Every business wants better sales performance from their salespeople and to have happy, loyal clients.
If you look at the overwhelming content online about sales problems and issues, it focuses mostly on salespeople and their performance.
But what about Sales Leadership?
Sales Leaders are given little support when it comes to being competent in their role. In fact, many Sales Leaders are given no formal training in sales management, leadership, or coaching.
Perhaps the way to solve the problem of ‘better sales performance’ is to start by raising the standards of our sales leaders so they can lead and manage their sales teams better.
These are just some of the issues we need to resolve that sales leaders face on daily basis:
- Not being trained to perform in their role: Sales teams need to be led and coached regularly; however, very few get any form of real leadership and direction beyond quarterly targets and even fewer get real and effective coaching because most sales leaders have never been trained in how to perform these roles.
- Being the super salesperson: Many (some could even say ‘most’) sales managers are not leading or managing their sales team, they are out there selling; either taking over the sales call from their salespeople and calling it coaching or running their own territory, so they don’t have any time to lead, manage, and properly coach their sales teams.
- Focussed on internal administrative tasks: Quite a few sales leaders are getting caught behind their desks focused on numbers and outputs, processing and managing information, data, and reports for senior management.
- Lack of time and support: Those sales leaders who want to do better, raise the standards and lead, often find the ‘best practice’ content available through keynotes, books, online resources, etc. interesting, but they are soon dragged back to the day-to-day demands. And the ‘best practice’ ideas they want to implement end up being a blip in thinking at best.
- Being caught in the short-termism of the business: The expectations on sales leaders to deliver growth and outcomes are real and fall within the ever-shortening corporate time frame. Sales leaders are under immense pressure to perform with very little time to be strategic and plan. They are often reacting to the markets instead of analysing and strategising for the future.
Most sales leaders are pragmatic people who are measured by the most tangible of corporate outcomes – sales results.
They have risen to the highly paid position they hold through getting stuff done – many are clever in the street-smart sense. This further fuels the debate about selling never being seen as a profession worth investing in. How wrong can we be?
What if businesses focused on training and coaching sales leaders to professional standards on ‘how to lead and manage sales teams better’?
Here’s what happens if we invest in the ongoing development of sales leaders
When sales leaders are more frequently and better trained and coached, their sales teams achieved higher performance and better results. In no other type of sales training is there a more positive correlation found between frequency of training and sales performance.
The investment in developing our sales leaders to professional standards is far more economical with better ROI than most sales training initiatives. We know. At Barrett, we have nearly 3 decades of evidence and experience in this space.
Where do we start?
Let’s look at some of the broad core capabilities sales leaders need to be competent in their role.
The primary role of sales leadership is to:
- People: focus, motivate, develop, and empower their sales team to improve their performance
- Process: provide interconnected resources, steps and direction for sales in and across the whole business value chain
- Strategy: ensure that the company’s position in its served market(s) is protected in its quest for incremental profitability and sustained market-share growth
- Culture: create a high-performance culture underpinned by empathy, collaboration, teamwork, respect, mutual success (win:win) and prosperity
Sales leaders are charged with leading a group of salespeople; of preparing them for a competitive marketplace and focusing their energies so that they can sell in value in the form of a larger basket of products and solutions, at better margins, in the face of stiff competition who have similar resources (and very often, similar solutions) as they do.
That means they must be more efficient, effective and better prepared. They have to develop strategies and go-to-market plans. They have to ensure that they have the right people, doing the right things; that the people in their sales teams are well trained and coached, highly motivated, and focused.
So, how do we support sales leaders in their development?
Formal classroom, remote, or hybrid training on key foundation topics such as:
- Sales Strategy
- Account Mapping
- Sales Selection/Recruitment
- Performance Management
- Sales Coaching
- Sales Financials
- Sales Technology
Infield Coaching: The formal sessions should also be supported by much more frequent activities which can include local or distance coaching (group and one-on-one), combined with regular access to advice and topics of interest such as talent management, time management, and business trends.
Sales leaders need support if they are to be of best value to our businesses, our teams, and themselves.
Remember, everybody lives by selling something.
Stories from the field
I met with a long term existing client who you would pigeon hole as “fairly hard to deal with” and would assume had everything with us.
Without boring you with the details, they needed 9 additional products with the potential of a referral from them.
At the end of the meeting, the customer acknowledged that this meeting was the best interaction they have had with a Bank.
Look out, I feel like I’m walking on water.
I couldn’t believe how much information I got out of this client using WWW.
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