First, the sales managers

l\To* rHAr rHE woRsr of the recession is behind us, it's I \ time to think about actually growing the business again. And that means investing in the improvement of the sales force.

Most astute principals and chief sales officers realize that in this brutal economic environment, companies that sell better will take market share away from less effective competitors. Yet budgets are still tight, and nervous c.e.o.s are hesitant to fund broad-based sales initiatives.

What to do? If you want to do something to improve your sales force, the best application of limited funds is to invest in the sales managers.

It's the sales managers who have the greatest opportunity to help salespeople unleash their potential. Because of their daily high touch interaction with the sales force and the market, sales managers have the levers to ratchet up sales performance in the entire team. If you can educate a sales manager in the best practices of his position, and if he then implements the principles, practices and disciplines of professional sales management, you can see an immediate, measurable and long-lasting improvement in the performance of the sales team.

While most people intuitively understand the link between effective sales management and improved results, recent research has confirmed it. For example, a study by Wilson Learning Worldwide concluded that sales teams under the oversight of a highly skilled sales manager produced"29Vo higher revenue, 47Vo higher employee satisfaction. and l6Vo hisher customer satisfaction."

Unfortunately, of all the job titles and positions in a typical B-2-B sales force, the first-line sales managers are the least trained for their positions. Most have never been educated in the best practices of effective sales management. As a result, they default to the habits and practices they saw when they were salespeople. They mimic the models of the sales managers for which they worked. Alas, most of their models were also never educated in effective sales management.

As a result, sales management practices vary from one extreme to another, depending on the individual manager's vision of himself. There is a continuum from micromanager on one extreme to non-manager at the other. Some see themselves as "super salespeople"-the most competent of all the salespeople, and the one who needs to go with the salespeople to close big accounts and to smooth flustered relationships.

Others become administrators, busying themselves with reports, meetings and a continuous stream of clerical functions. Some identify with the salespeople and wouldn't think of impinging on anyone's style or system of work. Others see themselves as executives who don't really have time for the nitty gritty of joint sales calls. Still others, suffering from a lack of a clear vision as to what their role could be, default to a reactive style of management, where their time is directed to the most compelling of the countless number of issues that cry for today's attention.

The costs to the company can be huge. Morale is not what it could be, and that impacts almost every transaction and relationship for the sales team. Salespeople turn over more rapidly, causing a series of unnecessary costs. Marginal salespeople continue in roles for which they aren't suited, resulting in lost sales and disgruntled customers. Unfocused salespeople default to reactive sales styles,