The Sales Management Problem

The sales industry has a leadership problem, and it’s bigger than we think.

First, there’s the sales management problem: Sales professionals are promoted into sales leadership due to high individual performance, and not based on actual leadership ability. Then they are very rarely supported with leadership training, coaching, or support. But the problem goes farther than that.

Chris Mott is a sales trainer and coach with Braveheart Sales Performance, an Objective Management Group (OMG) partner with more than 30 years experience, and a Membrain partner. He says the sales leadership problem goes all the way up the chain. He points out that the vast majority of CEOs do not come from a sales background, and generally have very little idea how sales operates.

“They come out of operations, or technology, or science, or engineering, or finance,” he says. “And to them, sales is all this touchy-feely, hard to organize voodoo science. It’s a bunch of people they don’t relate to, don’t really like that much, wouldn’t want to be, and who are responsible for carrying the financial burden of the business.”

According to Mott, this accounts for a large portion of the ongoing sales effectiveness failures. And in order to get better, we have to address it.

A Failure of Responsibility

The leadership problem in sales is not new. According to OMG data going back thirty years, not much has changed industry-wide in at least three decades. Why are we so stuck? Why does nothing change?

Mostly because the leadership itself refuses to take responsibility.

“They all make excuses,” says Mott, of salespeople, sales leaders, and organizational leadership alike. “They say their people are untrainable. Nobody follows a process. Sales leaders don’t hold them accountable, don’t know how to motivate them, don’t know how to hire, and they don’t have systems and processes to manage their people.”

But nobody is willing to accept their own role in these deficits.

If you’re going to actually build a strong sales organization, says Mott, leadership has to lead, and has to take responsibility for the failures of the past and the future success of the whole. And that means making some changes that may be uncomfortable.

“If you're going to build a quality sales organization, then as a sales leader, you need to approach sales leadership in a way that's not the way that you were taught, or the way you think it should be, or the way you want to do it.”

Leaders Must Lead

Ideally, the CEO should be involved in any sales transformation project from the start. Realistically, that can take some work.

“OMG has a tool that does a team leadership evaluation, and a lot of people use that as a way to get the senior management team involved,” says Mott.

Other approaches for involving senior leadership can start with conversations about value proposition, messaging, and culture. This opens the door for alignment at the senior level, so you can create a more sustainable program and longer term results.

Ultimately, senior leadership gets involved when they understand thoroughly what’s in it for them.

“In my experience,” says Mott, “the companies where the CEO is directly involved and they make sales function a priority, are the ones where there is some compelling reason on the part of the CEO to make sales operate better. Maybe it’s an exit strategy, a competitive problem, a margins issue, or something threatening the organization’s survival.”

Transparency, Training, Coaching

With the C-level leadership on board, it’s easier to make critical changes at the sales management level.

“Most managers suck,” says Mott. “But it’s because they weren’t taught, they don’t have the people skills, and they’re not given any process to use.”

The reason sales management fails is that the organizational leadership fails them. To fix this, senior leadership has to get on board with supporting their sales managers in a whole new way.

First, you have to build a culture of transparency, in which managers are willing to share their work and be honestly evaluated. Then you have to invest in training and, finally, in coaching.

“Many salespeople go to Zig Ziglar or Tony Robbins, and they have these ‘three days to success’ type things, and those are good,” says Mott. “But then they think that’s all they need. And if salespeople are untrained, sales leaders are even more untrained.”

“So you need to do a sales leadership intensive as a starting point,” says Mott. “But then you need to equip them with a coaching process and framework, and coach them consistently to help them apply and stay accountable to the training.”

Most sales managers have never received coaching themselves, not now and not when they were on the front lines themselves. Yet they’re expected suddenly to start doing it for their people, when they’ve never even had it modeled.

There’s a great deal that the sales industry has been getting wrong about sales management and coaching, for a very long time. The good news for your organization is that if you get it right, you can leave the competition in the dust.

Mott’s approach starts at the top and integrates training, coaching and leadership throughout the structure of the organization for lasting and sustainable results.

We’re proud of the partners we support with the Membrain platform, and the work they do to elevate the sales profession. You can find Braveheart, Chris Mott, and all of our partners on our partners page, or reach out to us to find the right team to help you attain world-class sales performance.