SMT (Sales & Marketing Training) has an article in its recent newsletter that surveyed its members for advice they would give to new sales managers. The author has provided the top 4 pieces of advice:
- Assessing talent is a first step
- Coaching the €œcoachable€ spending appropriate time on those individuals
- Avoid falling into the trap of €œwhat made you successful as a rep€ will make you successful as a manager
- Setting expectations and goals
I couldn’t agree more with these 4 items, especially the first one. The contributors expanded on their suggestions:
€œAssess the strengths, weaknesses and development needs of your team. Review your team by your success measures. Set plans against benchmarks and focus on what you can do to improve the best producers.€
Absolutely. We assist new sales managers by providing an objective assessment of their team and providing a development plan to target the right benchmarks for each individual. Another piece of sound advice occurs later in the article:
€œSpend time with your reps and coach them. Don’t just tell them they have to do this or that (a Drill Sergeant), work with them and coach them to be better performers (a manager).€
This is a top issue for sales managers. We encounter many who appear to take a completely hands-off approach. I’m not sure if they consciously do this to avoid accountability for the rep’s performance or if they simply are not sure of what to do. Either way, a detached drill sergeant is not an effective management method in today’s business world.
Sales managers need to stay involved with their reps in order to develop them further and grow the revenue stream. This growth occurs by knowing the rep’s pipeline and coaching them to expand upon their strengths.