Sales Management… Research Reveals the Important Stuff

Thursday, May 16th, 2013 - Post by JasonJordan

We often contend (and do believe) that the sales manager’s role is the most complex in any organization. They are part teacher, part coach, part salesperson, part CFO, part IT director, part marketing manager, part sales support, and perhaps parts of many other roles. Sales managers do a bunch of stuff. But what stuff matters the most?

In our foundational research in our best-selling book Cracking the Sales Management Code, we actually discovered what are the important parts of the sales manager’s role… At least as leading sales forces judge them. At its core, the research was an investigation into how companies are using metrics to manage their sales forces. And metrics are typically expensive and time consuming to collect and report. So if a company is going out of its way to measure something, it must be important to them.

What parts of sales management were these companies measuring then? What is the important stuff? It turns out that it’s simpler than you might think.

The sales forces in our research measured only five aspects of sales management:

    1) Coaching
    2) Training
    3) Equipping
    4) Assessing
    5) Forecasting

Clearly the first four areas are focused on improving the … Read the rest

Should Sales Managers ‘Micromanage’ their Reps? Sort Of…

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013 - Post by MichelleVazzana

A central insight from the research in our book Cracking the Sales Management Code is that sales managers can only manage the activities of their salespeople. They can’t manage their sellers’ revenue. They can’t manage whether or not customers buy from their salespeople. They can only influence the things that their salespeople actually do. Period. This is usually a valuable insight for sales managers, and it enables them to focus their efforts on the things that they can control.

However, any discussion about managing people’s activities always leads to a discussion of micromanagement. Many managers will reveal that they are uncomfortable measuring and managing their salespeople’s activities, because they don’t want to be perceived as micromanagers. They didn’t like being micromanaged when they were salespeople, and they don’t want their sellers to feel micromanaged now.

We absolutely agree that no one likes to be told what to do. It feels demeaning and it cheats sellers of the pleasure of making their own good decisions. However, we like to point out that showing interest in a salesperson’s activities does not necessarily equate to micromanagement. It’s entirely possible to have an objective and productive conversation about a sales rep’s activities that does … Read the rest

First, Train All the Sales Managers

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013 - Post by JasonJordan

In the classic book by Gallop, First Break All the Rules, the authors revealed profound inaccuracies in traditional management theories and conventional wisdom that were perceived best practices. An example would be, ‘Good managers treat all of their people fairly.’ Wrong. The best managers actually do have favorite employees, and they treat them preferentially. And consequently, the managers earn greater loyalty and higher performance from their stars. What a wonderful management insight that flies right into the face of historical ‘best practices.’

We would propose a similar insight that we have come to observe in our work: First Train All the Sales Managers. For more than a century, sales training has predominantly focused on improving the skills of front-line sellers. And this makes intuitive sense. If you want sell more stuff, then train the people who sell it. The logic is practically unassailable. Except that it is.

In our experience, we have gotten greater and more consistent sales improvement by training front-line sales managers – NOT the front-line sellers. In fact, we’ve seen win rates, margins, and revenues increase in all of our recent clients’ sales forces, though we never trained a single salesperson. All of this was accomplished … Read the rest




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