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It’s fairly common for sales managers to feel they are “too nice,” but most fear changing their ways.
Some salespeople, steady producers who don’t want to be pushed toward greater success, think their managers are great. This is due to not being challenged to move from their comfort zones.
Then, there are under-performing reps who have a decent relationship to their managers, but are resistant to coaching. When asked to do something, they always have reasons they can’t get it done. Most of these managers do little more than listen to their excuses. They don’t want to push too hard and upset their sellers, as this may result in some of them quitting.
Sales Managers Are Not Paid to Be Popular
Everybody no doubt wants to be liked, but this emotion must be balanced with holding people accountable. That’s where the struggle is. Managers are paid to help their people become more valuable in order to get the results they need. Additionally they need to create situations where their intentions are clear and facilitate respect. This way both sides win. There must be follow through by the reps and follow up by management.
Managers Are Regularly Tested
Over time sales reps convince managers with their consistent excuses for under performance. When that is coupled with manager fear of calling them out, large numbers of salespeople fail. When a seller needs to become more consistent in certain activities or improve on certain skill sets and managers don’t enforce these, they telegraph that there are no consequences. So why should their sales reps change?
Timeout for a moment. “I’m a successful sales manager today partially due to Doug’s weekly online coaching that helped me refocus me and taught me that a manager can be good and tough at the same time. You should take a few minutes and bumble around his website and get a feel for what I’m talking about.” Calvin T. Sales Manager, Baytown, Tx.
Push the Reset Button
The best way forward to create a more effective culture of accountability and relationships, is through one-on-one conversations. Managers must begin by resetting expectations and establishing new accountabilities. This should be followed with sharing the WIIFM of this new direction for them. It’s a simple process of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what’s in it for you.
According to Kevin Davis, noted sales coach, the following questions are good for managers to ask during these “reset conversations:”
Questions to Build Accountability
- What are you willing to commit to?
- How can I best manage you? Why type of management style do you respond to best?
- If we were to switch roles, how would you handle this in my position?
- How can I hold you accountable for the results you are looking to achieve?
- If you couldn’t use this excuse how would you go forward to achieve your desired results?
- How can I accomplish this in a way that will sound supportive rather than negative?
- What approach should I take if you don’t follow through with the commitments you make? What would be a good way to bring this up?
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Self-Reflective Questions that Get People to Articulate the Cost
- If you continue this way, what will it cost you?
- What repercussions would you experience by continuing to engage in that behavior?
- How does your behavior affect you and those around you?
- If you continue doing what you are currently doing, where do you think you will end up?
- How do you think this will affect your career goals? Your reputation? Your team?
When you ask precision questions like these, they create the rules of the game. Salespeople begin to tell you how they want to be managed. It goes back to the basics that they resist what you tell them but believe what they tell themselves.
The Culture Shift
Be prepared for the results. Often some of your under-performers will move on and resign. These should be replaced with candidates who are better fits for your team. Additionally, your better producing sellers will take it to the next level as you begin to inspect what you expect.
Once your sales room becomes an excuse free zone, because of your follow through on promises and commitments, everyone wins!
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©2019 Robinson Training Solutions, LLC
possess the skills. If that’s the case, show them a picture of what it should look like; that’s what leaders do. Afterward, conduct some test driving with the rep and chances are their confidence will quickly increase, unless it doesn’t. If it doesn’t move following that, then look into the attitude side of the issue.
Now before you dis the above suggestion, let me explain how I came up with these numbers. I’m visualizing a rep who receives one company lead per day and generates another lead per day personally. That would generate 10 points. Secondly I’m expecting this rep will complete two proposals per day, generating another 20 points. And finally, since “Selling is like shaving; if you don’t do a little every day you will soon become a bum,” let’s say this rep closes one sale per day, for an additional 15 points, totaling 45 points for the week.
It’s pretty incredible how often you hear managers complaining about their best employees leaving, and they really do have something to complain about—few things are as costly and disruptive as good people walking out the door.
They hire and promote the wrong people. Good, hard-working employees want to work with like-minded professionals. When managers don’t do the hard work of hiring good people, it’s a major de-motivator for those stuck working alongside them. Promoting the wrong people is even worse. When you work your tail off only to get passed over for a promotion that’s given to someone who glad-handed their way to the top, it’s a massive insult. No wonder it makes good people leave.
What’s your game… HVAC service tech, Pest Control/Termite specialist, Lube Store technician, or Lawn Care applicator? Common sense says service folks like these, and all manner of technicians in dozens of similar professions like these, should be the world’s best sales people simply because they are trusted by the customers they serve.
At the beginning of 2006 I began a gig as the sales coach for one multi-state division of a large environmental services company. One of my assignments was to improve technician sales. Of course we conducted regular sales training each month, but more importantly we reinforced the understanding of the two concepts discussed in this post. Here is a recap of our accomplishments, from the inception of the project in January 2006 to where we were four years down the road, at the end of 2009.
Your closing rate has dropped. Your pending proposal stack is getting taller. Even though you don’t want to admit it, your weekly proposal output is declining. The competition is kicking your butt more often than they used to. You’re not hitting your budgeted sales numbers and you’re worried you won’t catch up.
Have an out of body experience – For an additional perspective, benchmark with others outside your company to help you define the problem and gain confirmation of what you are experiencing. Consider talking to trusted vendors to gain an additional perspective. These same “outsiders” might be able to give you some valuable input, maybe even noticing weaknesses or roadblocks you have overlooked in your position, where it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees.
