CHAPTER 14
Great Sales Management: Leading People
Somehow, over the last two decades, conventional wisdom has locked into a singular view of the role of sales managers. The notion is that the primary role of the sales manager is to coach salespeople. This is ironic because, in our experience working with 50 of the world’s leading sales forces, none of them would report that their sales managers are doing an adequate job of coaching. Is having a universally accepted standard of the sales manager as a coach accurate or useful? Probably not.
In the next chapter we’ll discuss why the whole notion of coaching is worth questioning. Here let’s get a better picture of what great sales management looks like today. The easiest way to get a window into great sales management is to look at what happens when salespeople become sales managers for the first time. (It is easy here to repeat the other piece of related conventional wisdom: great salespeople often don’t make great sales managers. True. But the most logical place to look for new sales managers is always going to be from the existing pool of high-performing salespeople. You just have to select the ones with the right skills and personal attributes.)
Some successful salespeople, when appointed to their first sales management position, initially focus almost exclusively on customers. They spend a lot of time going on sales calls with their team. They remove roadblocks that are getting in the way of closing deals. In some cases, they continue to manage opportunities or relationships. Overall, they believe their path to success as a sales manager is to be what we call “customer advocates.”
Other newly promoted sales managers find it difficult to shift from being a peer to their team to their boss. They become the “buddy” sales manager, always willing to step in and help, whatever is needed. In the better versions of this approach, they focus their energy on developing their team members, believing that the greatest success will come from everyone working at his or her potential.
The third situation happens when new sales managers actually develop an affinity for all those reports they are now required to produce for their company. They become a bit of a spreadsheet jockey, constantly moving numbers around to get the reports right. They are not as available to their team or customers, but their bosses sure appreciate being able to get quick data. We call these sales managers, “administrators.”
Which of these three options is the best approach? None of them and all of them. That is, successful sales managers have to balance their focus on all three of these areas—customer, team, and company—all at once (see Figure 14.1). When they overfocus on one area, another suffers. The question that sales managers should ask themselves every day is, “Am I balancing my time across the needs of our customers, the needs of my team, and the needs of my company?”
Figure 14.1 Three areas of potential focus for sales managers.
Even with a balanced approach, the life of a sales manager is difficult. We might even say impossible. We believe there is a major restructuring of sales management coming around the corner. Sales managers are expected to do far too much. Take a look at what most companies hope sales managers will do:
Set expectations.
Observe customer meetings and coach before and after.
Provide in-the-moment feedback during planning and office activities.
Set development priorities.
Interview and select new salespeople.
Manage the job candidate pipeline.
Oversee onboarding.
Sell.
Maintain relationships with key customers.
Plan.
Report.
Manage the sales pipeline.
There is not enough time in a day, a week, or a quarter to do a good job on all these activities. Moreover, this list doesn’t include a host of activities that we have found are necessary for high-performing sales managers. We’ll describe those later in this chapter and in the two subsequent chapters.
As a result of having too many activities, most sales managers focus on a few where they are strong while doing the best job they can on a set of secondary priorities, and usually leaving out altogether a few activities on the list above.
Here are some of the changes we see coming to the way sales management is organized:
Some development of salespeople will move to field coaches who have this as their primary responsibility. These field coaches become experts both in the desired skills and in the process of behavioral change. Companies that already apply this approach find it powerful. The risk, however, which we have seen several times, is that after a couple of bad quarters, these positions are the first to be eliminated, along with all people development activities, like training. Good leaders have to see these positions as long-term investments. To link the positions more directly to their revenue contribution, leaders can structure compensation incentives that are driven in part by how much revenue increases among the people being coached.
Technology will replace some sales management activities. A significant portion of the sales manager’s job involves communication and development. Increasingly, technology can perform large portions of that work more efficiently. From a distance, this can look like the predictions of the 1950s where kitchen and laundry technology promised homemakers a life of leisure. That’s not exactly the case. However, technology can provide new and relevant information to salespeople on a daily basis, analyze data to recommend customer and development priorities, deliver short learning solutions, and provide feedback based on CRM data. Videos can show what “great” looks like, and social features can allow salespeople to learn from their peers. Technology to do all these things already exists.
In thinking about what the sales manager of the future looks like, we have found the most useful model to be one that breaks the job into three components:
Leading people
Executing the plan
In the remainder of this chapter, we will outline the key activities required to successfully lead people and describe what is particularly critical during periods of X-to-Y change. The other two components, developing people and executing the plan, will be discussed in the chapters that follow.
Communicate Vision
When it comes to the manager’s role in leading people, the standard view is that the most important focus for the leader is setting expectations. That is true, but we find that it is incomplete. Salespeople want to know more than just what is expected of them. They want to know why. Particularly among the increasing number of millennial salespeople, there is also a desire to be connected to and contributing to a larger purpose. The best sales managers today—the ones that sales reps remember for the rest of their career—are those who inspire people with a larger sense of purpose, based on the mission, vision, and values of the company. Of course, their success also comes from focusing on achievement of quantitative targets, but they don’t focus only on the numbers.
Great sales managers today understand that they must have a vision for their team. Yes, there might be an overall corporate vision, but they also create one that is aligned to the larger vision but shows what success will be for their sales team. They share that vision directly and through stories and examples of how people are contributing to the vision’s attainment.
These great sales managers also show how each person’s plan is aligned with the company’s strategy and plan for the current performance year. When times get tough—which they almost inevitably do at some point—these managers motivate their team by focusing on the bigger picture and offering a longer-term view that shows how things will get better.
