Now I ask you to consider – are the same keen sales attributes which made you a successful salesperson creating a stumbling block to effective sales management?

As a sales manager, if you are still action-oriented, decisive and adept at problem-solving – are you jumping in to “rescue” your salespeople and help them close the deal? Does it really help your salespeople when you jump in? Because of your problem-solving ability, are your salespeople bringing you more of their problems, problems which they can and should be solving themselves?

Way back in 451BC Confucius said, “What I hear I forget, what I see I may remember, but what I do I understand.” When you jump in and take over, and solve other people’s problems, you also eliminate the “doing” part. You eliminate the learning and development experience for your salespeople. Then, guess what – you get more of other people’s problems to solve, and more deals to try and save at the last-minute.

What matters is not how effective your salespeople are when you are busy “carrying their load.” Instead, what should matter is how strong their skill to sell and will to sell are when you are not working with them. Your goal should be to build more independence, but that independence should be earned through a sales rep’s commitment to development. And you need to enable this development continuously.

The leadership mindset for effective sales management is to become an observer. Stop doing and start leading. Stop solving everybody’s problems! Re-train and re-strain your “inner-salesperson.” Instead of jumping in and taking over, sit back and watch your people perform. Observation is the first step in the coaching process. How can we be effective sales coaches if we don’t first observe?

Some of the answers I received were

1. Reacting to my boss i.e. answering questions,
   following directives, etc.
2. Prioritizing my day according to voice mail and
   email.
3. Reviewing the opportunities on our CRM
   “dashboard.”
4. Trying to generate more revenue.

In order to be an effective coach and sales leader the
answer to this question should be,
that a sales managers’ #1 priority is the coaching and developing of salespeople.
It is the daily commitment to the development of skill and will in the hearts
and minds of the salespeople that should be the # 1 priority

At the end of your month you want to ask yourself, “ Is my
sales team better off and more competitive today than they were a month ago?”

Perhaps, a better sales management question to ask yourself
would be, what should I not do today so that I can spend time coaching?
Your “to don’t “ list is more important than your “to do” list. What do you
need to stop doing today to make time for more coaching?

STOP DOING, START LEADING!!!

Later that day, when we arrived at the “C-Level Prospecting” skills module, I asked them, “When you call a prospect on the phone, what do you say?”

Almost uniformly, the answer was, “The first thing I do is qualify him/her by asking, ‘Do you make the decisions on products such as X?’ If the prospect answers ‘Yes’ then I try to persuade him or her to agree to a face-to-face appointment.”

My challenge to the participants was this: If you want to form multiple relationships within an account why are you being so choosy about the first prospect with whom you meet? If your ultimate goal is multiple relationships, why not pursue that goal from the very beginning?

In most sales situations, qualification is not only obnoxious and self-serving, but also sure to raise the hackles of the person you’re talking to. If they are the decision maker you’re trying to reach, what are the odds they’ll admit that fact to someone whose only interest is in selling them something? And the outcomes aren’t any better if they aren’t the decision. They’ll either say “no” and hang up, or, if they are gatekeeper whose responsibility is to keep salespeople away from an executive, they’ll say “yes” even though it isn’t true. None of these situations is ideal.

If you want to get more appointments and build more relationships, do your homework before making the call, then sell the appointment right from the start, no matter who you’re talking to. Even if they aren’t the ultimate decision maker, you’ll have the opportunity to learn more about the company’s needs, and odds are they can put you in touch with the person who is the decision maker.

While sweeping statements about an entire generation can never be 100% true for any individual, there are a few factors that do separate millennial salespeople from both Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers. For example, millenials are the first generation to be considered “digital natives.” They’ve been around technology their entire lives, and see technology as helping them be more flexible in both their work and private lives. You may not have to master all forms of technology yourself, but you better create a workplace where the millennials can, or they may view your company as inefficient. When it comes to coaching millennial salespeople, here are some tips:

Millennials are much more egalitarian than prior generations in ways that relate not just to issues like workforce diversity but also to who gets a say in decisions. They expect their opinions, ideas and creativity to be valued. As their sales coach, encourage the opinions, creative output, tech skills and the general enthusiasm your millennials bring to the sales team. Be sure and let them know when and where their ideas have been implemented. A good tool for idea sharing is a Sales Playbook. This platform documents “best practices” your sales team identifies for every stage of selling, captured as example scripts, tactics and methods.

Millennials have a strong desire to find meaning and purpose in what they do. They are far less motivated by money —or perhaps just far more comfortable admitting that money isn’t their primary motivator — than any previous generation.  As a sales coach, it is your job to help a millennial salesperson determine the “why” in what they do. Communicate the overarching mission, values of the company, and the greater good that their contributions can provide. Perhaps redefine for them the culture of selling.

