Being a top performing sales manager or executive isn’t an easy job. Sales managers live in a world of constantly shifting priorities, crises, and challenges.
At the same time, sales leaders need to manage their role in carrying out the company strategy in the markets and with customers. They must adapt to ongoing changes in the market and the evolving needs of buyers and competitors. They have to ensure their organization is ready not just for today’s challenges, but also for upcoming changes they anticipate. They must boost the organization’s performance despite limited resources, reduced funding, rising expectations, and a lack of time.
Even for the very best it’s a huge challenge, but too often, those thrust into sales management roles, particularly first line sales management, aren’t prepared for their sales leadership responsibilities.
Given the challenges, it’s no wonder the average tenure of a sales manager is approaching 18 months.
The challenges sales managers face are not only those imposed by our companies, customers, and team members. Many of these challenges are self-created. Often, the saying, “We have met the enemy and the enemy is us,” reflects how sales managers tackle their roles. Whether it’s avoiding performance issues, getting caught up in details, or micromanaging every deal and action of their sales team, some managers find themselves overly involved. Others get too focused on closing deals, viewing themselves as top salespeople instead of effective sales leaders.
However you look at it, the job of a sales manager is not simple!
Having said that, there is much we can do to simplify what we do and how we work as sales managers. Most of it is pure common sense. Some of it is focus, discipline and pragmatic execution. A lot of it is creating the right environment or sales culture to drive each person to the highest levels of performance.
The things we need to do to simplify sales management are well understood. They are outlined in an extraordinary book by Mike Weinberg: Sales Management Simplified.
Mike’s straight, often blunt, approach to sales management, is pragmatic approach to the real worlds that sales people and managers find themselves working come through in simple messages about the job of the manager and how to drive top performance in the organization.
This summer, I had the pleasure of collaborating with Mike on Openview Labs Sales Management Series. Mike’s focus, clarity came through in each of those sessions–just as it comes through in Sales Management Simplified.
I can think of no better gift a sales manager can give to herself that buying, devouring, highlighting, annotating the book. It should be in arm’s reach of your desk, or on your tablet as you travel. It is your guide to focusing on those things most important to your people, your company and your own professional development as a manager.
At least until I publish my book, the Sales Manager’s Survival Guide, early next year, Sales Management Simplified is simply the very best book on sales management available. Next year, it will be one of the top 2 books on sales management ever written. (Mike, I just couldn’t resist adding these last 2 sentences–I know you’ll forgive me.)
As a final thought, Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Mike understands Sales Management!