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.
I'll walk it back to how I came to this conclusion, so you can follow the same logic I did.
3. The Big Sales Manager Complaint
The foremost complaint that seems to come up with sales managers we've spoken
with, is that they’re constantly having to motivate their salespeople to sell more,
or sell as much as they can.
4. An Analogy: Football
Let's take a look at a whole oter game: football. Let's
look at the biggest game in football—the Super Bowl.
What if the coach of a Super Bowl team had to
constantly harangue his team members, just in order to
motivate them to play the game?
You'd think that was pretty silly. Any team that has made
it to the Super Bowl is going to be plenty motivated;
there will never be an issue of motivation to play.
5. The System
In football, the motivation is the game itself. Or, put another way, the system. So in
sales...if the sales manager is constantly having to motivate salespeople to sell to
their full potential, there is something wrong with their system.
6. Taking Another Step Back
But there is yet another causative agent that can change
and even create that system. That would be you, the
sales manager, and your own mindset.
Through your mindset as a sales manager, you are
receiving data about your sales team. That mindset is
going to affect the system and all the other elements of
sales management.
7. Taking Another Step Back
For example, some sales managers consider that
salespeople are doing the least amount of work for the
most amount of reward. With such a skewed mindset on
salespeople, they could very well put a system into
effect that “demotivates” salespeople.
This mindset would also affect their use of technology.
Through technology, they would simply want to know
what their salespeople are doing, all the time.
8. Taking Another Step Back
It would affect their management and leadership style
as well. With a low enough opinion about salespeople,
one could think that they “don’t deserve” high
commissions or great incentives.
So it’s obvious that first comes the perception or
conviction—then comes the system. The first thing you
may need to do is change your own thoughts regarding
salespeople, from more negative to more positive.
9. 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.
10. NEXT SLIDESHARE IN THIS SERIES:
Just How Important is Technology
to Sales Management?