If you are investing just in your frontline salespeople, training won’t get you the peak performance results you desire.
Don’t get me wrong I love training and developing sales teams but over the years’ experience has shown me that if we don’t invest in developing their sales manager much of the improvement can be quickly lost.
That’s a big statement from someone who generates a large percentage of their income from sales training!
But it’s such a critical point to creating a high-performing team that it needs to be clearly stated and understood.
Today smart companies across the globe are waking up to an important fact.
They must invest in developing their sales managers to achieve maximum performance.
Which means stopping the erroneous notion that by promoting your best salesperson you automatically will have the greatest manager.
It won’t happen automatically because ‘Sales Management’ is a completely different role.
Primarily because you need to move from a position of winning for yourself to winning through your people, and that is a massive transformation to make without some expertise and support.
So, here are 5 reasons why every company should be investing in developing their sales managers.
- Set the pace. – They are the ones that set the pace and create the atmosphere for the whole team to achieve high performance.
- Direct link between boardroom & field. – They are the ones who can effectively communicate the strategy and direction from the boardroom and translate that into meaningful sales activities to be implemented in the field.
- Know their numbers. – They must understand their sales figures and be able to read them like a book! Spotting pipeline pitfalls and forecast potential blockages with the ability to help their team overcome them.
- Leverage their experience. – They need the tools and coaching skills for a strong Knowledge Transfer, developing everyone by multiplying their skills throughout the team.
- Breed Loyalty – A good manager will be able to win the hearts and minds of their team. This is another valuable quality when you consider the high cost and impact of staff retention on your organisation. The person in the role of sales manager can dramatically affects the bottom line, but they need to know and develop the qualities required to lead.
When you think about these 5 points is very evident that investing and empowering your sales manager is the key to superb results.
For additional insights checkout, the attached visual – -The Essence of Thriving Sales Organisation’ and listen to the podcast –
‘Empowering your sales manager to lead the team.’ https://www.linearstructure.com/category/podcast-series-across-the-line-creating-sales-sprinters/
Committed to Your Continued Sales Success!
Peter
