The primary role of the sales manager is to coach, measure and hold all members of the sales team accountable, helping them build and manage a healthy sales pipeline big enough to consistently make their numbers.
It is the very backbone of a company's sales force.
For this reason, it's absolutely crucial for the company leadership to be in a position to properly evaluate if a recently hired sales director is suitable for the position.
To help achieve this, here are 4 surefire signs that you unfortunately didn't hire the right sales manager.
The main task of sales managers is to coach their team to accomplish increased performance, and therefore, they should devote half of their time to this important activity.
If your sales manager doesn't take the time to adequately coach his representatives, debrief after meetings with potential customers and talk with them daily, he is essentially showing that he doesn't have the skills required for this position.
Important note: It's also sometimes the case that the very definition of the role of sales manager, according to senior management, is actually not aligned with the responsibilities that produces measurable results. If you currently haven't realized the importance of the coaching responsibilities in your sales manager, it might be necessary to take a step back and potentially re-allocate people into new roles, better suited to their strengths and skill sets.
For example, it is often required that sales managers spend much of their time validating and creating reports, selling themselves or accompanying representatives on the road. However, these activities do not affect the performance of the individuals within the sales team.
A good sales manager measures the work of its representatives objectively. In terms of results, as well as in terms of activities and behaviors. The job of a representative is really quite quantifiable and can be methodically qualified.
A sales manager who acts intuitively, based solely on his own perceptions, is unwillingly showing gaps in the knowledge and understanding of how to most effectively manage a sales team.
A sales manager shouldn't have to be involved systematically in the sales process of its representatives or accompany them during their meetings to get deals closed.
This sign shows either a lack experience or the expertise to assist the representatives or the inability to pass on their knowledge to the rest of the team. All in all, the result is the same: the organization becomes too dependent on the sales manager. This is a risk for two main reasons: Naturally, if you have to let the sales manager go or if he leaves for somewhere else, but equally important, even if he stays the skill level of your sales people isn't improved and the growth of your business is held back.
A good sales manager must not under any circumstances justify excuses given by the sales team. A sales leader should be uncompromising on this point, and management must be aligned and stay firm on this point as well, to leave no room for excuses.
Often wanting to be loved by the sales people, sales managers can be tempted to side with them and tirelessly forgive their failures. However, the desire of being the "good guy" when it comes to excuse-making will considerably harm the chances to successfully achieving the company's sales targets.
Important note: Management must assess the sales manager regularly during the first few months after being hired. This applies regardless of whether management is satisfied or not with the work of its new sales manager.
To do this, you must examine the daily priorities, objectives and actions the sales manager plans to undertake with the sales team and the frequency and nature of the sales coaching being performed. Check the quality of coaching interventions by asking questions on what lessons the sales people have learned, for example, or on the action plans set in place with them.
Through this evaluation, management will be able to determine whether the sales manager can improve the performance of the sales organization or if it would be better to find a new resource for this challenge. Generally, it takes more or less six months to reach this conclusion, but without placing yourself in the position to evaluate this in the first place, how would you know?
Entrepreneur, business owner, speaker, trainer, coach, adviser, blogger and expert about sales force performance and business growth… I'm all of it and none of it at the same time. Want to know why? I take an integrated approach to know where your company needs help to get from where it is right now to where you wanted to be. My clients know me for telling them what they need to hear, instead of what they want to hear. They value the depth of my expertise, the science behind my framework and the predictability of my insights. While most try to fix salespeople by working on factors that influence sales, I concentrate first on the scientific causes of underachievement and overachievement of sales organizations. I build profitable sales culture by working on the essential components that increase an organizations probability of generating profitable sales.
Find out more about Frédéric Lucas on LinkedIn
From north to south, east to west, Membrain has thousands of happy clients all over the world.
