One main theme of the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference was improving frontline sales manager effectiveness. A recent Gartner study showed that sales managers are the key to seller productivity, and development of frontline managers was the preferred driver for improving it by 33% of participants. Gartner further identified the three areas where sales leaders need to hasten that manager development. They are:
(1) Acquire high quality manager
(2) Develop managers’ ability
(3) Arm managers for success
Acknowledging that sales management recruitment and staffing is an entirely separate discipline from sales management enablement and training, we’ll focus on numbers 2 and 3 in this article—and with the understanding that robust and actionable dashboards are essential to effective implementation.