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 sales people 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 sales people 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 their sales managers will have learned enough during their days as a field sales person 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.

Are your sales people ‘sharpening the sword’?

Sales people often become stuck in their comfort zones and allow their skills and disciplines to slide.  It’s human nature.  But, it’s not good for them or you.

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The net result?  Few sales people are effectively managed.  All parties, executive management, sales manager and sales people, bounce from one frustration to another.  Company objectives are met frequently by happenstance, sales people 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 sales people and sales managers, I frequently see these three most common maladies suffered by sales managers.

3. Lack of an organized training and development system.           

No profession in the world expects the serious practitioners of that profession to figure it out by themselves.  Quite the contrary.  Every profession has determined some minimal acceptable course of study, and typically has some event which signals the entry into that profession.  It is for this reason that teachers, emergency medical technicians, and ministers are licensed; and why attorneys must pass the bar exam, accountants must pass their certification exam, etc.

Unfortunately, that is rarely true of sales people.  In only the leading companies is there some required course of study for entry level sales people, and some event which signifies the successful completion of that study and their entry into the profession.

To even think this way is so outside of the reality of most sales managers that I can almost hear half of the readers of this article snickering over their coffee.  “Some standard for allowing people into the job?”  Incredible thought.  But if you don’t insist on it, you’ll continue to labor with a hit-or-miss sales force where every hire is ultimately a shot in the dark.

No profession in the world expects that, once someone has become qualified to enter the profession, they then no longer need to invest in their own development.  And every profession has expectations of the practitioners’ regular need to systematically improve himself or herself.  Can you imagine a teacher who never attends an in-service training?  A nurse who never invests in continuing development?  A minister who never goes back to school?  A doctor who never attends...[Click Here To Read The Entire Article Online]