After I ended my career as a sales manager, I’ve had the good fortune to observe and work with thousands of other sales managers. Here are five lessons I’ve learned by seeing what the smartest, most effective sales managers do differently that set them apart from the crowd.
1. Smart sales managers replace scorecard coaching with developmental coaching
Imagine someone hands you their golf scorecard, and the results aren’t what they want. How can you help them improve? The scorecard tells you the outcome of each golf hole, but it doesn’t reveal the golf swings and course decisions that resulted in that score.
Too many sales managers have been taught this scorecard approach to sales coaching.
The smartest sales managers understand that to help their team improve, they have to conduct developmental coaching, which means focusing their attention on the inputs. They help their salespeople continually improve their skills, increase their knowledge about how to position your solutions as a prospect’s best option, and use their time wisely in terms of both contacting new prospects and upselling to existing customers.
2. Smart sales managers are proactive in their coaching
A regional sales manager was surprised to learn that his salespeople saw him as a gunny-sacker: though he could identify problems early on, he often didn’t talk with the reps about ineffective behaviors until the person failed spectacularly in some way. Naturally, they became defensive when he approached them with a litany of issues that hadn’t been discussed before.
When coaching happens after a rep’s failure, it often blindsides the salesperson. The feedback can feel abrupt, overwhelming, and punitive rather than supportive. This can breed resentment and anxiety, rather than motivation.
Smart sales managers are proactive with their coaching. They work regularly with each salesperson to identify strengths and opportunities for improvement. And they make coaching a daily priority.
3. Smart sales managers have coaching appointments in their calendar
In my workshops, I challenge sales managers to look at their calendars and tell me what it reflects about how they use their time. The answers are predictably disappointing: lots of meetings with people outside their sales teams but usually very little if any appointments for doing the kind of work they were hired to do—which is improving their sales team.
Because developing their salespeople is the #1 priority for smart sales managers, their calendars reflect that priority. They schedule coaching appointments with their people and have reserved blocks of coaching time. And they have learned how to minimize meetings that take away from their priority work.
4. Smart sales managers emphasize a customer focus
Saying you are customer-focused is almost a cliché in today’s world. But let me challenge you: are your coaching conversations focused more on the steps your people have completed in selling, or on the steps a prospect has completed in buying?
Traditionally, coaching questions have been focused on actions the salesperson has taken, such as whether they have scheduled a meeting, qualified a prospect, or submitted a quote/proposal (or made a presentation). The problem is that tracking only actions of the salesperson provides poor visibility into what is really going on with the customer.
To help your sales team develop a true customer focus, you need to frame your coaching questions around customer actions not sales rep actions. Here are a few example questions:
- Where is the prospect in their buying process? What customer actions have led you to this conclusion?
- What problems have they described to you that we can solve?
- What buying criteria are most important to this prospect? How do you know? Do different decision makers have different buying criteria?
5. Smart sales managers don’t let low producers linger on the team
Nearly every sales manager admits to me they have someone on the team who is a chronic under-producer.
I point out to them that smart sales managers don’t let situations like this linger on. If they are convinced they’ve done their best to give the person a fair shake and yet they cannot succeed on their team, they move quickly to de-hire that person.
If they think the underperformer COULD do the job if he or she wanted, smart sales managers observe the person’s performance in some detail to gather facts. Then they have what I call a “Two Roads” conversation with that salesperson where they describe two options and the consequences of each option.
The first road means the person agrees to make changes in their behavior so they can improve their sales effectiveness and results. Ultimately, this path could mean more appointments with qualified prospects, a higher income, assignment to prominent accounts, etc.
The second road means the person is not willing to make changes or put in more effort. Negative consequences of this road could include termination from the company.
Either way, the choice of which road to take is the salesperson’s. If they choose the first road to success, the manager should play an active role in helping the person identify areas where they could improve and providing support (training, mentoring, etc.) to make that happen.
Are You a Smart Manager?
The best way to summarize the traits of a smart sales manager is that their top priority is always the development of their team. They are proactive in making that coaching happen on a daily basis. They ask coaching questions focused on identifying evidence of customer actions. They deal decisively with people who fail to produce. Which of these smart sales management strategies do you need to work on improving?
