The best sales managers ‘DELEGATE’

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There are sales managers who want to do everything themselves and spend more time selling than helping their team develop and deliver.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone, particularly if you’ve been promoted to the role of sales manager from the ranks of salespeople.

With so many hats to wear and ever-increasing pressure on a sales manager to deliver results, those that seek assistance from inside and outside their team enjoy the greatest success.

Delegation allows you to focus on the key outcomes of your sales team and can be a basic driver of business growth and success.

“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men (and women) to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it” – Theodore Roosevelt

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Sales Managers are Reporting Regulators

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Sales managers are a pivot-point for reporting within an organisation.

Accurate, relevant, simple reports built around appropriate data enable sales managers to know what has happened, what needs to happen and what’s likely to happen if an individual or team maintains the status quo. Running your sales team without effective sales reporting is like riding a motorbike blindfolded.

If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it

And just as importantly, as a sales manager you need to be reporting inwards to assist leadership in making decisions and setting priorities. Reports from sales should be providing marketing with the intelligence required to develop appropriate market-engagement plans and content and R&D should be guided by what sales are hearing from the market to guide or confirm development decisions.

One of the challenges I faced in sales management was ensuring the reporting demanded of me, and that I asked from my team, was really necessary and added value to the business. All too often I found management requesting reports that were difficult to justify, time-consuming to produce and added little or no value to the productivity of the business, or my sales team. Likewise, a sales manager needs to ensure the reports that he requires from his team provide measures that help both the sales manager, the team and the individuals achieve their goals. Reporting on appropriate metrics should help identify areas for improvement, not catch people out.
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Sales Manager or Performance Supervisor?

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Over the years I have seen all too many sales managers focussed only on results and not what is necessary to achieve the results. The management component of a sales manager’s role is about the planning and control of work processes, but a good sales manager knows that supervision – directing their team towards success – will deliver not just better results for the team and the individual sales person, but greater job satisfaction for themselves.

Supervising the performance of your team is not just about measuring performance against targets (the results), but helping the individual salesperson understand what will help them be successful and guiding them to undertake these actions and develop the skills needed to achieve success. And this will be different for each individual. Once thorough planning has been done and your team know the sales strategy and objectives, they need to have a comprehensive action plan and the skills needed to guide them through the activities needed to achieve their goals.

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go with their old measurements and expect me to fit in”
George Bernard Shaw
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Sales Manager – The Team Selector

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As a sales manager you’re not just the coach, but the team selector. You will be responsible to finding, hiring and inducting the right people into your sales team. This is always challenging and even the best sales managers cannot expect to get it right all the time.

“I’m not looking for the best players, I’m looking for the right players” – from the movie ‘Miracle’

To help find the right person for a sales team, you need to ensure you have the right factors lined up before starting the recruitment process:

  • The right position – is the role clearly defined and do you know the knowledge and skills required to be successful in the role? Can you communicate this effectively to the new team member?
  • The right time – for both for the candidate and the company. Will the role be appropriate for where the candidate is in their career? Can the company accommodate this new employee at this time?
  • The right things – do you have a clear understanding of how your new team member needs to apply their knowledge and skills to be successful? Will they?
  • The right ways – will the the new team member be able to perform at their highest level while remaining in alignment with the business’s core values and the team’s culture?
  • The right fit – will the the candidate demonstrate the right attitude, behaviour and communication styles to ‘fit’ with your team culture?

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Business Finance Consultants

Waste in the Finance Function? Surely Not!?

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In a previous blog, we discussed applying the first principle of Lean (‘adding value’) to the Finance function. Today, let’s consider the second Lean principle: ‘Reducing waste’.

Yes, there can indeed be waste and missed opportunities in any Finance Department.

Here are a few common examples:

  • inefficient collection processes
  • the same data being manually entered several times in different systems
  • reports being generated for people that do not understand them and/or do not use them (in which case they are obviously not helping to guide the business)
  • complex report generation that requires the collection/analysis of data from multiple systems
  • cost allocation that does not add value to the decision making process, and
  • inappropriate budgeting processes that do not deliver outcomes aligned with the strategy of the business.

