Putting the Trainer back into Sales Management

Training salespeople is vital to healthy and sustainable sales performance. With markets becoming more complex and changing at rapid rates, ongoing development measures are imperative to help salespeople stay up to date and effective. Training needs to be periodic for it to have any effect. Regular ‘mini’ training sessions in short, sharp bursts combined with one-on-one coaching in the field makes for better and better sales performance as well as team spirit, unity and retention. It’s clear that this can only be achieved if sales managers take on the in-house training and coaching role, the way it used to be over 30 years ago. But when do sales managers have the time to learn how to be good trainers and coaches? And when do they have the time to put this into practice?

Many sales managers have become ‘CRM compliance police’, caught up in reporting on numbers of leads, meetings, conversions, etc., usually at the behest of senior management to create a sense of control over the activities and outcomes of sales efforts. Managers are also tied up in an abundance of meetings and other projects, which leaves them with little time to look after the training and development needs of their teams.

This means that salespeople are often left to fend for themselves with no sales management to support the quality and development of their work, while finding themselves under constant scrutiny to meet their quantity goals. They know numbers are important, but numbers are not the only aspect of effective sales performance – yet why are they required to be worshipped at the compliance altar?

Since 1997, we have been training sales managers to be competent trainers and coaches to provide timely support, based on actual needs, built around real live cases and situations that have high relevance for their salespeople. This kind of relevant and on-time support not only helps develop salespeople where it matters, but at the same time creates immediate sales results, because problems in the sales process with a client, ideally can be fixed before the client makes their decision, and not just theoretically, in retrospective. The results are clear: besides sales growth, team morale improves, there is better retention of staff, and clients are happier.

It has been shown that if a business has skilful, professionally trained sales managers who can strategise and plan; lead, coach and train; effectively manage their unit; liaise, link and collaborate with other divisions; and regularly report relevant, real data to the business, then the performance of the sales team will improve significantly. No other area of development shows such a positive correlation with sales results.

Generally speaking, ‘best practice’ states a sales manager should invest their time accordingly:

• 60-70% in people development (including coaching, training, performance management, recruiting, succession planning and sales meetings)
• 25%-30% in strategising, business planning, future thinking, etc.
• 5-15% in reporting and administration

This is a plea on behalf of beleaguered sales mangers everywhere – if you want great sales results, get your sales managers training again.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

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