Sales managers have significant impact on the performance of reps, so why do so many companies neglect to provide sales management training?
When a global finance and accounting services firm sought to reverse a steady decline in revenues, Blue Ridge Partners, a management consulting firm, proposed a number of initiatives, the most important of which was an upgrade of sales management talent.
“For many years, this firm had been filling frontline sales manager positions with accounting and finance professionals. These folks were great at controlling costs, but knew little about managing salespeople, and a driving a revenue engine,” explains Brad Wilsted, a Blue Ridge Partners co-founder. Just two quarters after overhauling their sales management team and putting several other changes in place, the company saw improved sales activity and revenue stability, paving the way for long-term growth.
“The magnitude of sales management influence on topline performance cannot be overstated,” adds Wilsted. “This is a huge — and widely underutilized — lever in steering the sales organization toward improved results. Most executives miss it because they focus on their sellers, their compensation plan, their sales process and other related issues when trying to address revenue challenges. High-performing companies understand that sales management is their key point of leverage in the sales force and their most powerful opportunity for driving growth.”
Why train salespeople but not their managers?
One common reason companies struggle to successfully fill sales management positions is the top-performer formula that so many follow. They invest heavily to develop their frontline sellers and then promote one to management. If that person struggles to succeed in the management role, many companies repeat the process instead of tweaking it.
One study by the Association for Talent Development (ATD) found that only 11 percent of companies train their sales managers to a high
extent, while 22 percent don’t train their sales managers at all. In contrast, the same study found that about 66 percent of those same companies train their salespeople on selling skills at least once each year.
The same study found a “significant positive correlation” between the extent to which those managers were trained and the percentage of their reps who meet their sales quota. Conversely, companies that didn’t train their sales managers suffered lower sales performance.
“If you want more from your salespeople, the solution is not always to retrain the sellers. Sometimes the solution is to train their sales managers,” state Michelle Vazanna and Jason Jordan in an article for ATD. Vazanna and Jordan are executives at Vantage Point Performance, a global sales management training and development firm.
What training for sales managers does exist frequently focuses on leadership and coaching. While those are skills that managers certainly need to hone, Vazanna and Jordan state that it’s most important to teach managers to focus on factors they can manage and understand those they cannot.
“In reality, the only factor managers can manage, and directly affect, are the activities of their sellers — which customers they call, what they say during those calls, which deals they pursue, and how they pursue them. In the end, all of these activities will determine whether they make their number and hit their revenue target, but the target itself can’t be managed. You only can manage activities, not their outcomes,” Vazanna and Jordan state.
5 elements of managing
Matt Millen, senior vice president of revenue for Seattle-based Outreach, makers of a sales engagement platform, says there are five main roles for someone who leads a sales team: manager, leader, coach, trainer and mentor. The challenge, says Millen, is to know what to be when, and how to move within those five functions of sales management.
“Managing is getting the day-to-day duties done. Leadership is making sure you’re headed in the right direction — that the team is pointed to the right North Star. Coaching is making sure you’re doing it with excellence — the quality of the ride,” he explains.
There is no one way to lead, and every manager will be stronger in some areas than in others. Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of management candidates is critical. If your company likes to promote from within — and there is nothing wrong with that — this process should begin long before you are ready to promote, says Millen.
“If you wait until you have an opening, it’s too late. You have to start investing in people early and see who steps up and who can actually do the work. If I have a team of five reps and I want to start pegging someone for management potential, the first thing I’ll do is see who is demonstrating the attributes of leadership?”
Motivated by others’ success
Many top salespeople are independent and self-motivated. They push the right buttons to push themselves, but that doesn’t ensure they will be able to lead others. Among the common mistakes that first-time sales manager make is trying to be the super salesperson and win through their team rather than have their team win, says Millen.
A proclivity to be autonomous and out front may be characteristics of a top salesperson, but a good sales manager’s strengths are just as likely to be altruism and empathy, adds Donna Warrick of Jamesson Solutions, a leadership development and talent acquisition company. She says a pre-hire assessment is essential to finding the right sales manager.
“You want someone who is motivated to develop and help other people. You want to know how clearly they see and understand people, as well as how clearly they see and understand strategy and tasks,” Warrick says.
A lot of the sales management training she sees is focused on hard skills such as territory planning, filling a prospect pipeline, setting goals and following processes. Warrick cautions companies not to neglect training on soft skills, such as coaching, providing feedback and even improving listening skills.
“At the end of the day, whether you’re in sales or operations, you have to understand people. You have to understand how you influence people – how to coach. Coaching is a skill set that people need to learn. If you’re going to take good performers and make them better, you need to be able to coach them effectively.”
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