Sales managers have a multitude of tasks and responsibilities. Hiring, training, planning, reporting, admin, motivating, selling, fire fighting, managing performance – any sales manager will readily add to the list. But what sets the top sales managers apart from the rest?

Typically these tasks and responsibilities fall naturally into one of four areas of what I call ‘the sales management spectrum’.

1. Command and Control

This sales manager is the administrator. Their day revolves around day-to-day admin, operating mission control mostly via their email, measuring and reporting, and filtering out all the clutter so that sales people are not distracted.

2. Sell, and Solve Customer Problems

This sales manager enjoys selling more than managing. They get involved in all the big deals and building relationships with clients. Typically they will have been the top performing sales person prior to becoming the sales manager. In fact they might sometimes be better remaining as the top sales person, rather than a sales manager.

3. Coach and Develop

This sales manager spends high quality time with their sales people, truly helping them to develop into top performers. They are excellent at identifying and recruiting talent. Sales managers of large teams who truly focus on coaching and developing will spend a large proportion of their time building the capability of the team.

4. Business /Market Management

This sales manager is the strategic thinker and tactician who works on the big picture, building value in the business. They are looking for strategic alliances, and work closely with marketing on changing trends and opportunities. In smaller companies, they will be the strategic marketing department, driving product development based on market intelligence and research, as well as being the sales manager.

The best sales managers are effective across the spectrum.

However, many sales managers have an individual style which favours just one or two of the key areas. Indeed, many sales managers tend to spend their time on the command and control. So is one area of the spectrum more important than others?

The most important job of the sales manager is to help their sales people succeed. As a sales manager, if your sales team is successful, then it stands to reason that you will be successful. Building the capability of the team, through training where needed and consistent coaching, has to be the primary focus for the sales manager.

Most importantly, as a sales person, there was one common trend with the command and control managers that I have worked for – I didn’t learn much from them. They were not helping me to be successful.

Recent studies all point to the fact that the one consistent thing that the world’s top performing sales organisations do is that their sales managers are highly effective coaches. For example, here are the findings from three trusted sources:

‘The most important skill is that of the sales manager who coaches and develops the sales person. However, most sales managers are more administrator than coach. Sales people who receive ½ day per week 1:1 with their sales manager are twice as productive as other sales people.’
(Source: HR Chally Group world class sales excellence report 2007.)

‘Top sales performers work for managers who create a culture of development, recognition and coaching.These teams were 38 per cent more productive, and had 27 per cent higher profitability. Consistently superior results depend on the manager.’
(Source: Gallup Organisation, survey of 250,000 sales people, 1 million customers, 80,000 managers. 2003.)

‘The manager activity most closely associated with sales rep success is coaching. However, of the skills that managers possess, an ability to coach individual sales reps is relatively the weakest. The SEC findings are that the world’s best sales managers provide, on average, three-five hours coaching per person per month. Teams who did achieved 107 per cent of target. Teams who did less than two hours per month achieved 90 per cent of target.’
(Source: Sales Executive Council – world class sales coaching 2007.)

Some sales training works, but quite often it doesn’t. When it does work, the part the sales manager plays in reinforcing the training, after the training has been done, is key to the success of the training, and particularly the business results. When training doesn’t work a primary reason will be that there is nothing in place to reinforce the training – to turn learning into performance.

Old habits die hard – people carry on doing what they have always done.

The SEC, who represent over 500 of the world’s leading sales organisations, report that: ‘reps fail to recall 87% of what they have learned within 30 days of receiving training. When training is complemented by in-field coaching, productivity is quadrupled, increasing from 22 per cent to 88 per cent.’

You have probably seen similar statistics before on classroom training. They are somewhat scary if you invest in the training, but have nothing in place to follow up. Sustained coaching is vital to derive the benefit and value of most sales training and help the team to apply the knowledge and use the tools they have learned in the class room.

We do have a centre of excellence here in New Zealand. Late last year, the SEC ranked the Waikato Management School based Gen-i Sales Academy as world leading, and one of the most effective they have seen. Sustained coaching is identified as one of the top five contributing factors.

Coaching is often not well understood. Giving direction and orders, showing someone how to do a task, or persuading that person to do something are common examples of what I see when managers think they are coaching. These are necessary elements of teaching and managing but are not coaching. The best teachers and managers are all great coaches. They understand and guide the sales person through the learning process until the desired results are being achieved.

The secret for the sales manager lies in knowing when to coach, how to coach and what to coach. The ‘what’ requires a clearly defined sales process and the appropriate sales tools. Otherwise it will be like coaching a team of footy players to play ‘no rules’ football or coaching someone in the finer art of cake baking with no bowl, scales or mixing spoon (tools) and no recipe (process). You will get a pretty messy outcome.

When I think back to the two best sales training programmes I participated in as a corporate account manager, it surprised me at the time that the senior sales leaders did not attend the training. Needless to say, they made no contribution in helping the team to success following the training.

Recent research confirms my observations:

‘Many organisations do not have a ‘coaching culture’, and managers worldwide, who have direct reports and therefore by definition are team leaders, currently struggle to understand what coaching really is, let alone reap the rewards that coaching can deliver’.
(NZATD People & Performance, June-July 09, The Coaching Conundrum Asia – Pacific Executive Summary)

So before you embark on your next sales training programme, start with developing and honing your own coaching skills, or get help from someone who can assist with this. You will need to figure out how to coach the process, using the tools and techniques introduced in the training. For the sales manager who has not done any professional development in sales coaching, then this should perhaps be the biggest priority in your own personal development.

Sales articles contributed by NZ Sales Manager e-magazine. Click here to
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