You can’t have a strong sales team with weak managers. Every day weak managers suffocate strong sales people. They fail to realize that strong salespeople won’t stick around very long if they are not being challenged, or receiving the strokes and praise they deserve. There are several ways in which the strength of your company’s sales management can directly affect the health of your organization.
One way a manager can show strength rather than weakness is in her hiring practices. New blood adds new fire. When a new rep is hired and properly on-boarded, competitive juices start to rise among the ranks. If your team is healthy they look at this as someone in their rearview mirror that may catch up to them, so they need to step it up. If your team is not healthy and a new strong rep is hired, culture may take over and the person who came in healthy will quickly be destroyed by the headtrash instilled in them by the veterans.
Weak managers have a greater tendency to hire weaker reps, which causes the overall health of an organization to continually decline. When managers take their own lessons learned from previous hires and continue to bring in top talent, the entire organization benefits. And if your business’s sales team is sick, one way to change your culture is to hire it in. Managers have to be responsible for bringing in the right people for your team and getting them properly acclimated, and for building a culture that encourages new hires rather than stifling them.
Another part of building that culture is creating a common sales process and sales language throughout your organization. When you have this it allows your organization to achieve higher levels of consistency. When every rep handles their process differently, it can be a challenge to simply identify what reps are doing. If there’s inconsistent performance (which, in this situation, is likely), it will be hard to figure out what is causing the roller coaster results. A lack of common language leads to extended sales meetings, inaccurate pipelines, and inconsistency in coaching reps through the sales process. If your team is healthy, they will have a consistent message that helps bring everyone clarity, increasing overall energy levels.
Strength in sales management breeds strength in a sales team. If you think you may have an unhealthy team, start looking for solutions by diagnosing the manager. You may find that his performance isn’t what it should be – and that adjustments need to be made, to make sure your sales team can get healthy.
Image courtesy of renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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