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HR Consulting

How Strong Are the Links in Your Management Chain?

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I’m sure we’ve all had the experience at one time or another of seeing apparently sound decisions fall apart at the point of implementation, or otherwise proceed but result in unintended consequences.

This can of course happen in connection with any type of decision, and staff-related decisions are certainly no exception. Indeed, training initiatives, recognition programs and performance review systems are classic examples of well-intended business improvement initiatives that can go awry.

Of the many possible reasons for things going off track (poor project management or inadequate resourcing, for example), one of the most common concerns the role of middle managers/supervisors. Read more →

Be a Sales Team Captain

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As a sales manager you need to wear a lot of hats – you are a leader, a manager, a coach, a trainer, a translator of company messages and many other things. But one role I often see overlooked is that of team captain. I believe this is one of the most difficult areas of management in sales. The ability to be the captain of a team is not found books or courses but in skilfully relating to individuals – managing relationships and interactions ‘on the field’.

In sport the team captain must not be just a competent player, they need to inspire confidence, translate the game plan into action and make changes when necessary. The must make tactical decisions, communicate effectively and handle pressure. Read more →

When You’re a Sales Manager, You’re a Leader

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It’s not uncommon for good salespeople to be self-directed and accountable individuals, which makes them naturally effective at being the ‘leaders of their own lives’. Good sales professionals are highly results-driven and competitive. These natural traits tend to see them focus on their individual performance, often with little consideration for team results. The fact that the individual success of high-performing salespeople delivers the results required by the company makes them a valuable asset, but they are not necessarily working as part of a team to achieve these results – that was surely my experience when I was enjoying my greatest success in sales. As a sales manager your ability to lead these unique individuals, and achieve synergistic outcomes is what will define your success.

Management is about doing things right, and leadership is about doing the right things.

The above definition from management guru, Peter Drucker does provide an understanding of the difference between leadership and management, what it doesn’t do is highlight, that to be a successful sales manager, you need to do the right things, and you need to do them right – you are both leader and manager. Read more →

Inform partnering with US consultancy

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We are pleased to announce that Inform Consulting Group and COGNEGY (USA), have formed a strategic alliance that will allow Inform Consulting Group to assist Australian businesses that want to enter or strengthen their current position in the US market.

Inform Partner, Eric de Diesbach said of the agreement: “The US remains one of the greatest opportunities for Australian companies but entering a new, well established market is never easy. The relationship with such an experienced business development consultancy as Cognegy allows us to provide unique local support to business on both sides of the Pacific to assist with their positioning and export development.”

COGNEGY-color-taglineCognegy Executive Director, Phil Jafflin, said of the new relationship: “We are fortunate that we might refer such a trusted and highly skilled partner for the companies which desire to invest into the Australian Market. Indeed, the market is very attractive by many ways. It is politically & economically predictable and offers great opportunities to the niche players with a strong value proposition.”

COGNEGY is a privately held business development firm providing tailored services to grow mid-market companies faster and more profitably. COGNEGY is presently active in New York, Atlanta and Miami.

Typically COGNEGY is engaged by:

Established North American businesses who seek profitable growth or global expansion
Foreign businesses who want to enter the US market
Foreign businesses who want to improve their current performance in the US market

Contact us today for more information.

Sales Manager, Leader or Coach?

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To be effective, a sales manager must be both a leader and an manager – doing the right things, and doing things right. But what happens when your staff are struggling to do things right. This is where sales managers become coaches.

Many may argue that not all sales people require coaching but as roles and circumstances change, what is needed to ‘do things right’ also changes and often even the best salespeople can falter. This is where the manager needs to adopt the role of coach. Think of the best athletes. I know of none who have achieved greatness without the support and guidance of a great coach. Even pro-golfers and tennis players at the peak of their careers will often look for specialist coaching to help with small flaws that have crept into their game and are negatively impacting their performance.

When your sales staff have the basic and essential skills but struggle to apply them in a changing environment, this is when your role as coach is needed. You help them develop and apply their skills both for their own benefit and that of the team – this is your skill.

“A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be”
Tom Landry Dallas Cowboys coach 1960 – 1988

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