Put me in, Coach

How to be a good sales manager

By Jack Keough, Editor -- Industrial Distribution, 2/1/2006

If you were to ask a sales consultant, trainer, or executive the best word to describe a top sales manager, inevitably the word "coach" would creep into the conversation.

"The truth is that every sales manager needs to be a coach," says Tom Reilly, a sales expert and author who has helped train more than 100,000 salespeople. Reilly, who is also the author of Industrial Distribution's Strictly for Sales column, uses Tiger Woods as an example.

"Tiger Woods has a coach to help him prepare to play better. And if someone like Tiger Woods needs a coach, shouldn't your salespeople?" he asked.

Reilly quickly offers some statistics to emphasize the importance of coaching.

"Fifty-six percent of salespeople today say they're not being coached the right way," he says. "Even more shocking is that 39 percent of salespeople have no written sales objectives. You can't succeed as a sales manager with those kinds of numbers."

Chuck Connors, president of Omni Enterprises, a hose and accessories distributorship in Worcester, Mass., takes the coaching analogy a step further.

"One of the best coaches in the National Football League was Bill Walsh of the San Francisco 49ers. Walsh was a very successful coach who had his first 15 plays of the game scripted depending on the opponent that week. Come hell or high water, he was going to run those plays, because they were well thought out and intended to work on a specific opponent."

It's no different in sales, he says. In Connors' case, his salespeople have a 100-day plan in which they make five contacts with major customers. The sales manager and salesperson come up with the plays that will work on specific accounts and work towards the ultimate goal: closing the sale.

"It's been said that 48 percent of salespeople make only one call on an account; 25 percent will make a second call; 12 percent a third call; and only 5 percent make a fourth call," Connors says. "Yet, 80 percent of industrial sales are closed after the fifth call. You just can't ignore those numbers."

Particularly irritating to Reilly, who wrote Coaching for Sales Success, is the number of managers who don't make joint calls with their salespeople.

"How can you possibly assess the talent of your salespeople if you're not on the road with them?" he asks.

Reilly dismisses comments from sales managers that they don't have the time to make those calls.

"That's a sales manager's primary job—to educate his people, mentor them, and help them achieve their sales objectives..., yet it's often overlooked. If that is the case, the manager has a time management problem as well as a sales management problem," he says.

Michael Marks, a principal with the Indian River Consulting Group and author of a book on sales compensation, is direct when talking about sales management.

"One of the biggest issues facing distributors today is managing the sales force," he said during a sales seminar at the Specialty Tools and Fasteners Distributors Assn. meeting last November. "In too many cases, the inmates are running the asylum."

He then asked, "Who is in charge of your sales force—you, as the manager, or the sales rep?"

A major problem with sales managers, Reilly says, is that they don't provide the feedback that salespeople need.

"Too many sales managers are intimidated by the salesperson. Many of the experienced guys on your sales force don't think they need coaching. Nothing is further from the truth. Sometimes your most experienced people are the ones that need the training. And in many cases, your best people are the ones that will get the most out of good coaching."

Marks says that every sales manager must discuss territory management with each rep at least once per month.

Inevitably, the question of accountability arises during discussions of the manager-sales rep relationship.

Connors, who is a professional sales trainer in addition to running his distributorship, remembers a phrase Reilly used years ago.

"P plus P equals 2PS," says Connors, sounding like a chemist rather than a sales executive. "It's simple. Planning plus preparation equals twice the performance. High-performance salespeople are accountable because they plan and prepare. Using the football analogy again, plan and prepare the five plays you're going to run before your sales call. Planning is the key to sales success."

One of the best ways for a manager to manage his salespeople is to give them the tools they need to do their jobs, work with them to establish achievable objectives, and hold them accountable for their performance.

"Accountability means that performance and expectations really matter, and the sales manager controls those expectations," says Marks.

Connors advises sales managers to stop managing and judging the output of salespeople. Outputs, he explains, are the results. A sales manager has to go back and look at the input: specifically, what went wrong and what went right to achieve goals.

"You shouldn't celebrate the touchdown. You should celebrate the way the plan worked and how the salesperson carried out the plan," he says.

Today's sales managers are different from 40 years ago, he says.

"In the 1960s, sales managers were basically policemen. Many more skills are needed today than just beating up salespeople at meetings, as was done years ago."

Connors says written plans are needed.

"Show me a well-thought out plan itinerary, who they're going to call on and how they're going to make it work, and it will lead to increased sales," he says.

Reilly says sales managers must be specific with what they want their salespeople to accomplish. Those goals also have to be attainable, measurable, and at the same time, challenging.

"Then you provide them feedback based on those goals," he adds, noting that it's extremely important to establish a time frame for accomplishing the objectives that are agreed upon.

During his STAFDA presentation, Marks, who conducted research on more than 600 distributors for his book, What's Your Plan: Smart Salesforce Compensation in Wholesale Distribution, advised distributor executives not to use an incentive plan to replace the role of sales manager.

"Don't try to manage your sales force by an incentive plan," he warns. The heart of sales management is to identify the activities that create the result and then manage those results, he says.

But sales experts say that long before managers get to that stage, the most important role is to hire qualified people.

"Be slow to hire and quick to fire," says Connors. "In the '50s and '60s, salesmen went out in the street and got credit for the orders and business they brought in."

Today, managers want salespeople who will be held accountable for execution of the sales plans they have developed for their territories. Distributor executives point out that it is critical to their success.

Connors asks, "We have to do business plans for our banks if we want a line of credit. Should it be any different for salespeople to develop plans for their territories?"n

For more articles on sales, go to www.inddist.com/sfs.