Newsletter Archive - HR / Personnel
What is the definition of a "great" sales manager?
04/13/2010 - By Ken Clark, Director - Recruiting - Names & Numbers
In a recent blog, I asked this simple, but somewhat complex question: what makes a "great" sales manager? What words would you use?
Oft time you will hear sports announcers talk about a "great" play, which I thought may have been good, maybe even outstanding, but not "great". And these are athletes being paid millions of dollars a year to make these types of actions.
I heard directly from several people who told me what a less than great (ok, horrible) sales manager looks like. But I was more interested in hearing about the good ones. Perhaps it is in the eye of the beholder as to what characteristics a great sales manager should have.
He's some guidelines that I use when recruiting for sales managers for Names & Numbers:
- Managers that go beyond just believing that morale will improve when sales go up. Instead they know that morale improves when employees believe sales will improve. Most managers believe that increased sales will result in higher morale, which is true. Everyone loves to play for a winner. But in the current economy we need managers that can generate a belief in their team that they can be successful. How? By 1) presenting a clear vision of the future, 2) translate the vision of the future into daily results that the sales team believes are achievable, that they will work towards, and will benefit each team member, and 3) articulate the vision into a practical set of steps that everyone agrees are achievable.
- Manager's whose first responsibility is not to just make the numbers. Instead it should be to actively manage the activities that drive those numbers. While a manager cannot truly "manage" the numbers, a manager can always manage the activities that lead to the numbers. If you focus on what the sales team is doing, and measuring the effectiveness of each activity, each day the numbers will take of themselves.
- Quota is an important employee management tool, but quota is actually a corporate measurement tool. Quota is simply what the organization needs to achieve in order to fulfill its goals. Quota has nothing to do with what the employee wants from his/her employment. It only often does not motivate, even when managers uses it as a club to beat employees about results each month. Instead quota should define the minimum performance standard of an organization and the minimum performance of the individual inside that organization. The team needs to internalize what exceeding that goal yields.
- Managers should put the customer first, to a point. Often, more importantly it needs to be about putting their employees first. We look for managers that communicate regularly and comprehensively with employees, and work through them when communicating with the customer. Managers should never undercut their employee's authority to deal with customer issues.
- The manager's job is NOT to have all the answers. It is to ask the right questions. Each time a manager answers an employee's question we want managers that challenge that rep to think and the opportunity to grow. Great managers seem to know the "magic questions" that help employees discover where they need to do to improve and get the commitment necessary to make the improvement.
- It isn't the top performers that define management ability, it's the worst performers.The normal trap of most managers is to point to their top performers as an indicator of how successful they are as sales managers. Yet it is the worst performing sales person on the team which highlights exactly what performance level the manager will accept. That worst performer acts as a drag upon the rest of the team, who are well aware that they must work harder in order to cover for the manager's willingness to tolerate poor performance.
- Management is certainly about a lot of common sense, but also requires a complex and multiplex skill set. For example, to get the best from employees, managers must know their employees and their interests, their expectations, their aspirations, and then manage according to those interests. That certainly requires a little applied psychology. To make sure that sales activities result in profitable revenue, managers must define and track a productive sales process. That requires system analysis. And so forth. I'm looking for managers that are constantly trying to upgrade their skills and knowledge.
With that said, yes, I am looking for several of those "great Managers" for Names & Numbers, a publisher that over the past 36 years has steadily grown to over 60 products in 11 states and isn't done growing yet. And we are a company that still believes in the print products while continuing to develop digital products that will work for both advertisers and users alike.
Are you a great manager?? Send me a resume at kclark@namesandnumbers.com and let's talk.