4 Skills Every Manager Needs

If there’s a group that we all know is critical to a successful sales organization, it’s the front line sales managers (those of you reading this who are FLSMs, be proud, but let’s not get crazy just yet). Direct managers have such an enormous impact on rep behaviors (changes or reinforcement), on team climate, on retention of top talent, on attraction of the right talent, and on the most important, performance. It’s no wonder there’s been a renewed focus on sales manager development—the skills a front line manager needs to drive reps to successful outcomes and coming in above goal.

That said, even though there’s a renewed focus, what many have not yet come to terms with is that the definition of what the best managers look like and do, has fundamentally shifted. Yet, many sales organizations and their managers act as if nothing has changed. It’s as if we are running the NFL coaching playbook from 1956, with different rules and a failure to recognize changes in offensive and defensive schemes. But just like in the NFL, the sales landscape has changed, as has successful leadership competencies (we can all argue another time if the NFL and sales was better “back then”).

Here are some examples of sales manager missteps we are seeing as they work with their sales reps in this new landscape of customer buying and Insight Selling. Maybe these sound familiar to you.

A manager guides reps to just “take a deal” to hit a revenue metric, while profit is significantly reduced (or even negative)
As soon as a sales rep deviates from the prepped call plan, the sales manager jumps in and takes over the sales call – owning it, leaving the rep to sit silently
A manager sees a rep spending time on social media, prospecting, researching, and perhaps sharing relevant information, and discourages the practice to focus on making more dials to customers

These are just a few and, I imagine, we all could come up with a long list of ineffective behaviors in the new landscape (in fact, we have, CEB Sales Members, see the Sales Manager Competency Guide). What we do know, from variety of quantitative and qualitative studies, is that the most effective sales managers take a very different approach to management. Specifically, they excel across four key areas:

Management Fundamentals – items like honesty, integrity, communication
Coaching (bet that didn’t surprise any of you)
Sales Innovation – deal-level creativity coupled with strong business acumen
Climate of Judgment – empowering reps to make decisions and facilitating collaboration

As you move into 2014, ask yourself how will your sales organization arm managers with the right approach in the new sales landscape?

At the CEB Sales Leadership Council, we’ll be hosting workshops specifically designed for heads of learning and development and others that own sales manager development, to arm organizations with the information and tools to develop the manager competencies needed today. Look for dates and locations in the coming months.