Since blue collar businesses have very little initial “glamour” in the eyes of potential job applicants; electronic ads and website postings may not yield all the raw material you need. As a matter of fact, while the headlines have continually touted high unemployment numbers for the last several years, most companies never been able to attain their sales staffing budgets.
With a basic understanding of the four zones salespeople move between, you as the sales manager need to check your zone, to see where you are as the leader. This is important because you can’t take people where you haven’t gone!
The key to both change and cooperation is feedback. When it’s plentiful and honest, it’s much easier for salespeople to remain in the Stretch Zone. There are two types of feedback to be aware of:
Last time we left off listing the three main reasons sales managers don’t coach. As this post begins I want you to look in the mirror and see a developing coach. To be able to do that, it is important to understand where your sales people are emotionally, so you will know how to coach them for improved performance. There are four different zones where your sales folks may be at any given point in time:
4) The Stretch Zone – This is a completely different place than the other three zones. People here are actively involved in their work and are committed to developing themselves. They don’t feel threatened by change, but see it as an opportunity. They are excited, enthusiastic, and ambitious; they have new goals, ideas, and strategies. These are certainly the top performers.
Managers know how important it is to get the most from their sales teams, but most don’t really know how to accomplish this. It seems that there are two kinds of leadership; one based on controlling people and another based on empowering people. I probably don’t need to paint a picture of the first one, as most salespeople are intimately familiar with this version of micromanagement. Empowering, on the other hand, involves lots of coaching, which few leaders have mastered.
It’s sort of ironic, but the more effective the coaching becomes, the less the coach is actually needed. You can tell when the coaching process has really taken root when self coaching and peer coaching occur regularly. So where are you on the leadership spectrum? Would you describe yourself as boss or coach, manager or partner, or supervisor or teammate?
Provide incentive dinners for rep and spouse at a local restaurant
It’s got to be fun! Do things that are untraditional and enthusiastic in order to give your employees more opportunities for recognition and status. You may think its stupid, but remember that your salespeople are your “revenue getters,” and it’s not about you, it’s about them…unless you are going to go out and make all the sales yourself!
Knowing how lonesome it is for his reps, as they run around south Alabama looking for sales, Keith envisioned and put together several training concepts for them to take advantage of that I was, and still am really impressed with.
In the Scottish Highlands there was once an old farmer (known as a crofter in that part of the world), who awoke one winter Sunday morning to an unusually deep snowfall. Not to be deterred, he trudged three miles through the knee-deep snow and sub-freezing temperatures to his local, but remote, chapel for Sunday service. When he finally arrived the only other human in sight was the minister.
Evaluative – Designed for the salesperson to clearly understand the current state.
After spending 40+ years in the selling universe I realize and understand that much of a sales manager’s time is sequestered by upper management in completing useless reports and providing redundant administration. With that as a given, when reality finally dawns on you, you have to just buck up and carve out a reasonable amount of time for your sellers, realizing your job security rests on their success.
In Part II of this “care and feeding diatribe”, we will look at the 3 types of field training calls you should be conducting, along with the 2 types of feedback that your reps should be receiving, following your fieldwork sessions.
Visitors to your sales room know he’s the one when they hear the sucking sound coming from his cubicle, as he absorbs all the information in the selling universe. He stores this treasure in a secret underground lair he accesses at will, or when one of his colleagues (your other sales reps) needs to be rescued from a selling box canyon. By default this makes him the perfect go-to advice-giver in your shop, especially considering he views the majority of situations differently than most any other mortal.
Sales management is a very difficult job. I’ve always said it reminds me of “herding cats”. I’ve managed small groups of a few reps and I’ve managed multi-state teams numbering over 100. Regardless, the principles and the potholes are really the same, just magnified when the numbers are larger.
Joe Girard, although born into poverty, sold 13,001 cars in 15 years; making him the Guinness world record holder in auto sales. By the way, Joe wasn’t in fleet sales, so these were individual retail sales. His best year, 1973, he sold 1,425 cars, 174 in one month, which is another record still standing after 40 years.
Unlike the way Joe viewed business, in today’s marketplace it often appears that employees work in “silos” within their companies. Although they work hard, they seem oblivious to what goes on around them, creating situations like these:
Sometimes employees fail to do what they are supposed to do. Simultaneously teammates assume a, “it’s not my fault” stance and point their fingers at others. But this is the time to stand in the gap, play above the rim and, if necessary, take one for the team. This response helps everybody on the team hang a “W” on the scoreboard. Once the customer is taken care of, close ranks and deal with the issue behind closed office doors as you would at home in a family meeting. Remember the commercial; what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas? 
Your salespeople no doubt understand the power of role-play in improving selling skills, but they also will tell you it is one of the nastiest tasting medicines they’re asked to swallow. Realizing that, what doesn’t kill you makes you better, in this piece I’m offering ten tips to enhance role play among your team members, which in turn will improve their sales performance.
If sales reps really understood these statements, why are so few thriving? It’s time for a gut check where each seller needs to look squarely in the mirror and admit that his or her results are solely dependent on the person looking back at them.
What is your development plan for these four areas?
Can’t sell in January-Between the terrible weather and folks coming back from vacation, how can you expect someone to focus on buying now? I’ll pound the pavement next month.
Can’t sell in April-Who wants to focus on buying with Spring in the air? And hey, my kid’s birthday is this month. I’m sure my prospects are working on their taxes anyway. Next month, better for sure.
Can’t sell in September-Between the three-day Labor Day weekend and a new fiscal year kicking in, no one is buying anything. I’m feeling good about next month.
