Empower your sales manager to drive more revenue!

 

To increase sales velocity, most organizations either invest in marketing (buy more leads) or invest in sales (hire more sales people). The sad truth is that both of these tactics are wildly ineffective. While more leads may put additional MQLs into the top of the funnel, there's no guarantee that these leads will convert to SQLs or eventually customers. And similarly, hiring more sales people takes time and effort -- three to six months to recruit an inside sales person and bring them up to speed, twelve to eighteen months to recruit and enable a good enterprise field rep. By then your successor will be facing the same challenge! And...more sales people don't guarantee more revenue. It just doesn't work that way! You have a better option! Improve conversion rates and velocity at each stage of your sales funnel! No additional marketing investment is needed. No new sales headcount required...just a focus on skill and process improvement. And the ROI for this investment is dramatically higher! Given my background of 20+ years in enterprise (and early stage) sales enablement, you might expect me to suggest investment in sales enablement as the obvious approach. Years ago, as a newly minted CRO of a $20M professional services organization, I did not invest in enablement. I did something different...related, but different. And revenues grew by 75% in 18 months. While good sales enablement is a critical foundation for improving sales productivity, you cannot turn around an ineffective sales enablement function in less than eighteen months. Short term revenue acceleration requires focused process and skills improvement and coaching by the sales manager. The fastest route to increased revenue velocity is to empower your first line sales manager The job of the first line sales manager is to ensure the success and effectiveness of the sales team. Yet, in most organizations, first line sales managers spend most of their time not empowering their direct reports. Instead, they are burdened with managing up, conducting pipeline reviews, selling (acting as heros "saving" their reps), and dealing with administrivia. What a waste... In the meantime, their direct reports receive no coaching or timely feedback on their tactics, habits, techniques...they just keep doing the same thing that hasn't been working in the past. Oh, and by the way, the rep's manager is the primary reason why a rep will stay with (or leave) a company!

Steps to take First, this approach requires a shift in mindset, a focus on coaching and deliberate practice. How much of that happens in your organization today? Sales leadership must send a strong signal that coaching is the single most valuable activity for sales managers to undertake. Not pipeline inspection...coaching.

Too many sales managers are former lone wolves...they were great at selling, so they must be great managers. Wrong. Ted Lasso never played (European) football, yet he was a great coach! Assume that your sales managers need help in developing their coaching skills. Invest in a coaching workshop and ongoing support to ensure that they are indeed coaching and that their coaching skills improve over time. Measure the time they spend actually coaching. It should be 20-30% of their week...every week. Use your CRM data to identify where individuals and teams need coaching...and deliberate practice...focus. If early stage conversion rates are weak, focus there. If negotiation skills are lacking, focus there. Assume that discovery skills can be improved through skill building.

Professionals practice. You're a sales professional, not a sales amateur Devote time for deliberate practice. Professionals in many fields (and most athletes!) practice their craft and skills before they enter the operating room or step onto the field of play. To be good at what you do, you must practice. You must focus on the skills that make you good, and you will benefit from immediate, in-the-moment feedback. If you don't practice, you'll have to think your way through a difficult sales situation. And by then it's too late. Why don't sales people undertake deliberate practice? Role playing is uncomfortable. Ya. So is lifting weights or doing windsprints or practicing your keynote speech. Practice takes time away from selling time. Sure... Your sales people must build the "muscle memory" so they can pivot with the customer or deal with a challenging objection. They must build the muscle memory so that challenging selling situations go smoothly, that nothing rattles them, that the customer truly understands that they are on their side, helping them to achieve their strategic business goals.