Searching for a sure-thing approach to sales management is a bit like searching for the perfect golf swing. Golf nuts know there is no such thing, but that doesn't stop them from constantly tweaking their swing, studying everyone from Tiger Woods to Bill Murray to discover how to lower their handicap.

The same can be said for the various sales techniques and motivational tools “guaranteed” to result in annual double-digit growth for your company. Sales managers are always listening, always interested in any tips or techniques they might be able to use.

Robert Nadeau, managing principal for the Industrial Performance Group, speaks to hundreds of sales managers and their staffs each year. In his talks and informal discussions, Nadeau has heard a number of sales mangers talk about their challenges. Likewise, he has also received feedback from salespeople—sometimes via IPG surveys—as to what they'd like to change about their respective companies' sales approaches.

In one recent survey, Nadeau and IPG found that only 38 percent of salespeople's time is devoted to actual selling.

“[That's] data from more than 2,000 salespeople,” he says. “The average salesperson only spends 19 weeks, out of a 50-week work year, on selling.”

To Nadeau, this crystallizes the key problem facing sales departments in corporate America today.

“If you want to get more sales, give your salespeople more time to sell,” Nadeau tells sales managers. “Just ask your salespeople, 'What keeps you from selling? What are the little problems or hiccups that keep happening and get in your way?' Salespeople will tell them because they're dealing with it every day of their lives.”

One such hiccup can be a lack of communication, a lack of consistently accurate information between the inside and outside salespeople. Savvier distributors recognize this and make sure inside salespeople are up to date and well-trained—and well paid. This has done much to level the playing field and improve customer service, explains Bill Currie, director of sales at Perry Supply Co. in Birmingham, Ala.

“Thirty years ago, the princes of the sales force were the outside salespeople,” says Currie. “The inside salespeople were a notch or two down. [Today] I'd equate a good inside person with a good outside salesperson.”

Many inside sales staffs actually have more day-to-day contact with customers than the outside salespeople, he adds.

“Once the outsides salesperson attracts the good customer, it basically falls into the lap of the inside person to serve that customer in a manner that keeps them coming back,” Currie says. “So it's very important to have high quality, knowledgeable inside salespeople.”

Joe Henderson, manager of industrial sales at Arkansas Mill Supply in Pine Bluff, Ark., agrees with the added emphasis on inside sales.

“My role is to get more good inside sales teams trained properly, so we can get our outside salespeople out and face-to-face with more customers—generating more phone calls which will generate more revenue and profits,” Henderson says. “That way, the inside staff can battle the day-to-day fires.”

Inside sales departments will get the call from their outside counterparts if a customer's order hasn't arrived “yesterday.” A well-trained insider can anticipate such problems and prevent many of them.

While this approach has been helpful for Arkansas Mill, Henderson agrees with Nadeau's general assessment of outside salespeople being unable to spend as much time on selling as they'd like.

“Sometimes salespeople can get bogged down by putting out fires rather than actually being out there, bringing in new business,” Henderson says.

Nadeau points out that larger companies tend to use more tools to measure the effectiveness of their sales staffs.

“They always say, 'It costs us a ton of money to manage these employees with benefits and pensions. So we have to do something to get as much productivity from these people as we can,'” Nadeau explains. “The larger organizations realize how important people are as an asset, because when you look at the cost drivers in your company, the biggest cost drivers are your people.”

Larger companies are also more accustomed to “having a culture of measurement,” Nadeau says, since many have been using various analytical tools like the Six Sigma method that categorizes and measures efficiency and productivity.

“One measurement is worth more than a thousand hunches. So they'll measure the productivity of their salespeople, the number of mistakes being made and the kind of calls that come into their call center,” he says.

By contrast, Nadeau has found that smaller to medium sized companies won't get serious about scrutinizing their sales approach until things start to slow down.

“As long as they're making money and things are going well, they don't talk about this,” Nadeau explains.

A smaller, family-run business, Nadeau theorizes, tends to make decisions more informally.

“They'll ask, 'Are we doing OK? Are we doing better than the other guy?' They don't always look at the mechanics of their business the way larger ones will,” he explains.

Nadeau understands how a successful small, family-owned business would not see fit to approach this the way a large company might. For one thing, smaller distributors don't have the budget of a Fortune 500 company.

At the same time, a smaller distributor knows that selling services is as much a part of its success as the actual selling of product lines—even though there may not be an immediate financial benefit to some of the services.

Cutting back on the time a salesperson spends on service—attempting to free them up so they can spend more time on actual selling—may not be an approach that would help, says Henderson.

“As distributors, we sell service every day and anything that cuts into servicing the customer and bringing them value-added cost savings is not going to be a win in the long run,” Henderson explains. “In the short run, you might see some return, but long-term, it will harm your company.”

Jim Miller, executive vice president of sales and marketing at General Tool and Supply Co. of Portland, Ore., agrees and says many of his salespeople will be out “selling”—but not actually selling, in the cash transaction sense of the word.

“I have some senior [sales] guys who are account managers. That's their primary responsibility. It involves managing those key customers who are, in many cases, multi-million dollar customers,” Miller explains. “The amount of product selling they do is much less, because they are working at every level to maintain that relationship between their [client] company and ours.”

General Tool sells to manufacturing, electronics and MRO customers as well as electrical and mechanical contractors.

“Most successful companies understand who they are as a company, understand the mix of products and services and the best way to deliver them to the end customer. They then go out and differentiate themselves from all the other people out there,” Miller explains. “That's the ultimate challenge.”

So should selling services, the value-adds, be equated with actual face-to-face selling? Nadeau says yes, but advises not to confuse adding value with time spent correcting preventable mistakes.

“If you look at some of the stuff considered to be value-added, [distributors] are dealing with mistakes not created by the customer, but created by their own company. You only add value when you help the customer with their problem,” Nadeau says. “If you call up and apologize for not having an item there on time and then offer to drive it over, you're not adding value.”

For all the analysis of what sales managers should or shouldn't do, experts agree that the actual finding, hiring and keeping of good salespeople—inside or outside—is as important as ever.

“The hiring is hard because there aren't a lot of good salespeople just sitting around needing a job,” Nadeau explains. “It's hard to find them.”

Once a company finds good salespeople, motivating them with pep talks delivered by celebrity speakers, or assuming that large commissions alone will keep them happy, is not necessarily the best approach, Nadeau says. The key lies in making sure they are in position to do what they do best—sell.

“I believe that anybody who goes into sales is a self-motivator. … They like doing it. They like to be out pressing the flesh and getting sales,” Nadeau maintains. “As for financial incentive, if you have a good compensation system, they're going to make as much as they need to make or as much as they want to. So just look at what is keeping them from being good [salespeople] and remove those barriers.”

Miller adds another point to consider: Like that perfect golf swing, timing in sales is everything.

“You have to manage based on what the [economic] times are,” he says. “Our industry goes through contractions. In every decade, we seem to have one to three years of a down cycle. And that challenges everything.”

When customer dollars become few and far between, it can make for difficult motivational challenges for managers.

“Motivation in a large growth market is different than in a shrinking market,” Miller explains. “You have to manage differently. Good managers earn their money in a down market.”

Still, effective sales managing—like the ideal golf swing—is an issue guaranteed to start conversations.

“It's a great topic, but in today's market it's a big challenge and a frustration at the same time,” Miller says. “What's important is that you have people who live it everyday and understand their responsibilities.”