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Does Sales Management mean there’s management in sales? How many roles are there in sales for management? And does that management add any value or simply get in the way? This is a complex question anybody involved in selling needs to understand.
Learning to manage the management should be the first class in sales training, but never is.
The Task Master
Most people will recognise the activity sales manager role – the one where the task master collects numbers of calls, presentations, proposals and deals closed. Here’s where the manager bullies the under performers – Get on the phone, get out on the street, kiss more frogs, or get another job.
The Hero
Lucky sales people will recognise the hero role. The manager is the superstar sales professional – coaching the rep on what to and how to do it. This guy is the hero – called in to manage the difficult ones. Everybody loves this guy, and especially the hero. It’s the ultimate ego trip.
The Secret Weapon
Particularly in the B2B world there’s also a role for the non-sales executives. The CEO, or CFO, or COO, or technical architects are brought into the sales process to supplement the proposition. In this type of business arranging for the buying company CEO to meet with the selling company CEO is pure gold – provided the the two get on, of course.
That’s three roles experienced sales professionals will recognise. What’s the fourth?
The Fixer
Henri Fayol taught the world about management nearly one hundred years ago. He explained his theory and fifty years later consultants picked up on the concept. Read Fayol’s work, or even summaries you’ll find in Wikipedia. Netting it down, Fayol said “Figure out where things go wrong, then make changes to stop them doing it again”.
Unfortunately most sales managers don’t get involved in management theory. The bully or the hero roles are more easily understood. But Fayol’s theory has proved correct, in production and supply chain.
Isn’t it time sales organisations adopted the concept?
That’s the background to Sales Probability Process Management – a methodology which recognises nothing can be understood by measuring outputs alone. The defects which undermine performance can only be uncovered, and rectified, by monitoring and understanding the process.
Sales organisations which rely on activity, good fortune and superstar sales magicians never succeed – in the end. The secret to success in sales operations is finding a value proposition and a process which the average sales rep can make work, and then finding ways of improving it.
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