“From Great to Mediocre (or worse)”

by Steve Chriest

Last week I wrote about a crisis in sales management that has affected businesses worldwide during at least the last fifteen years. In the opinion of an experienced recruiter of sales managers, the expanding economy of the 1990's required little in the way of selling skills from salespeople, and contributed to the overall decline in sales and sales management skills.

While her reasoning sounded plausible to me, I began to think about other potential contributors to today's crisis in sales management. At least two causes came to mind: First is the ill-advised promotion of great salespeople to management positions, and second is the overall lack of management training provided to most sales managers.

First, those companies that routinely promote sales superstars to sales management positions often experience these results – they lose a great salesperson, they gain a mediocre or terrible sales manager, and the company's customers suffer in the transition.

According to experts in the field of psychological profiling, great salespeople, by definition, do not make great sales managers. Why? Simply because the characteristics needed for sales excellence are diametrically opposed to the characteristics required for great sales management.

The great salesperson lives to interact with customers. She is independent, and often shuns help and advice from her superiors. She would much rather interact with customers than fill out call or expense reports. And while she might agree, occasionally, to mentor junior salespeople, she will soon resent this intrusion on her time, and she will itch to get back to interacting with her customers.

Expecting a good or great salesperson to also be a good coach, teacher, report writer and internal politician ignores the essential characteristics that make great salespeople great.

Another contributor to the crisis in sales management is the observable fact that most sales managers aren't given the education and tools they need to execute the primary responsibilities of management, which include:

1) Setting objectives for their teams
2) Organizing the activates and supervision of their teams
3) Motivating their team members and effectively communicating the company's vision and mission to the team
4) Establishing specific measurement yardsticks that gauge individual and team performance
5) Developing people, including themselves

If you are a sales manager, how much in-depth management education and training has your company provided to you and your counterparts? If you were lucky enough to receive management training and education, how supportive has senior management been in allowing you the time you need to develop your skills and develop your people?

Unfortunately, research shows that the position of salesperson is considered “entry level” at most companies where career development programs are offered to employees. It follows that sales managers are too often viewed as red headed stepchildren by senior managers.

Next week I will offer some suggestions to help end the crisis in sales management.

Copyright © 2006 Selling Up TM . All Rights Reserved.

About the author: Steve Chriest is the founder of Selling Up TM (www.selling-up.com), a sales consulting firm specializing in sales improvement for organizations of all types and sizes in a variety of industries. He is also the author of Selling Up , The Proven System For Reaching and Selling Senior Executives. You can reach Steve at schriest@selling-up.com.