What Great Managers Say and Do
Doyle Slayton | Nov 11, 2009 | Comments 21
Reader Q&A:
Great sales managers have a knack for inspiring and driving sales teams to achieve top performance. These managers seem to always say and do the right things.
What great things do managers do to inspire and motivate you?
What things do managers do that demotivate you?
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Filed Under: Blog • Leadership • Reader Questions • Sales
The great managers encourage,play with the positives and give their team members own space to perform optimally.Punish and make them understand when they go out of hand but never leave a chance to appreciate them in team meetings.
I’m sorry, but whenever I hear the word “Punish,” I get the hair on the back of my neck to rise, and I feel like the kid that got caught with my hand in the cookie jar.
I do agree with helping sales reps understand the meaning of consequences, but I would rather have them take risks then to always wait for someone else to make the decision. I had a great manager who helped me understand “empowerment!” The goal is to constantly empower decision making (within reason and company goals) as close to the customer as possible. Thus empowering the rep in front of the customer, helping the rep “OWN” the decision, and expediting the selling process. To do this the general message is NOT to fear “punishment.” The process I instill is to help each rep understand that they are allowed to make the decision. Since I also instill a environment of “NO surprises,” they are required to make sure I understand the decision they made each time they go outside the 9 dots. If it was a good decision, and one I would have supported, they get an “Atta-person” and we both learn. I tell them ahead of time that if they make a mistake and a decision I would not have made, we will work together to fix things, there will be no punishment, and they will NOT make the same mistake again. It is here where I once again coach them on understanding the consequences and it usually sinks in better when tied to a specific decision.
Good Selling!
Jim Hughes
Sales Leadership Consulting
The great managers let their superstars shine and give them breathing room to work. They also help the underperformers get what they need to become superstars. They don’t steal ideas from those they supervise and call them their own. They praise and reward good work with money, benefits, and accolades. Good managers must make tough decisions too, which sometimes means getting rid of underperformers. Good managers continue to learn about sales, technology, marketing, company products, and competitors’ products.
The bad managers do the opposite of the above. They micromanage, powertrip, and do not coach. Some lack empathy. Bad managers rarely know how to lead by example. Some can’t lead at all. Don’t just tell me. Show me how it’s done.
Kind regards,
Emanuel Carpenter
P.S. Thanks to everyone for buying my new ebook “Six-Figure Cold Calling.” The publisher priced it at $9.99 so that folks can afford it in tough times. Visit me online at http://www.cold-call-selling.com.
I used to have an employee who we saw once a month at the sales meeting (spoke occasionally between), but would leave the meeting with comments like ‘everyone leave me alone till next month’, ‘hopefully we won’t need to speak until next month’ all said in jest of course.
The fact was that he didn’t want interaction with colleagues or management, he was our second top earner and all we needed to do to keep him performing was leave him alone!
Pretty easy to manage, problems occurred when a micro manager came in and wanted weekly reports etc. He left, and we got someone in with half his ability!
http://www.thesalespro.co.uk
Exactly!
Great Sales Managers start by hiring the right people who are self motivated. Then they set realistic and acheivable goals. They encourage and motivate and create a positive work environment that fosters top performance.
What they don’t do is hire people who are taking a job because they can’t find anything else. They don’t discourage performance by creating an atmosphere of fear, negative reinforcement and micro management.
Great Managers are consistent. That doesn’t mean they treat everyone the same as people have unique motivational needs, it means they value and support every member of the team. They also run effective meetings. An effective meeting model to follow is “R E M” – Recognize, Educate and Motivate. If they don’t have time to develop good meeting tools on their own they find them, which is where we can help.
Great managers encourage their reps to be independent thinkers and territory managers. They engage their reps in conversation not only about business but work life balnace and the still embody some of the sales rep characteristics that got them noticed as a potential great manager. Not so great managers just manage!
For me, it’s simple. My best managers have set aside time for me in a one-on-one each week so I could ask them to remove barriers to selling (internal backlogs, contract negotitations, etc) and move deals forward. Other than that, they stayed out of my way (kept admin tasks away, kept internal mtgs to a minimum, etc) and let me sell.
Great question!
Jill
They paint the picture of a vision, then get you to buy into the vision on a personal level.
The truly great sales managers treat each and every one of their direct reports like business partners because truly that is what they are. Each and every sales manager has a quota or a specific metric that they need to hit, just like each of the sales reps do. If each one of the manager’s business partners isn’t succeeding, then it is difficult for the manager to succeed.
The key to this point is that each sales rep’s vision of success is different. New sales reps have entirely different visions of success than a 25 year sales veteran. Good sales managers help direct and coach them, great sales managers manage their relationship with each business partner as if their entire livelihood was dependent on it. This includes working to get the resources needed to close a big deal as well as having the hard conversations about why things aren’t meeting expectations or things that either the manager or sales rep are not comfortable with.
In the end, in order to truly succeed in the long term there must be a mutual sense of respect and trust between a sales rep and the manager. Bad managers can get lucky enough to have a star sales rep on their team but only good or great managers can insure that they stay on the team.
Doyle,
Thank you for everythng you do. I share a lot of the articles you write with my sales team so that they can benefit. There are a lot of those articles hanging up on our sales floor or in peoples cubes.
I look forward to the day when we can meet each other and I can thank you in person.
Take care,
Ben
All great feedback. I recognize every single one of those scenarios and each have described some of the “best practices” great managers use.
Here are a few of the cliche’s I use and preach:
1) Deliver good news and bad news with equal dispatch
2) Be a Jesuit. Meaning it is always easier to ask for foregiveness then permission. However, if you ever choose the wrong direction please note that you will NOT get in trouble as long as you can explain why you thought it was the right thing to do. Plus, don’t make that same mistake again. I want to encourage smart risktaking as close to the customer a spossible.
3) Do the right thing.
4) Never dispariage….anyone!
5) Make sure you are managing the poor performers so that the weight of the team goal does not always fall on your top performers.
6) Lead, follow, or get out of the waty.
7) Lead by example.
Great managers say, “Yes, and…” http://throughthebrowser.blogspot.com/2009/11/yes-and.html
The great managers that I have had have developed a team atmosphere, encouraged mentoring and communication between members. They respect the abilities of their salepeople, and celebrate their achievements. They praise in public and correct in private. They also are always willing to pitch in and help whenever they’re needed.
They inspire, empower and listen
Great managers mentor, coach and demonstrate what expectaions are. They eliminate any uncertainty in what awesome performance looks like and how to achieve it.
The instill confidence and listen well.
The increase use of virtualized sales teams adds an interesting/challenging twist to this question. See:
http://mark-rodman.blogspot.com/
Great managers are available when you need them, they make decisions in a timely manner, praise sales people on performance and never show favoritism. They are good listeners and tend to be realistic about what is achievable and know how to obtain excellent results. They lead the team and help the individual members succeed.
Work just as hard as I do. Go to bat for me & the team with upper management. Always be looking for ways to make me perform better/faster/stronger. Always be up front with your team (as much as the situation will allow).
The best manager I ever had believed in me and pushed me on to success (literally). But he would not have done that had I not wanted it. He let me work late and was always telling me to go home.
Micromanaging is a demotivator for any good salesperson
I also want to give a thanks to Doyle, I have had no salespeople I can talk to like this because they all see me as a threat, so thanks for this forum.