How to Be a Better Sales Manager, Part 10 - Bring out the Best in Everyone

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How to Be a Better Sales Manager, Part 10 - Bring out the Best in Everyone

By Brad Shorr | March 11, 2008

This is the tenth in a 10-part series, How to Be a Better Sales Manager. It’s my belief that the sales manager is underserved. There’s plenty of training and coaching available for sales people, but managers, the unheralded heroes of sales success, are all too often left to their own devices. These posts are designed for sales managers who want to do better and are looking for ideas.
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The best way for a sales manager to rise to the top is by helping sales reps improve. Sometimes you accomplish it by being a teacher or a story teller — communicating skills and sharing your experiences. Sometimes you take on the role of a coach — asking questions and drawing out talent that’s already there.

Either way, it helps to have a method of evaluating talent so you know where to focus. If all you do is throw out advice randomly or teach without a pattern, you run the risk of confusing people. I think success in sales boils down to four ingredients –

Skills
Attitude
Work habits
Ethics

Skills are probably the easiest things for a sales manager to cultivate. It’s fairly easy to see where skills are lacking, and there is no shortage of advice and role models and systems to improve such things as time management, presentation technique, and relationship building. Sometimes the hardest part of skills training is taking the time to do it. It’s not as glamorous as other parts of your job, and requires a good deal of patience and detail work. But it’s an area where, if you don’t make a difference, nobody else is going to step in and do it for you.

Attitude is a bit harder to cultivate, because attitudes come from within — you can’t “make” a sales rep enthusiastic, positive, ambitious, and competitive. But you can help bring those qualities to the surface by setting a good example, offering encouragement at the right times, being there to listen, providing support at crunch time, and setting a clear and exciting direction.

Work habits are, in my experience, more difficult to cultivate even than attitude, although you could argue work habits are a reflection of attitude. But there are sales people with truly fantastic attitudes who, for whatever reason, simply don’t put in the time and effort necessary to achieve success. Dealing with work ethic issues is tricky. Some people respond well to and even welcome a disciplined, taskmaster approach. But for others, cracking the whip is completely and utterly demotivating. If you take this into account and vary your approach depending on the person, you’re vulnerable to being tagged as inconsistent or playing favorites. One thing you should do in all cases is set clear expectations up front about hours, call volume, and whatever other key metrics apply. If you establish a standard, at least everyone knows where they stand.

Ethics is an area where you may or may not be able to make a difference. Integrity is the most important element of success in sales. Without integrity, your skills might soar to lofty heights, but you will still be sunk. If a person is basically dishonest and doesn’t want to change, what can you do? Thankfully, those situations are rare. It’s just like sports. The Michael Vick stories get all the attention, but the great majority of athletes, who selflessly donate time and money to worthy causes, go unnoticed. Most of the time, people come into the work force with a good ethical foundation, and are ready, willing, and able to learn how business should be conducted. When it comes to ethics, there is no substitute for leading by example. Get the integrity piece right, and everything else falls into place. It’s only a matter of time.

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3 Responses to “How to Be a Better Sales Manager, Part 10 - Bring out the Best in Everyone”

Andrew Says:
March 14th, 2008 at 4:12 am
Hi Brad,

I think the point you make about setting clear expectations up front under the ‘work habits’ section also applies to the ‘ethics’ section as well.

In terms of attitude, work habits and ethics, if problems occur frequenty in any of these areas, then hiring practices and proceedures should be closely examined. Diligent and effective hiring practices are, I believe, the first step in preventing the above problems. It’s far better to screen out prosective employees who have poor attitudes, work habbits or ethics than it is to deal with these problems once the person has been employed.

Also, if remedial action in relation to the above problems unsuccessful, then termination of the employees concerned should be considered.

Cheers

Andrew
Brad Shorr Says:
March 14th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Andrew, that’s probably one reason why psychological screening is a growth industry. I met someone recently whose firm is extremely busy helping corporations identify the type of issues you talk about. Unless an employer has incredible intuition, it’s hard to do that kind of screening without special training.
10 Ways to Be a Better Sales Manager | Word Sell, Inc. Says:
March 19th, 2008 at 5:00 am
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