Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

I received an e-mail from an ex-student this week hoping to reserve a place on the next Vanguard Sales Management session in the UK – as it happens, we no longer deliver public classroom sessions as the online interactive programmes will be launching around June. However, I did send him a downloadable version and he knows I am available for ongoing advice.

The point of me mentioning this is that I was surprised that his company had decided to promote him because to begin with, he is a Top 5% Achiever who consistently exceeds all targets and is responsible for approximately 20% of the company’s revenue. He has developed very strong commercial relationships with many of the most important clients over the past ten years and has obviously played a prominent role in the firm’s dramatic growth. In this particular instance, knowing the board as well as I do, I feel sure they will have thought it through thoroughly and will have prepared contingency plans – but that is not always the case.

I do believe that the single most common mistake that organisations make is promoting their number one salesperson into the role of sales manager, thereby depriving themselves in a single stroke of their best producer and hamstringing their sales force with an ineffective manager. The skills required for managing, mentoring and developing a sales team are totally different from those required for selling. As a result, it’s not uncommon to find newly promoted sales managers who regret having taken a management position and may even leave to get back into sales.

Insufficient Time for Sales Team Development:

The most common danger in having sales managers who are basically super salespeople is that “relations with subordinates” including the critical tasks of development and supervision may deteriorate.

Even when they do recognise the importance of developing their salespeople, many sales managers find that they lack the skills and resources to do it effectively. It then becomes easier not to bother. The majority of sales managers – new and experienced alike – say they do not have sufficient time to train and develop their sales teams. They are so focused on sales results – and so accustomed to achieving success through their personal pursuit of those results – that they overlook their greatest potential source of power, the power to increase sales performance by developing their people.

An Overwhelmed Manager:

To make things worse, most sales teams consist of a number of individuals with differing levels of experience and ability, so the whole issue of team development becomes too daunting for the overwhelmed manager to contemplate.

The Important Role Sales Directors Can Play:

Sales Directors, who recognise that the different roles played by salespeople and managers require different skill sets; factor those differences into their recruitment and selection of sales managers. Instead of promoting top-performers purely on the strength of their sales performance, these Sales Directors look for management candidates who can demonstrate an ability to help others strategise, work effectively with customers, and build their self-confidence. These Sales Directors recognise that coaching competence is absolutely pivotal and feature it highly in managers’ performance reviews and remuneration packages.

Additionally, successful Sales Directors ensure that some sort of training and development program is in place to help sales managers continually improve the way they coach and develop their team. Equally important, top-performing Sales Directors look for ways to provide sales managers with the resources they need to perform effectively. This may mean, for example, giving managers tools with which to identify each individual salesperson’s strengths and development areas, providing them with an easy-to-use framework to address development needs, and putting a process in place that helps their team to implement new skills.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also like to read:

Sales Management – The Core Competencies and

Sales Management – What’s Involved?

I have been asked to remind you that the latest edition of the Newsletter is out next week and if you haven’t already subscribed, you can do so by following the link within the panel on the right.

I received a lot of mail this week, both wishing me festive greetings and also commenting on the results of the JF Directory Awards – thank you very much to all of you.

We have a very busy period coming up with the new JF site launching at the end of January, this blog receiving a complete makeover and change of name and address to: www.jonathanfarringtonsblog.com plus of course the imminent launch of ASP Profile.

However, I can share with you some exciting news: This week we finalised our plans to launch a new venture which will provide a “one stop” experience for sales leaders and sales professionals. It will be a site dedicated to promoting the work of the very best authors of sales related material – articles, white papers, training material and sales process tools – strictly by invitation only. I will of course keep you fully updated with the progress we make.

And finally……two further new articles:

On The jfa Group site: “How Small Companies Can Compete And Win” provides an insight into the secrets of the most successful “bidders” and reveals how, with just a little tweaking, every organisation can improve their success rates.

“It’s The Time Of Year For Account Reviews” is the lead feature on my personal site: jonathanfarrington.com and I have taken the opportunity to reiterate my belief that regularly reviewing your performance against a set of objective criteria within your most important accounts, is vital if you wish to continually improve and remain competitive.

Ok, as ever, have a great week - JF

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