Sales Managers’ Most Common Mistakes – #1

by Dave Kahle

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 salespeople 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 salespeople 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 field salespeople 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.

The net result? 

Few salespeople are effectively managed. All parties, executive management, sales manager, and salespeople, bounce from one frustration to another. Company objectives are met frequently by happenstance, salespeople are not developed to their fullest potential and sales managers lurch from one crisis to another.

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Certain common mistakes often arise out of this unhealthy situation. As a long-time consultant and educator of salespeople and sales managers, I frequently see these three most common maladies suffered by sales managers.

Sales Managers’ Most Common Mistakes — #1

Lack of an intentional sales structure

This is such a foreign concept to many companies that the term itself is unfamiliar. The structure of a sales force consists of all the articulated and unspoken rules, policies, and procedures that shape the behavior of the salesperson. It consists of such things as:

• How sales territories are defined
• How salespeople go about their jobs
• How markets and customers are targeted
• How salespeople are compensated
• Methods the manager uses to communicate with the salespeople
• Expectations of the sales force
• Training and development system of the company
• Expectations of the information collected by salespeople
• Frequency and agenda for sales meetings
• Sales tools used by the salespeople
• Countless other things

A highly focused, strategically-designed sales structure can be one of the company’s greatest assets, as it ultimately shapes the behavior of the sales force.

Most sales structures, however, haven’t come under the critical review of the company’s management. Typically, the structure slowly takes shape over time. Decisions are often made with heavy input from the salespeople, almost always in... READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

The Loss of Discipline and the Opportunity for You