What I Learned From Talking To Your Sales Reps

As a former frontline sales manager at Gartner, I often found myself overly focused on getting to goal that I overlooked that the most sustainable path was getting more of my reps to their goal. This October edition reflects the sentiment of how your reps interpret you as their manager. The below summarizes “What I Learned From Talking to Your Sales Reps.”

To all frontline sales managers…

Amidst all the pressure associated with closing out the fiscal year or your quarter end, my natural instincts are to share tactics and insights from my time as a frontline sales manager. Yet my sense is if you’re not already in full EOY motion, I’m sure sales leadership will begin the exercise of identifying key deals, scheduling war rooms, announcing all hands on deck, producing stack rankings, and the myriad of other tactics to get in position for a strong close. And I love it...it’s what we do as sales managers. However, let me not add more tactical noise, and rather share with you what I’ve found to be perhaps the most interesting and insightful exercise I’ve done year to date - listening to your reps.      

As you look across the findings, let me encourage you to picture each member of your team. I mean really form an image...and as this picture comes together, think about what you represent to them as their manager. Why...because we need to get something straight.  

What you feel you represent to them and what they believe may be drastically different. While your day to day may lead you to feel you represent a multitude of things to your team - from a leader to an administrator, almost every single rep we listened to is looking to you for one single purpose...to guide them to goal. Let me say this differently, your reps don’t care about the number of interviews you need to do, open headcount, your QBR prep, the fact you just met with this VP or that SVP...what they care about is your ability to guide them to goal.  

Here’s what they told me:   

• Everyone wants to be coached (well almost everyone) - and yes, even your tenured, most experienced reps. It doesn’t matter if they’re older, younger, male, female, top of the stack rankings...most reps are eager to gain an edge or fundamentally change an approach based on your ability to diagnose a gap. Another way of thinking about this is “truth speaks to power” couldn’t be more true. Your reps are interested in your accurate assessment of their skillset.  
• Your reps don’t want you to take over their calls. In fact they want just the opposite, they want to feel as if they can make mistakes in front of you and that your coaching will enable them to get better.  
• Your reps want more than the “what” they did right or wrong, they want to know the “why”. They’re looking to understand why pre-call planning matters, why a solid intro and agenda can make all the difference in advancing a sales cycle, why it’s important to understand the difference between a customer agreeing to next steps and calendaring next steps. Telling someone what to do is different than helping them understand why.  
• Your reps want recognition.  Some of the best feedback I heard from your reps was when you told them something they didn’t recognize they did exceptionally well. I don’t need to tell you, sales is about doing the small things that matter - and your ability to recognize the small contributions demonstrates not only your appreciation for detail, but that you’re paying attention. Recognizing writing styles in email correspondence, punctuality, professional poise, humility, active listening were among the specific examples your reps cited as being meaningful feedback on the things they were doing right.    
• Your reps want to work for someone with high standards.  Perhaps this fits into the category of the blatantly obvious, yet when you ask your reps what this means, you hear characteristics such as: consistency in feedback, an ability to maintain a development thread across the quarter (not something new every time you’re together), someone who understands the difference between compliance and making the right judgement call, a very high “do what you say you’re going to do” ratio, and someone with a high degree of accountability.   
• Your reps cited Identifying, Qualifying, and Prioritizing “Pain Points” as the #1 self identified skill. They’re looking directly to you for the most coaching.
• Your reps recognize that you too need feedback and coaching. Your reps can help...so can your peers. Your reps were forthcoming about wanting you to ask your peers what they do in certain situations and share best practices. More specifically, your reps want to know that you see your role as a developer of talent and that you subscribe to both coaching and getting coached.   

Being a frontline sales manager today is nothing short of a Herculean ask. It was clear from all the feedback that if you invest, your reps will return the investment 10x.  

Good luck down the stretch and towards getting more of your reps to the high-side of their comp plans!  

Best - pi