There’s a crucial and often overlooked role in sales, the sales manager. While there are lots of tips for success for sales reps and other content geared toward VP levels of sales, there’s not much out there for the sales manager. Doug and Jess cover the key priorities and responsibilities of an effective sales manager, as well as how companies can better support sales managers to maximize their impact.
Pre-Show Banter:
They need to understand performance and be able to manage the performance.
Sales managers are the recruiters of sales. You need to be constantly working on your team and developing your team.
You have to provide direction to those above you so that they can make smart decisions. You have to provide direction to those below you to manage those decisions.
Your job is to make work light for others. Your job is to know how things work in your organization.
You need to be coaching. If you aren’t living and breathing the training, learning and development, sales reps will flush it down the toilet.
To go further, there needs to be a framework that allows for flexibility. No one manager has the same style. There have to be lots of ways to get it right and that has to be defined. (Here's an episode that goes into the behavioral science that effects the sales process.)
Not only does the strategy need to be defined, it needs to be clearly communicated. What’s the economic model? What’s the game you’re playing?
This means that when you have a bad quarter and suddenly the expectations shift, don’t expect the same leverage.
No one is born a sales manager. They need training and development like anyone else.
Sales managers need to be able to make decisions. There are many choices that need to be made every day that are ambiguous. They have to be accountable for that and have to learn from that.
If you’re going to be the facilitator and know how to get things done and make work light for others, you need to have access and support. If you need to talk to the CFO, the CFO should talk to you.
You need to be willing to provide the resources to be successful. You have to give sales managers the tools they need and a support team.
They need a strong CRM configured the right way, and they need whatever other right tech. More often they don’t have the tech they need, rather they have tech that’s a pain in the ass and tech bloat.
If sales managers have to do low-value activities and if they’re not being proactively supported with the right things, they’re not going to be successful. If RevOps can only do one job and can only make one person in the organization happy, that role is the sales manager.
Sales managers are in an in-between place. You need to be responsive to their needs.
Jess’s Takeaways:
Follow Jess, Doug & Lift on socials for updates on the show or other insights:
Subscribe to the show on Spotify & Apple Podcasts
Check out Let's Play RevOps on Twitch for more commentary on RevOps