Kevin F. Davis

The best sales managers know how to hire enthusiastic people who have the right attitude and want to take advantage of a great opportunity. But even the best new hires usually lack many key skills. Where does a sales manager start? Here are three critical skills you should coach your new hires on.

Qualification Skills

Do you remember when you were new on the job? Did you know how to recognize prospects that could turn into good clients and those that would just waste your time? Neither did I!

Too much valuable time is wasted on low potential accounts. New hires need to learn how to weed out under-qualified leads faster.

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One of the most difficult situations sales managers face is how to confront problem performers in a way that gets them to change their ways, and become more successful. I define a problem performer as anyone who has not responded to your coaching conversations. In other words, you noticed poor performance or unsatisfactory behavior, brought the issue to the attention of the person, and gave them specific and actionable advice on how to correct the situation. Then, they made no change. Here’s what you do now….

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As a sales manager, if you are managing your time well, and balancing priorities enough to be coaching your reps –congratulations!! A big dilemma faced by most sales managers, though, is how to coach and more importantly whom do you commit the bulk of your sales coaching time to? Who you coach is every bit as important as how you coach.

Like most sales managers, you likely have some “A” players, your top performers. You also some have “C” players — the people who are always at the bottom in terms of results and attitudes. And most of your reps are “B” players — the people in the middle.

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The end of the year is fast approaching and your annual sales numbers are solidifying.

It’s time to ask yourself: Does one or more of your sales reps stand out from the pack? Does this rep possess “super star” qualities such as an awesome work ethic, the ability to solve their own problems, someone you can consider a self-starter?

This rep most definitely needs to be recognized as much for his or her own achievements, but also as an example for the rest of the team as someone who is following the company’s idea of a the definition of success.

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Time management is a critical component in sales. As the old adage goes, time is money.

But, do you know if you are a proactive or reactive sales manager?

We have devised a list of questions and common everyday tasks that sales managers are faced with in an effort to help you prioritize your day to day activities and adopt a proactive mindset.

First, How many of theses activities do you tackle everyday?

• Respond to emails and phone calls
• Check sales numbers
• Check in with newest reps or the ones who are struggling the most
• Check the status of deals
• Respond to boss’s requests
• Reach out to customers
• Spent time doing one-on-one coaching
• Link your actions to strategic priorities
• the list goes on…

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As I talked about in my previous blog, getting addicted to the adrenaline of fighting fires and solving problems is one reason that sales managers can have a hard time becoming a more effective, proactive leader. When you were a salesperson, there was benefit in being a good firefighter. But not that you’re a manager, you’ve just been promoted to Fire Preventer in Chief.

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I recently reviewed the sales manager’s job description for a Fortune 500 company and learned that about 85% of the responsibilities they assigned to their sales managers were related to sales coaching. Then my partner and I conducted in-person interviews with four of their regional sales managers, and asked “What percentage of your time do you actually spend one-on-one, coaching a salesperson?” Not one of the sales managers told us that they spent more than 5% of their time, one-on-one, coaching a salesperson.

So for this company, only 5% of a sales manager’s day was actually spent on tasks associated with achieving 85% of what the company expected a sales manager to accomplish. It was no wonder that this company’s recent “climate survey” had measured low sales morale, an unacceptably high sales turnover rate and poor ramp-up to quota for new-hires.

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