It’s probably not hard to see how the ability to communicate a vision becomes a vital element of success in a world of X-to-Y change. First, the manager has to explain what Y is, what it means, and why it is vital for the company’s and the salespeople’s future. To be successful, this must be done with authenticity; that is, sales managers need to speak from the heart about why they think this is the right thing to do.
Second, sales managers have to articulate what a Y future looks like for their teams, not just for the company as a whole. Next, and this is the most important part and the theme of this book, managers have to describe the shorter-term XY picture of success. They have to communicate to salespeople how X and Y will be sold at the same time to the same customers. An essential part of this work is emphasizing that X business and the people who sell X are still highly valued. Managers have to explain the new measures of success, which must contain metrics for X, XY, and Y.
Demonstrate Executive Presence
Increasingly, the sales leaders we work with at the world’s largest sales forces expect their sales managers to show up internally and externally as executives would. That means that when working with their teams, sales managers cannot express cynicism about new policies or strategies. They can’t blame leaders for wrongheaded moves. They have to own the company strategy as if it were their own. That means they cannot remain neutral either. Sales managers who demonstrate executive presence are no longer just messengers of news from above. They are partners in executing the strategy. Sales managers who have figured all this out also have discovered another secret: this approach is also the fast path to promotion.
Whether they appreciate it or not, sales managers are always “on stage” with their team. Their people are watching what they do and assessing whether they want to be led into battle by this person. That means that managers must act from authentic conviction. People will quickly spot anything less than full honesty. So that means that, prior to talking to their teams, sales managers have to genuinely align their mindset with the new strategy, change, or policy announcement.
In a world of X-to-Y change, the ability of sales managers to demonstrate executive presence will surely be tested. Not only must they communicate the vision, as we described earlier. They must do it with authentic conviction. They must go through their own change journey to develop comfort with the new approach before explaining it to their teams. They have to own it.
Behaving as an executive also contains an external component. The sales manager is often the leadership face of the company to customers and the local community. That means the manager has to be able to articulate the company’s strategy to customers in a way that is relevant to them and to what their own businesses are trying to accomplish. Sales managers have to behave, dress, and communicate in a manner that is consistent with their companies’ values and brand.
During an X-to-Y change initiative, it falls upon sales managers to explain their companies’ new approaches to customers. Telling this story is much simpler when the X → XY → Y approach is used. It’s critical to define the company’s Y future and how that intersects with the customer’s future vision. Yet it’s equally important to describe the XY midpoint and the company’s commitment to continuing to sell X. What the XY midpoint looks like may vary for every customer. That must be co-created with each account. It’s the sales manager’s job to help assuage concerns and demonstrate that the X → XY → Y transition will be executed in full partnership with each customer.
Sales managers also must become internal role models for the company’s values. They have to live those values as examples for others. That sounds easy, but the moments of truth are when they must make a decision where the interests of their own team conflict with those of another department. At moments like these, people are watching to see if the manager does the right thing for the company or the right thing for his own interests. Behaving as an executive means adopting a balanced approach, where the interests of the customer, the company, and the team are all considered.
Become the Voice of the Customer
While sales managers are not responsible for production or delivery, they are still on the line to make sure that customers are happy. For many sales managers, this means spending significant time addressing problems and acting as an ombudsperson for the customer with other company departments. Not only do the best sales managers do this, but they find the bigger patterns and prevent future problems by becoming the voice of the customer internally.
In the meetings they attend, these great sales managers remind people to consider the customers’ point of view and how customers will be affected by big decisions. They do that at both the macro and micro level: How will our customers perceive us differently as a result of this announcement? How will a specific customer who is about to go out to bid on a big piece of business react? In the confusing mix of stakeholder discussions that most companies have, it is easy for the voice of the customer to get lost. The sales manager’s job is to make sure that doesn’t happen.
When companies are moving through an X → XY → Y change process, sales managers should ensure that customer needs and interests are protected. What will happen to customers who are still buying X? What does XY look like from the customers’ point of view? How different might it look for different customers? What does achievement of Y mean for our current customer base? What new customers do we need to find? These questions should not be used to slow the transition down but rather to speed it up by providing the clarity that customers and salespeople will require.
Humility and Experimentation
Part of demonstrating integrity and authenticity is taking a humble approach to change. While the best leaders always have a vision and a plan, they also admit that they don’t have everything figured out yet. It is better to admit that you believe the plan is 80 percent right and you’ll figure out the rest along the way than it is to show an inflexible commitment to the perfection of a theoretical plan. By acknowledging that you will make adjustments along the way, you will show people that you will learn and adapt, which actually makes you more believable. The commitment to Y should never waver, but the exact path to Y will inevitably evolve over time.
One way to operationalize that approach is to experiment. You can try different approaches with different customers or different salespeople as you figure out what XY approach works best. These experiments work best when they are intentional and well communicated. Let people know they are experiments. Then collect data in as an objective way as possible. That will inform better decisions and build support for your XY implementation approach.
Conclusion—Value the Whole Journey
In a nutshell, sales managers must demonstrate (perhaps even more than anyone else in the business) that they authentically value X, XY, and Y. They cannot avoid Y (as many do) or fall in love with Y and neglect X (as some others do). On a day-to-day basis, they will benefit more than anyone else from having clarity about the XY midpoint. It will enable them to communicate better both upward to their leaders and downward to their teams, as well as to their customers.