difference between an ordinary sales manager and a great sales manager, this is it.

Consistent management

A great sales manager consistently uses all the tools to keep a good grip on everything that’s going on.  The challenge is to do so in a way that motivates rather than micro manages.
It’s about using all the management tools and practices consistently – be they sales reviews, sales incentives, use of CRM, whatever.  You need to communicate you’re interested in results and you need the team members to take personal responsibility for achieving those results.
A detailed focus on ‘how’ is micro management.  A delegation of responsibility for results is motivating.

Support the team

A great sales manager champions and supports his team in every way possible.  That happens in lots of ways:

• Champion your best salespeople throughout your organisation
• Get your feet on the street – don’t ask people to do things you wouldn’t do yourself
• Facilitate constructive discussion, including constructive conflict
• Help demolish internal barriers
• Campaign for whatever support resources are required
• Celebrate success
• Be accessible when your team needs you

Summary

Being a great sales manager is far from easy.  It requires a combination of visioning, management, development and support at different times in different ways.  A combination of being approachable, but firm and uncompromising, all at the same time.  


By Mike McCormac
www.salessuccessandmore.com