The Missing Link In Sales Performance

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Every sales executive is constantly struggling to improve the performance of their organizations.  The data on percent of sales people achieving their goals, percent of companies making plan, and so forth is appalling.

Millions of person hours are spent in trying to understand how to drive sales performance.  Billions are spent on tools, training, consulting services all focused on improving the performance of sales people.

In virtually every discussion, every popular blog post, the focus of all sales performance initiatives is the sales person.  Are we getting the right people?  Are we developing the right skills? Do they have the right programs, training, tools to maximize productivity/performance?  Do we have the right incentives/compensation?  How do we get sales people to perform better?

Sales enablement professionals, sales operations, and top executives seem singularly focused on the question, “How do we raise the level of performance–the effectiveness and efficiency of each sales person on our team?”

We keep asking the same question, we keep trying different approaches, we keep spending time and money trying to fix our sales people.  We may see some results, some improvement, often difficult to sustain.

As I look at all these initiatives and efforts, there is one element that is consistently missing.  It seems obvious, it should be leaping out at us, but it’s rare that I see organizations focus on this.

It’s the front line sales manager.

The job of the front line sales manager is to maximize the performance of each person on their team.  It’s what they spend every day (or should be spending every day) doing.  Yet too often we ignore them in our performance improvement initiatives.

Sure they go to the same training their sales people go to.  Absolutely, they are using the same tools we want our sales people to use.  Yes, they are involved in the programs we want our sales people to execute.

But if they are the people responsible for maximizing the performance of each person on their team, what are we doing to help them do that?  How are we helping them learn what it means to drive performance, how they can be effective in working with their people every day?

How many sales managers even know this is their job?  The only reason they are in place is to maximize the performance of each person on their team.  The only way they achieve their numbers is through what the people on their team are doing.

The fastest path to driving consistent, sustainable sales performance is to focus on the people responsible for driving performance in their teams—the Front Line Sales Manager.

Yet, inevitably, enabling the front line sales manager is an afterthought, or we even seek to go around them–establishing coaching resources in sales enablement, or trying to relieve them of their coaching and performance management responsibilities through tools (as opposed to implementing the tools to augment their capabilities.)

If we want to drive sales performance, we need to focus on the people responsible for the performance of sales people-their managers.  We have to:

  1. That we make sure we have the right people in front line management jobs.  Sales superheroes, or managers that hide behind spreadsheets and analysis, or managers who think their time is better spent in strategy sessions and endless management meetings will not move the needle on sales performance. (They may cause a blip, but it is never sustainable.)
  2. Make sure they understand their first priority is their people and maximizing the performance of each person on their team.
  3. Make sure they are trained and equipped to do their jobs:  Making sure they know how to set performance expectations, they know how to coach and develop their people,  that they are actually prioritizing coaching in their day to day work, that they address performance issues early.  That they are recruiting and on boarding the right people.  That they are measuring the right things to help them understand where there are performance issues, but that they can’t be hiding behind the numbers and reports, but those should drive specific action and engagement with their people.  That they have some empathy for the reality of what sales people face every day, and can leverage that empathy in driving engagement, that they are truly being helpful to their people.
  4. Make sure they know their personal success is solely based on their people’s success.
  5. They are actively engaged in the design and implementation of tools, training, programs that we are rolling out to the sales people.  Implementing any new program without the active engagement of front line management in the ongoing reinforcement and coaching will not lead to sustained performance improvement.
  6. Senior managers–the managers of FLSMs need to actively be coaching and developing their FLSMs.

Since so many of our performance improvement strategies simply aren’t working or sustainable, perhaps there’s an argument for changing where we make our investments.  Perhaps we ought to be investing disproportionately in the people directly responsible for day to day sales performance, the Front Line Sales Manager.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Dave Brock
Dave has spent his career developing high performance organizations. He worked in sales, marketing, and executive management capacities with IBM, Tektronix and Keithley Instruments. His consulting clients include companies in the semiconductor, aerospace, electronics, consumer products, computer, telecommunications, retailing, internet, software, professional and financial services industries.

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