---
title: "Marketing Manager on the Eleventh: How Should Business Managers Manage Salespeople?"
description: "There is no fixed rule for business managers to manage salespeople well, and no book can claim a complete set of methods that can be followed blindly. Managing salespeople is not a static proposition but requires targeted and adaptive management that changes with the environment, circumstances, and the individuals involved. Therefore, fundamentally, business managers must rely on real-world experience to find targeted methods. Fortunately, everything has its patterns..."
author: "谭长春"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2016-10-25"
language: "en"
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# Marketing Manager on the Eleventh: How Should Business Managers Manage Salespeople?

> There is no fixed rule for business managers to manage salespeople well, and no book can claim a complete set of methods that can be followed blindly. Managing salespeople is not a static proposition but requires targeted and adaptive management that changes with the environment, circumstances, and the individuals involved. Therefore, fundamentally, business managers must rely on real-world experience to find targeted methods. Fortunately, everything has its patterns...

There is no fixed rule for business managers to manage salespeople well, and no book can claim a complete set of methods that can be followed blindly. Managing salespeople is not a static proposition but requires targeted and adaptive management that changes with the environment, circumstances, and the individuals involved. Therefore, fundamentally, business managers must rely on real-world experience to find targeted methods. In other words, to manage salespeople well, experience must come from reality.

Fortunately, everything has its patterns. Although the techniques and methods for business managers to manage salespeople vary, there are still some basic principles to follow for effective personnel management.

Although I am an "old business manager" who has fought in marketing for over a decade, I still lack the confidence to clearly tell everyone how to manage salespeople. However, during a training opportunity, in a sales manager training class, I wrote this question on the whiteboard and asked everyone to combine their own experiences, discuss in groups, and brainstorm on this issue, ultimately deriving some basic principles.

Finally, I summarized the discussion results into two parts. Below are some of the basic contents.

> ****
>
> **Groups 1 and 2 were composed of older business managers promoted from experienced salespeople. Their discussion results were simple but comprehensive:**
1. Managers should first be familiar with the business themselves to earn respect. If salespeople respect their manager, the manager's work may be relatively easier, and subordinates may be more obedient.
2. Although managers cannot go to the market every day like salespeople, they must still be quite familiar with the market. If the manager is familiar with the market, there is a platform for managing people and the market; otherwise, salespeople may think the manager is just someone standing higher than them but useless for the market.
3. Managers should fully understand their salespeople, including their culture, quality, skills, personality, and hobbies. Managers must lower their stance, first make friends with salespeople, and then manage them.
4. Position each salesperson and create a development plan. Everyone has expectations for the future, and salespeople's expectations are often not only in their own hands but also require guidance and support from the manager. Therefore, a good manager is one who can plan for salespeople's future and help them improve. At the same time, since each salesperson has different personality and behavior, the manager should help them find a suitable position within the team and even the entire enterprise, so that salespeople can fully leverage their abilities in a targeted way. When salespeople feel the manager is good, they will naturally follow the manager's arrangements.
5. As the head of a marketing organization, the manager should establish a sound supervision and management mechanism that aligns with the company's business goals. That is, the current management mechanism is no longer "strict control and heavy management" but coordination and supervision. At the same time, attention should be paid to the assessment of key indicators and incentive methods. Marketing managers should avoid "grabbing beard and eyebrows all at once," meaning no focus and no method.
6. Establish an effective training mechanism to help salespeople grow quickly. The current salesperson group is large, but few are professionally trained. Therefore, they must continuously receive training on the job to adapt to environmental changes and marketing development. If marketing managers can establish a good training system internally, the overall quality of salespeople will improve, and they will become more self-disciplined, not requiring much management but able to motivate themselves.
7. Managers should lead by example as much as possible. A manager is not only a leader who manages people but also plays multiple roles, such as being a "lead sheep" at this time. "Leading well is better than managing well" is the essence of good management.
8. Communicate frequently, guide, encourage the advanced, and pay attention to specific events. Encouraging the advanced means managing by grasping the key points and using role models to lead everyone forward. Paying attention to specific events means going deep into practice. Practice is also an important standard for testing the quality of management.
9. Regularly visit the salespeople's management areas to solve specific problems. Managing not only with mouth and pen but also measuring the depth of management involvement with feet might be more meaningful. This is also the "management by walking around" advocated by many experts.

The above basically explains the necessary conditions for being a good marketing manager and managing salespeople well. Although not systematic, each aspect is the real-world experience of many managers.

> ****
>
> **In the same class, Groups 3 and 4 were not to be outdone, as no one wants to be considered incapable of managing salespeople. After intense discussion, they proposed the following measures and principles they believed were good.**
**I. Important Principle**: The principle of "three fairness": fairness, justice, and openness. To manage salespeople well, the first step is to establish a good team order. Therefore, marketing managers must project a very selfless image; otherwise, every salesperson will view the manager as biased and narrow, and the manager will never manage the team well.
**II. Key Measures**
1. Make good plans: Clarify work goals for each period and determine work plans. Let salespeople fully utilize their abilities and levels under the constraints of goals and plans.
2. Motivate frequently. At this time, the manager should be a propeller, and the important method to promote employee work is motivation.
3. Managers should train them personally: On one hand, this demonstrates the manager's business ability; on the other hand, it allows the manager to impart sales skills and communication techniques, reflecting the spirit of joint improvement and goal achievement.
4. Key indicator assessment: Develop routine and temporary assessment indicators based on work content. Let salespeople pay attention to both the company's routine indicators and the key monthly tasks. When salespeople complete the indicators well, management has achieved its purpose.
5. Supervision: Let salespeople understand the significance of supervision to better cooperate with the manager's management. The supervision mechanism ensures that even when the manager is not present, salespeople can follow the rules and do their work well.
6. Try every means to stimulate salespeople's initiative. This requires marketing managers to position themselves in a service role, providing logistics and support for salespeople. The success of salespeople is the success of the manager.

Of course, the above aspects of managing salespeople do not represent all of reality and may be simple, but don't forget that whether it is execution or management, it starts with the simplest things. Only when simple things are done well can more management skills be developed.

At the same time, with the change in the marketing environment, management work is increasingly shifting from management to service. This requires marketing managers to adjust their mindset, position, and way of doing things in a timely manner, thereby doing management work better and better!

-END-

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