I am consistently on record as saying that standards of professional selling have never been so bad: This is borne out by the startling statistic that around 50% of frontline salespeople, globally, are expected to be behind quota at the end of Q2.

I have also been quoted as saying “Show me an underperforming sales team and I‘ll show you an unqualified and ill-equipped sales manager”

If you are a manager, here are some words of advice you may want to digest as a matter of urgency –after all, the average tenure for someone in your position is now just 18 months!

The principle of working together with your team should underpin how you operate. Managing people doesn’t just mean acting as overseer, to see that they get their work done satisfactorily. It means involving people throughout the team in a creative role, to ensure that together you are all able to succeed: You need them as much as they need you, because whether you like it or not, your success depends entirely on their success.

Involving people on broad issues is motivational. Never underestimate people. Their views can enhance everything: methods, standards, processes and overall effectiveness.

Remember, managers are not paid to have all the ideas that are necessary to keep their section working well in a changing world, but they are paid to make sure that there are enough ideas to make things work and go on working.

Use your people and make it clear to them that you want and value their contributions.

Underpinning Success:

Some matters are of particular importance to the way a manager and staff work together. This is not the place to review the whole management process, but the following four areas are critical and must be addressed correctly early on if results are to follow.

They are:

• Setting goals
• Project management
• Ongoing development
• Job performance appraisal

A quick look at each of these in turn…

Setting Goals:

“If you don’t know where you are going any road will do”

For all its familiarity and common sense this maxim is worth reiterating. No one and no organization works well without clear objectives. The responsibility for setting many of them may well be yours.

The objectives you set must condition and direct what your people do. Make sure everyone has clear goals and they are committed to achieving them.

Project Management:

Many of the tasks to be done involve the complex process of people working together in a co-ordinate way over time. When this is headed up by you or involves you, make sure that the project is:

• Carefully and systematically planned and organized.
• Effectively executed.
• Precisely monitored.
• Fine-tuned so that contingencies and changes are accommodated.
• Brought in on time, on spec and if appropriate, on budget

Your management of others will be jeopardized if the way you organize the work of the section in any way falters.

Ongoing Development:

Nothing is more important to people than their success. Time and again you hear people say something like “Above all, I want to work with a manager from whom I can learn“. The development of your people is not something to ignore or leave to training departments. The responsibility is yours. Make sure people have the right knowledge, skills and attitudes to do the jobs you want and to do them well. Development is not only about correcting weaknesses, it is about upgrading and taking people forward, not least to keep up with change.

Tell your people that you:

• Recognize that their development is important
• Will help them gain experience and extend skills And…
• Create a visible system so to do

As the old saying goes you can either “have five years’ experience or one year’s experience multiplied by five”. People want the former. Show them you are the means to achieve it.

Use the development cycle:

• Analyze the job (what is needed to do it)
• Analyze the person (their competencies)
• Look ahead, anticipate what new skills, etc. the job might necessitate in the future
• Define the gap – what must be done to create a good fit between the person and the job
• Specify development activity, methods, budget and priorities
• Implement action and monitor results

This is a rolling cycle. Keep clear records, make sure everyone is reviewed in this way and create a culture in which people value development and what it brings. Part of your job is helping people to learn.

The culture of an organization in terms of its attitude to training and development is important to people. Their view of it is, in part, dependent on you. Send the right signals.

Performance Appraisals:

In many organisations appraisals are poorly conducted and rated unhelpful by those who are appraised

Appraisals should:

• Be constructive, helpful and motivational
• Focus on the future
• Be a genuine opportunity for both parties to ensure that the period ahead (year, quarter, etc.) goes well, perhaps better than the last
• Link to action plans for the future

Study your organization’s appraisal system and learn how to conduct an effective appraisal meeting. This is good use of management time. Apart from helping you achieve results in a practical sense; it will also position you as a competent manager and differentiate you from others.

Management Processes:

Whatever processes you set up, will be seen as a sign of your style. If they meet with approval, trust is built. If not, they distance you from your staff.

You must ensure system and processes are:

• Fair
• Understandable
• Effective
• Relevant
• Time (& cost) effective

And are not:

• Bureaucratic
• Out of touch with realities
• Over complex
• Restrictive/contradictory
• Incompatible with other systems/common sense

Everything you set up (or maintain if someone else instigated it) must aid the effectiveness and efficiency of the section. Those who do the work will quickly see inappropriate systems as you making their jobs more difficult; not a way you want to be seen.

As the advertising slogan of the Abbey National banks in the UK said, “Life’s complicated enough”

Pick up a typical report and what words do you find? Verbs like analyze, forecast, plan, assess and schedule, are used in pursuit of organisations that are efficient, productive and predictable. What set of people are required? Obviously, people who are efficient, effective, proficient, competent, productive and co-operative. But I believe we need to go beyond – we need to be inspired, motivated, creators, who are enthusiastic and able to consistently deliver against our key objectives. We should be developing individuals who are not afraid to challenge paradigms, who are prepared to go that extra yard in search of excellence and who understand that success is 80% attitude and only 20% aptitude.

