Successful dealers are always looking to grow, nothing new there. The question is what structure should be put in place to best achieve the desired growth? If money wasn’t an issue and we had unlimited opportunity, it would be easy to plug and play entire sales teams with the thought that more “feet on the street” would naturally lead to increased sales. Unfortunately, the only certainty with that scenario today is a sudden and significant increase in costs. Besides, we can all agree that the opportunity for imaging dealers is no longer limitless and neither is the cash in the bank account.
Too often in this business dealers choose to hedge their bets, so to speak, and hope for growth by attempting to scale up small teams under the guidance of “selling managers.” The term itself is somewhat redundant because leaders within a sales organization should be expected to sell with reps on a regular basis. Obviously, the dealer is looking to task a high performer with the mantle of leadership while maintaining responsibility for a base of accounts and the corresponding quota. The dealer thought process is to protect the current account relationships and provide development to both a high performer and sales staff, while limiting payroll risk. Surely these are all noble objectives—the result of moving to a selling manager structure rarely yields the desired results.
There are pretty clear reasons why one person can’t wear these two hats effectively. Take a look at your reps – the high performers. Can you honestly say that they effectively manage their time well enough to do their current job plus another that is even more time consuming? To be fair, most reps need to do a better job managing their time just to maximize the opportunities within their current territory. Adding management responsibilities to these folks would be folly. Just facing facts, sales management is a full-time job. Looking at the time required to effectively recruit, train, and develop people it becomes clear that there are not enough hours in the day to effectively perform as both a sales manager and rep.
I am confident readers of this have heard the expression, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Unfortunately, the expression is valid in the case of the selling manager. Experience shows that either the person excels in their personal territory at the expense of the development of the team or they are effective leading the team at their own expense in their territory. Given the fact that the accounts the selling manager is tasked with are typically higher in profile, this is a really bad combo for the company. I guess in reality we could coin a new expression: Jack of all trades, master of ONE.
The downside of creating a selling manager structure can be significant. There is considerable risk of customer loss. If the team is not being developed your customers are susceptible to attack from competition. On the other hand if your selling manager is focused on developing the team and not covering her or his territory, larger more meaningful accounts are vulnerable. Another common unintended consequence is simply burnout of a valued employee. Selling managers often become frustrated with the amount of effort they are expending vs. the amount of financial reward they are used to earning. They also miss the feeling of success from being listed at the top of the stack ranking. Remember, these are the folks who are used to making the club trip and thrive on recognition to fuel their self worth. Too many times I have seen good people moved into a flawed selling manager structure only to quit or return to their sales role within a year. Do you want to put your best employees through that?
