Sales Managers Must be Good Coaches

If you’re not satisfied with your sales status look to the coach of your team - your sales managers. Here’s a way to check how good they are.

1. Does your sales manager know where his/her sales will come from by account, by product / service for 2008? Or is it about, “Here is my number. Let get out there and sell, sell, sell.” Ask each one to explain where the sales for 2008 will come from.

2. Does your sales manager know how to motivate each of his sales people? Yes, money is key, but money goes to the family. Money is about survival. But what really get the sales person going. See if your sales manager can answer this question about his sales people.

3. Does you sales manager coach and mentor. Coaching is telling his people what to do, i.e. get to the ultimate decision maker. Mentoring is showing them how to do it, i.e. show how to use your main contact to network you to the ultimate decision maker.

This requires discussing sales call plans and pursuit strategies. Then making sales calls together - not for the sales manager to sell, but to observe, give feedback and lay-out a behavior modification plan. How often does you manager do this with each sales person.

4. Does you sales manager turn-over and recruit effectively and timely. In other words does he purge the bottom 10% each year and constantly seek new recruits. Most managers are reactive. When someone leaves, they then seek a replacement. Unfortunately, because of 1-3 above, the better people (maybe not the best) leave and then the manager starts recruiting. This leaves you with the poorer performers and the new hire becomes what ever was available.

Like a college football coach, your sales manager must be good at recruiting good talent and then showing this raw talent what to do and how to do it. Don’t ever get sucked into the “experienced sales person”. Experience only means someone has been doing it before. It says nothing about how good one is, especially selling your products and services. That’s where the coaching and mentoring becomes critical. As in football and all sports, coaching and practice is critical and ongoing.

5. Finally does your sales manager hold your sales people accountable? That is when a forecasted sale isn’t made, is there a discussion that holds the sales person’s feet to the fire? Are there consequences as well as rewards? As my old football coach use to say, “I don’t want excuses, I want results or else you don’t start.”

Now it’s your call. Is the person responsible for the most important element of your business - sales - capable and doing what it takes to get you where you want to be? Or do you need to step up and take actions of training your managers or hiring new ones - and then training them. If professionals like Tiger Woods and every other athlete needs coaching, your sales managers do as well.