For a group of people to remain consciously competent at optimum performance levels, they require frequent injections of stimulation, motivational guidance, coaching, prompting and directing, otherwise they can easily lapse into becoming unconsciously competent or worse, unconsciously incompetent.

In 2015, around 50% of frontline sales professionals failed to achieve quota – did they fail? No, their manager failed. All roads lead back to the leader – he/she has total responsibility for the success of the team, and that responsibility cannot be abdicated. After all …

The primary objective of a professional Sales Manager has to be:

“To achieve consistently superior results through the performance of every key individual.”

The Acid Test: When thinking about your own sales force ….

• Do you understand their motivators – what is driving them?
• Do you have visibility of their numbers – year to date, forecast vs. required performance?
• Activity levels – are they working hard and smart enough?
• Engagement – are they talking to the right level in their prospects/accounts?
• Messaging – are they capable of delivering an appropriate message at the right level?
• Qualification – are they only spending time on deals where they can compete and ultimately that they can win?
• Closing – are they constructing successful campaigns and closing business?

How did you do?

One of the most important responsibilities of a sales leader is to translate the organization’s vision, mission and values into a meaningful context that sales teams can relate to and feel excited by. If this is achieved then the leader will have created a sales team with a shared mental model. This transforms an ordinary sales team into a high performing one.

For clarity, here is a brief description of the following terms:

An organization’s vision is a guiding image of success formed in terms of a huge goal. It is a description in words that conjures up a picture of that organization’s destination. A compelling vision will stretch expectations, aspirations, and performance. Without that powerful, attractive, valuable vision, why bother?

A mission statement communicates the essence of an organization to its stakeholders and customers, and failure to clearly state and communicate an organization’s mission can have harmful consequences around its purpose. As Lewis Caroll, through the words of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland says, “If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

Guiding principles are the consequence of a mission statement that are intended to inform or shape all subsequent decision-making, which also provides normative criteria allowing policy-makers to accept, reject or modify policy interventions and activities. They are a guiding set of ideas that are articulated, understood and supported by the organisation’s workforce.

Values are beliefs which the organization’s workforce hold in common and endeavor to put into practice. The values guide their performance and the decisions that are taken. Ideally, an individual’s personal values will align with the spoken and unspoken values of the organization. By developing a written statement of the values of the organization, individuals have a chance to contribute to the articulation of these values, as well as to evaluate how well their personal values and motivation match those of the organization.

The Human Capital Development Model, created by Krauthammer International, is a logical process that can take top management concepts, and translate them into a context that has real meaning for staff at all levels.

The key to bringing this model to life is to answer the following questions:

• Do my team understand the organization’s vision and how their role moves the organization closer to achieving it?
• How can my sales team translate the organization’s mission into one that is relevant to them?
• How does the organization’s guiding principles impact on the day-to-day responsibilities of sales people?
• Which of the organization’s values does my sales team relate to?
• How can we interpret these values so they become compelling for each sales person?

An effective sales team understands the big picture and the context of their team’s work to the greatest degree possible. That includes understanding the relevance of their job and how it impacts the effectiveness of others and the overall team effort.

Too often, sales people are asked to work on an activity without being told how their role contributes to organization’s vision, much less how their efforts are impacting the ability of others to do their work. Understanding the organization’s vision promotes collaboration, increases commitment and improves quality.

An effective team works collaboratively and with a keen awareness of interdependency.

Collaboration and a solid sense of interdependency in a team will defuse blaming behaviour and stimulate opportunities for learning and improvement. Without this sense of interdependency in responsibility and reward, blaming behaviours can occur which will quickly erode team effectiveness and morale.

The more successful you are as a Sales Leader means that your sales strategies will affect more and more people. The more people you affect, the more likely it is that your actions will impact people who have power and influence over changes that you are seeking to implement. These people could be strong supporters of those changes or they could block them.

Stakeholder Management is an important discipline that successful Sales Leaders use to win support from others. It helps them ensure that their changes succeed where others fail. By engaging the right people in the right way in your proposed changes will make a big difference to the outcome you desire to attain from the changes.

Stakeholder Analysis is the technique used to identify the key people or departments who have to be won over in order to successfully implement the changes you want to make. You then use Stakeholder Planning to build the support that helps you succeed.

The benefits of using a stakeholder-based approach are that:

• You can use the opinions of the most powerful stakeholders to shape your change plans at an early stage. This makes it more likely that they will support you and their input can also improve the quality of your change plans.
• Gaining support from powerful stakeholders who have high levels of influence regarding your changes can help you to win more resources – this makes it more likely that your change plans will be successful.
• By communicating with stakeholders early and frequently, you can ensure that they fully understand what you are doing and understand the benefits of your proposed changes so they can support you actively when necessary.
• You can anticipate what people’s reaction to your proposed changes may be, and build into your plan the actions that will win people’s support.

Stakeholder Management really is that important!