BusinessWeek.com offers a comprehensive article regarding executive development especially in regards to leadership. Sales executives/managers are underserved in this area. The author provides a handful of suggestions for development engagement, but I want to highlight two of them:
€¢ Targeted assessment and development planning as part of succession planning or career path planning;
€¢ Peer networking roundtables.
Those two topics are right in our wheelhouse. We provide sales executive assessments today that help managers understand their natural strengths and potential blind spots. The reports are important in providing the basis for the sales manager to properly onramp a new salesperson and to retain them over time.
To the second bullet – peer networking roundtables – we will be launching a Twin Cities’ based group this fall as our first foray into building a sales manager network. The group will be headed by Mike Cardinal from our company and will cover numerous sales management topics. Look for more information on the sales manager roundtable later this summer.