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Holistic Competencies for Sales Managers By Kevin F. Davis.

Many sales manager training programs focus primarily on sales coaching. But to thrive in their profession, sales managers must develop a wide range of competencies, not just coaching.

Here is a list of competencies that I place at the top of the list in terms of “must haves” for great sales management. Additional competencies can be added, or sometimes deleted, depending on your company’s needs.

(1) Developing a leadership mindset Every sales manager I’ve met came up through the ranks. But though they’ve been promoted into a sales management position, their mindsets are stuck in their previous job. They still think like an über salesperson”: chasing deals, jumping in and taking over when a rep is struggling, avoiding conflict, focusing almost exclusively on end results.

An effective sales manager understands that leading a sales team requires a completely different mindset from selling. They learn to stand back and observe their team in action, then offer counsel and coaching rather than taking over. They develop their team in order to improve the inputs that produce the results.

(2) Managing their time and priorities Most sales managers tell us they would like to do more coaching but they just can’t find the time. Not surprising, given that most of them are inundated with hundreds of emails, texts, and calls every day. This avalanche of “stuff” buries them in work that feels urgent but is not really important.

Sales managers must become masters of time and priority control. They must learn how to respond to requests in ways that forces the responsibility for taking action on the person doing the asking (most often the rep!). Their #1

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priority should always be developing the knowledge and skills of their salespeople, not responding to requests from others.

(3) Effective coaching Sales managers often say they already do coaching, but what they really mean is that they do performance reviews once or twice a year where they call a salesperson into their office and discuss past activities and results. The best sales managers also incorporate:

(a) developmental coaching, where they help salespeople improve their skills and motivation, and

(b) deal coaching, where they help salespeople prepare for specific meetings with customers and prospects at different points in the sales process.

Doing more developmental and deal coaching allows sales managers to develop salespeople who can sell value solutions, not just products or services.

To become good at these coaching skills, sales managers must understand their company’s sales process, know how to help reps demonstrate value to the company’s customers, put themselves in a position to observe reps, be able to diagnose sales performance problems, know how to evaluate sales rep skills and attitudes, and have strategies for solving common problems.

(3) Helping reps connect better to customer buying behavior There’s an irony that’s far too common in sales organizations: they think and say they are customer focused, but their sales process is seller-focused. That is, the company makes sure that reps understand what actions they are supposed to take when selling, but pays little attention to teaching reps how to identify the steps of buying that the customer is going through.

As a result, tracking and forecasts are based on sales rep intuition, not on evidence that a prospect is making progress toward a decision. And it’s this disconnect between “sales rep actions” and “customer actions” that contributes to lost sales and missed forecasts. Helping reps make those connections is the task of sales managers.

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(4) Increasing motivation and engagement Motivation issues come in many shapes in a sales team: New salespeople often have problems linking their personal and professional goals to their work. Experienced salespeople can lose interest in the job if it is not challenging. Successful reps can develop into prima donnas who think they deserve special treatment. One rep with a poor attitude can bring down the results of an entire team. Salespeople who want to rise in the organization can become discouraged if not given the opportunity for job growth.

No single model or approach to dealing with motivation can cover all these issues. Sales managers have to learn how to identify the specific motivators for each rep in order to increase their inspiration to excel. They must also learn how to deal with people who are demotivated—who believe they are facing barriers that are preventing them from doing better.

(5) Planning & pipeline management Managers who lack experience or training often have a hard time looking beyond today’s problems. They either fail to develop plans or don’t understand what they need to do every day to implement their plans. They will often pay attention to deals only when the rep is nearing the “close” step, which is too late for them to help the rep sell value.

Successful sales managers have plans that address both sales goals and development of their salespeople. They link their pipeline and CRM systems to their company’s sales process so they can provide more timely, effective coaching and help sales reps move deals forward past each milestone in the buying cycle.

(6) Hiring & onboarding

Every experienced sales manager has hired someone who later turned out to not be a good fit for the job. Or perhaps the new hire wasn’t given sufficient guidance or training on how to be successful in that sales position.

Learning how to evaluate both the skills and wills (attitudes) of job candidates helps sales managers make sure they are bringing people onboard who are a good fit for the job and the team.

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To improve their teams, however, sales managers also need to think through the kinds of support that new hires need to learn all the skills required to succeed in the position.

Competencies Drive Sales Growth

Every sales manager’s job is to drive consistent sales growth. That means maximizing their team’s performance. Developing the competencies described in this article will improve sales managers’ skills, which in turn will help their teams consistently improve.

About the Author

Kevin F. Davis is the author of The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness: 10 Essential Strategies for Leading Your Team to the Top, which describes methods for everything from leading, coaching, and managing priorities, to hiring, forecasting, and driving rep accountability. For more information on TopLine’s sales management training program visit TopLine Leadership, Inc.

Download a sample chapter from The Sales Manager’s Guide to Greatness here