- [Norman] Welcome to SRG Insights, where we answer your questions about sales,
sales management, and sales training. And today's question is...
- Kim Rody asks, "How do I find a great sales manager?"
- So this is a really interesting question. I think it begins by thinking
through, what are the areas of responsibility that that sales manager is
going to have within your specific organization? Now, once you determine what
those areas of responsibility are, you can really think about the skills,
experience, and personal qualities you're looking for in your sales manager.
And then another consideration is really how much time and how much resources you
have to invest in that person's personal development because that may really
influence whether you decide to promote from within
or hire someone who already has experience.
So if we think about the first point I mentioned about the areas of
responsibility, these are broadly defined. I think we do a really good job of just
kind of analyzing each of these in our new book The High-Impact Sales Manager, and
those areas are recruitment and selection of star performers, managing sales team
performance, managing the sales pipeline, coaching sales reps,
and leading and motivating the team, and let me start with the first one.
Recruiting and selecting star salespeople, that's really critical.
If you have the right people on your team,
it's going to be a lot easier to manage and lead that team.
So you have to think about the particular sales manager role that you're hiring for,
how much hiring is actually going to need to take place? Are they going to build a
whole team from scratch, maybe just do a couple of replacement hires?
And you also have to think about, will all the responsibility be shouldered by the
sales manager, in terms of both sourcing the candidates, interviewing,
and hiring them, which is often the case in a small organization,
or the larger companies, a lot of that work is being done by HR and the sales
manager's role is more limited. In either case, interviewing is going to be a
critical skill and really discovering whether the candidates they're
interviewing they themselves possess the sales qualities you're looking for.
And so, generally, managers who have been in sales before are pretty good at asking
questions, hopefully they're very good at actively listening so that the interviews
are really going in depth to discover whether the candidates possess the
personal qualities. They should be good at developing rapport,
obviously people want to come and work for people they think they will
relate well to, and so, those are some of the qualities
you look for people to recruit and hire great salespeople.
Another area that's absolutely critical, ties to the name of the position, is
managing sales team performance. So ultimately, the manager is responsible for
the performance of that sales team and you want there someone who's really got very
good analytical skills, someone who's got really good communication skills,
they're going to need to clearly communicate areas of responsibility,
they're going to need to hold people accountable. They're going to need to be
able to really understand, what are the underlying behaviors that are going to
move sales forward? So for example, it's not just enough to say we're going to
achieve X amount in sales, that's a result.
What are the key behaviors in terms of prospecting proposals
and the work that needs to get done to really achieve those
results? So you want someone there who is really going to be very good at
communicating, analyzing, and providing input to their team.
Managing the sales pipeline could be very important in organizations that have
complex sales, where the manager's responsible for forecasting or assisting
reps on complex deals, that will be an important skill.
In other organizations where the sale is more transactional maybe not as important,
skills that you'd want for managing the sales pipeline, again, would be good
analytical skills, and probably someone who has a really good background in sales
that could actually help the salespeople
put together strategies to advance opportunities.
Fourth area is sales coaching, and sales coaching is probably the most important
skill because what we found in the research we've done and research that
others have done is managers who are really good at sales coaching and spend
about 20% to 40% of their time
have the highest performing sales teams.
So sales coaching really gets to someone who is willing to work with others,
help other people self discover the areas they need to improve in,
and can really coach without telling, in other words, it's all about helping the
salespeople self discover and then working with them
to put together personalized coaching plans.
And the fifth area is one of really motivating and leading your team and if
you think about, you know, the number one cause of turnover in sales organizations
is typically because the sales reps don't necessarily have a great experience
working for their particular manager. So you want someone who really cares about
the sales team, who's able to communicate a vision, and really understand what's
going to motivate each individual.
So if you think about those five qualities, you then have some context in
terms of making your overall hiring decision. If you're going to hire someone
from within, you really have to think about do they have the qualities that I'm
looking for, is this someone who's been a star sales performer?
In that case, you have to think about, will they really be able to make the
transition, are they going to be able to move from kind of being center stage
themselves to working behind the scenes to help others? We've often found that even
kind of average salespeople can make great sales managers if they have the qualities
you're looking for, but again, if you hire someone from within,
you're going to have to have some patience and some training
to really help them develop these key skills.
If you decide to go outside of your organization, you might hire a more
experienced sales manager. They may possess many of the skills you're looking
for. You certainly want to interview in depth to really make sure they have the
skills you're looking for. You also have to understand that there will be a
transition period where they're going to have to learn about your business,
your industry, and develop credibility with the sales team.
Whether you decide to promote from within or hire externally, we always recommend
looking at both forms of candidates, and at a minimum, interviewing at least three
people and instead of locking in on one particular candidate that's convenient
within your organization, you give some validity to the overall process,
you may also discover there's certain skills that your candidate didn't possess.
In any event, even if you hire the person you thought that you were going to hire,
they're going to feel better about having to go through that process and that's
going to bode well both for them as a sales manager in the future
and for your sales organization. Thank you.
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