Millenials have a strong desire for professional development. Overwhelmingly, they want to be in a workplace that offers them training opportunities and on-going feedback so they can continually improve their job performance. The challenge for you is that this takes more time on your part. You have to be very savvy in how you control your own time so you can spend more of it coaching. For specific suggestions on taking charge of your time, see items 2, 3, 4 and 12 in http://www.toplineleadership.com/2011/10/12-sales-management-tips-in-2012/

Perhaps the best news about millenials is that they are probably the most coachable members of your team. When your more senior tenured salespeople notice the millennials gaining on them—and sometimes passing them by—they will realize they need to work even harder to compete! The better the job you do of coaching your millennials, the greater the positive impact on your sales team as a whole.

3. Provoke thought. I believe that a sales team’s sales effectiveness is largely impacted by the questions salespeople ask themselves before each sales call. Salespeople, especially those with considerable sales experience, are notorious for switching on their “auto-pilot.” They often go through the motions without thinking much about what they are doing. You need to help salespeople switch-off their auto-pilot.

4. Set clear goals. What are your two most important priorities over the next six months? What are the actions you will need to take to get there? Having a clear picture in your mind about what is truly important is essential. Your goals act like a magnet, drawing you toward the most effective use of your time, and away from the reactive, fire-drill mentality that is so much a part of many sales organizations.

Make 2012 the best year ever, for you and your sales team!

“Having inconsistent standards” …. “Tell you the problem but don’t help you work through the solution” … “Care only about results and not how we get them” … “Make you do exactly what they when they were salespeople—no adapting to the individual.”

Reverse these statements and you have a good starting point for how to evaluate your own effectiveness as a sales manager and coach. Do you have standards that you enforce consistently? Do you help your salespeople learn a process for effective selling? Do you help them develop solutions that fit their talents and style?

Remember—by improving your skills as a sales manager, you can improve the performance of your entire sales team.

1. He wanted a strategic sales process that would gain buy-in from reps from different countries and cultures throughout their world-wide sales organization.
2. He also wanted a process that was not complicated. His goal was to get everyone on the same page around a simple model, because his experience had been that if the model was too complex, sales people don’t adopt it.

This executive’s request reinforced for me the reasons why I developed my 8-step sales- model that closely ties actions a sales rep should take with customer needs during the buying process. While cultures certainly differ around the globe, the process that human beings go through when contemplating major decisions is the same everywhere: Customers have to know what’s at risk if they change, and what’s at risk if they don’t change. They will be happier with their choice after the purchase if they have carefully thought through all of their needs, and if they can justify why purchasing from you would be better than purchasing from your competitors.

The better a salesperson understands that their customer’s buying behavior should influence their selling behavior, the more successful they will be. Having a simple model they can refer to makes it easy for them to put that principle into action.

Kevin Davis

Turns out that a few years prior the execs had implemented a major territory realignment – making existing producers “names account reps” by pulling their geographic territories away, and back-filling with 50 new hires.

While the change initiative had been largely successful, results-wise, execs were very troubled by the recent turnover of a few key peak performers. And, to make matters worse, they had recently hosted their Top Producers trip and heard a bunch of complaints from their winners.

So what caused the silence in the room was the execs’ collective realization that their sales leadership style was effective for driving change, but not for retention and ongoing morale of the troops. They had all taken their eye off this all-important ball. Their change initiative had worked in terms of increasing sales, but their peak performers were getting restless. So, the president halted my session, took over the whiteboard, and they made a “relationship development plan” tasking each senior exec with reaching out to a certain specific list of peak performers.

My key point is this: Check in with your peak performers on an individual basis soon. If you lose one of them it will have a devastating impact on your entire sales team. If and when you do lose a peak performer, you will be the last person on the sales team to learn about it……

But often, a manager’s high activity level can actually inhibit the development of the sales team. As author Steven Covey says so well in 7 Habit’s of Highly Effective People, “Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership is determining whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall. “

To be a successful sales leader, then,you must continually ask yourself, “Regarding what I am about to do–will it result in a tangible, lasting and beneficial impact on the improvement of my team, or individuals on my team?” If the answer is“no”, the best leaders choose to do something much more important.

What did you do today that you really didn’t have to do, or should not have done? Leadership is answering this question, and then following through on the answer.

Positive confrontation is the discussion that a sales manager has with a salesperson in a timely manner, regarding an unsuccessful behavior or attitude exhibited by the salesperson. “PC” just means that you slow down a bit, and talk to the salesperson about the issue. That’s all.

Like many words in the English language, the word “confront” has multiple meanings. One is “to face or oppose antagonistically.” Not good. But another meaning of the word confront is “to stand or meet face-to-face.” It is this 2nd meaning that I am referring to.

Many sales managers, when they see a sales rep do something that is not successful (or don’t see something happening that they should be seeing) fail to “address the issue” face to face in a timely manner. Because of all the other pressing issues and ”fires” the manager is dealing with, he or she is often reluctant to slow down and discuss what the manager just observed and why it is not consistent with the company’s expectations.

As a sales manager, you are responsible for keeping your salespeople focused on the behaviors you need for sales success. If you see something happen that is not successful you must use positive confrontation, stand or meet face to face with your salesperson, and just talk about it. Because what you don’t confront, you condone.