Sounds like a funny thing to say, doesn’t it? But it’s true. Of all the many pain points for a sales manager—and our research has turned up dozens—the first and foremost of these is the sales manager himself or herself.
How did I arrive at that conclusion?
The Big Sales Manager Complaint
The first and foremost complaint that seemed to come up with sales managers we spoke with, was the need to constantly motivate their salespeople to sell as much as possible. These sales managers claimed that their reps would generally go for the “low hanging fruit” of the leads, steering clear of leads that took more work to qualify or convert to opportunities. In another example, they wouldn’t cold-call unless a gun was held to their heads.
The System
If you look at another type of activity, such as football, you’ll see that “motivation” is rarely needed. For example, why is such motivation never needed in the Super Bowl? Because motivation is built right into the system of the game. It is an extreme honor to play major league football, it is doubly so when a team makes to the Super Bowl, and it pays extremely well on top of all that. No additional “motivation” is needed.
So you can see that in sales, something must be wrong if the sales manager is having to “motivate” the sales team. If a coach in football was having to motivate the players, something would be very wrong with that game. Likewise, if the sales manager is constantly having to motivate salespeople to sell to their full potential, there is something wrong with that system.
Taking Another Step Back
But there is yet something else behind that system: you, the sales manager.
You as a sales manager have a certain mindset. You are perceiving data about your team through that mindset. That mindset affects all the other elements of sales management–from technology all the way down to the commission system.
Such a mindset also affects your use of technology. From a negative standpoint, you might demand of technology that you constantly know what your reps are doing, all the time. From a positive one, you might take a more benevolent approach of coaching and mentoring.
In our company, we have always taken the latter way. We have found that people, in their basic nature, are good, really want to do good jobs, and will. From this perception we have created a system—for onboarding, training, commissions, incentives and the whole sales structure—that our salespeople are very happy with. They’re only too happy to sell.
So it’s obvious that first comes the perception or conviction—then comes the use of technology and the system.
What To Do?
So you might find that the first thing you need to do as sales manager is change your mind about your team members, removing some negative and adding some positive. Such a change can have broad implications.
Sales manager pain point #1 might very well come back to you—the sales manager! And we’re here to help you totally change that.
Pipeliner CRM totally supports a sales manager’s approach. Try it today
