A Bottoms-Up Approach to Building Sales Leadership Strength

A typical day in the life of a Sales Manager includes on-the-spot change management, some firefighting, and mostly, unplanned work that derails whatever he/she had set out to do at the beginning of the day. Sales Managers typically lack the time to develop their teams and feel frustrated at not being able to develop them. They simply spend too much time on internal meetings and coordination. The situation underscores an unfilled need in the organization and may indicate major problems to come.

The Sales Manager is the frontline face, a brand ambassador for the company.?His/ her role is becoming increasingly complex in a dynamic marketplace with intense competitive pressures and serious hiring and retention challenges. He/ She is the implementer of the organization’s culture and guardian of the ground level performance.

In reality, however, Sales Managers tend to be divided into two classes. One, the successful ones, that overly focus on Selling on behalf of the team, aided by a few Star Performers numbers. They tend to ignore developing other team members and fear lowering of focus and scores if they did so. The other class is of the unsuccessful Sales Managers, who fail to hire correctly or groom anyone on their team. The successful ones Manage-by-Doing and the unsuccessful ones Manage by-not-Doing anything correctly.

In either case, the challenges that they face are:

-?????????How to prioritize their time?

-?????????How to set up a successful unit in a dynamic and complex market?

-?????????How to truly develop their teams?

Not transitioning effectively from being just a Seller to a Sales Manager is not good for the sales teams and the organizations’ overall performance. Typically, sales teams' performance and retention are directly correlated with the quality of Sales Managers’ leadership. Unfortunately, only a third of sales team members report being supported by their sales managers in developing the skills they need for their role.?So, between the underperformance of direct reports and the cost of replacing sales team members who leave, a single ineffective Sales Manager is a costly proposition for an organisation – one which can set the territory back by a year at least!

Then, why don’t the organizations focus on enabling the Sales Manager toward team development? After all, a future leadership pipeline emerges from this level.

One of the areas that set apart the sales organizations that get the best results, is that management prioritizes and maximizes the time managers spend on Sales Coaching.

Many organisations limit any required interventions to a Training Program – while this is necessary, it may not be sufficient in all contexts. It is critical to Embed the Learning in order to drive real change which is sustainable and scalable. This can be done through relevant and practical post-Training interventions such as:

-?????????Periodic Sales Coaching sessions with the Sales Managers to get feedback during execution and sort out challenges if any

-?????????Regular check-ins to exchange ideas, experiences, feedback and best practices

-?????????Change evangelists amongst the Sales teams who can champion the cause.

-?????????Active involvement of the Sales Managers’ supervisors to ensure alignment

-?????????Management reviews and KPIs which include elements geared towards managing people rather than just sales/business outputs

?A Bottoms-Up approach to building Sales Leadership Strength will ensure a solid foundation for the Sales team, and make the outcomes more predictable and success sustainable.