Why Sales Leaders need Management training.
How does a sales manager learn how to manage a sales team? Unlike traditional business disciplines such as finance, marketing, or general management, most business schools offer few, if any, courses, on sales or sales management. Also, few companies offer comprehensive sales management training programs for new sales managers. This is counterintuitive because sales are the lifeblood of any business.
Managing a sales team is probably the most challenging position in any company, requiring a unique set of skills. They are responsible for a range of diverse tasks, including recruiting and hiring new sales professionals, managing a sales pipeline, coaching, sales forecasting, leadership, and motivation. And in many organisations, sales managers are required to both sell and manage.
Companies used to tend to assume that successful sales professionals will make successful sales managers. This has proved to be a flawed assumption. Think about many professional sports where great players ended up being mediocre coaches!
The key reason the transition from sales professional to sales manager can be challenging is that each role requires a different set of skills and knowledge:
Sales Person Sales Manager
Prospecting skills Setting team goals
Questioning skills Recruitment, selection, and retention
Listening/communication Coaching
Objection handling Sales performance management
Gaining commitment Leadership and motivation
Time management (self) Time management (team)
CRM management Sales & Marketing tactical alignment
Product knowledge Industry knowledge and trends
Unfortunately, most sales managers are not positioned to succeed because they lack the full complement of the managerial skills necessary to manage their sales teams. Key symptoms of this problem often include the sales manager being overwhelmed by supervisory problems, spending too much time “putting out fires,” high team turnover rates, and poor performance.
Studies have found that high-impact sales organisations (defined as organisations where more than 75% of the salespeople attain their performance levels) are much more likely to invest in sales manager development.
Reports also revealed that top-performing sales organisations have sales managers who are better at:
• Coaching
• Managing sales performance.
• Recruiting and hiring top performers
• Earning their teams’ trust and respect.
The four sales management abilities described above form the foundation of Christian Doppler Consulting’s, The CDC Advantage Sales Management development programme.
To learn how your sales managers can improve the effectiveness of your sales team, please contact us on +44 (0) 208 123 2466 or at info@christiandopplerconsulting.com.
