{"id":6811,"date":"2014-04-03T08:08:30","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T12:08:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theweekinimaging.com\/?p=6811"},"modified":"2014-04-09T10:03:46","modified_gmt":"2014-04-09T14:03:46","slug":"success-at-the-toughest-job-in-the-company-sales-management-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/feature-articles\/2014\/04\/success-at-the-toughest-job-in-the-company-sales-management-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Success at the Toughest Job in the Company: Sales Management Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"training67956623\"<\/a>Front line management is tough regardless of your functional area.\u00a0 As a manager you need to deal with scheduling, employees\u2019 personal issues, training and emergencies you could never have anticipated.\u00a0 When you\u2019re a front line sales manager you have to throw into the mix the high visibly of having to generate the revenue month in and month out.<\/p>\n

Many consultants, trainers, and poorly developed sales leaders have contributed to making the sales manager\u2019s job exponentially more difficult.\u00a0 The added difficulty has been mostly presented as trying to be helpful when in fact it takes a difficult job into the impossible to succeed zone.\u00a0 Some examples of sending a sales manager in the wrong direction can be found in suggestions like \u201calways be recruiting,\u201d a focus to irrelevant metrics, such as phone calls as the critical success factor, and the concept that the manager should \u201cspend your time in the field.\u201d\u00a0 Sadly, those three concepts are the beginning and the end of many sales managers\u2019 repertoire of daily activities.<\/p>\n

Learn more about Strategy Development\u2019s sales management training. <\/a><\/p>\n

I am sure I have many managers, and even vice president of sales and company owners, confused at this point so I\u2019ll take a second to debunk these concepts. First, the only reason you\u2019d need to be constantly recruiting is if you had tremendous turnover. If that were the case then as a manager you should be focused on what is driving that turnover and spend your time fixing that issue rather than continuing to put employees in a situation where they cannot achieve success.\u00a0 If you were in an industry where you were growing like wildfire, say some aspect of cloud computing, and were expanding your sales force at 50 percent to 100 percent per year then hire some staff recruiters to take on that role. Should networking with high performing sales professional be part of a manager\u2019s role?\u00a0 Absolutely, but if a manager were always doing something, my hope would be that it was developing their team members.<\/p>\n

When it comes to metrics, phone calls are basically like measuring if your sales person shows up for work. If you hired a sales person and then have to tell them that they need to prospect you made a bad hire, a really bad hire. Moreover, if I really wanted to measure activity in 2014, e-mail would be my primary metric (I am not suggesting you measure this level of activity with a sales professional except on a short-term remedial situation. If you have to go more than two weeks you\u2019re telling them they have to work.) And \u201cfield time\u201d is one very important aspect of the manager\u2019s real job, developing each person on their team. But when there is a general rule that the manager should \u201cbe in the field\u201d I\u2019d bet the field is Starbucks or some other location with free Wi-Fi where they can meet with their team members, work with their database, and make phone calls.<\/p>\n

How do you provide an environment where your sales manager can achieve success?\u00a0 First and foremost, measure the success of your manager on how many members of their team achieve success. Because the manager\u2019s primary responsibility should be to develop their team members this has to be the primary measurement of success. If this isn\u2019t happening in your company you probably have one or more of the following issues:<\/p>\n