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There are no immutable rules for a marketing supervisor to manage sales staff well, and no book dares to claim a complete set of formulas that can be followed blindly. Managing sales staff is not a fixed proposition but rather targeted and adaptive management that changes with the environment, circumstances, and the individuals involved.
Therefore, fundamentally, a marketing supervisor who manages sales staff well must rely on exploring targeted methods in reality. In other words, experience must come from practice.
Fortunately, everything has patterns. Although the techniques and methods for managing sales staff vary, there are still some basic principles to follow for effective personnel management.
Although I am a "veteran marketing supervisor" who has fought in the marketing arena for over a decade, I still lack the confidence to clearly tell everyone how to manage sales staff. However, during a training opportunity, in a sales manager training class, I wrote this question on the whiteboard and asked everyone to discuss it in groups based on their own experiences, conducting a brainstorming session. Eventually, we derived some basic principles.
Finally, I summarized the discussion results into two parts. Below are some of the basic contents.
The first and second groups were composed of older business supervisors promoted from sales roles. Their discussion results were simple and comprehensive:
The supervisor must first be familiar with the business to earn respect. If sales staff respect the supervisor, the supervisor's work may be relatively easier, and subordinates may be more obedient.
Although the supervisor cannot visit the market every day like sales staff, they must still be quite familiar with the market. If the supervisor is familiar with the market, there is a platform for managing people and the market; otherwise, sales staff may think the supervisor is just someone standing higher but useless to the market.
The supervisor must fully understand sales staff, including their culture, quality, skills, personality, and hobbies. The supervisor must put down their airs, first make friends with sales staff, and then manage them.
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 supervisor. Therefore, a supervisor who can plan for salespeople's futures and help them improve is a good supervisor. At the same time, since each salesperson's personality and behavior are different, the supervisor should help them find a suitable position within the team or even the entire enterprise, so that a supervisor who enables salespeople to fully leverage their abilities is a good supervisor. When salespeople feel the supervisor is good, they will naturally follow the supervisor's arrangements.
As the head of a marketing organization, the supervisor must 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 key performance indicators and incentive methods. Marketing supervisors should avoid "grabbing everything without focus or method."
Establish an effective training mechanism to help sales staff grow quickly. The current sales force 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 the marketing supervisor can establish a good training system internally, the overall quality of sales staff will improve, and they will become more self-disciplined, not requiring much supervision but motivating themselves.
The supervisor should lead by example and set a precedent. The supervisor is not only a leader who manages people but also plays multiple roles, such as being a "bellwether" at this time. "Leading well is better than managing well" is the essence of managing people well!
Communicate frequently, provide guidance, encourage the advanced, and pay attention to specific events. Encouraging the advanced means managing with a clear focus and using role models to lead everyone forward. Paying attention to specific events means going deep into practice. Practice is also an important criterion for testing the quality of management.
Regularly visit the sales staff's management areas to solve specific problems. Managing not only with mouth and pen but also measuring the depth of management involvement with feet may 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 supervisor and managing sales staff well. Although not systematic, each aspect reflects the real-world experience of many supervisors.
In the same class, the third and fourth groups were not to be outdone, as no one wants to be considered incapable of managing sales staff. After intense discussion, they proposed the following measures and principles they believed were good.
I. Important Principle: The "Three Fairness" principle of fairness, justice, and openness. To manage sales staff well, the first step is to establish a good team order. Therefore, the marketing supervisor must project a very selfless image; otherwise, every salesperson will view the supervisor with bias and contempt, and the supervisor cannot manage the team well.
II. Key Measures
Make good plans: Clarify work objectives for each period and determine work plans. Let sales staff fully utilize their abilities and levels under the constraints of goals and plans.
Motivate frequently. The supervisor should act as a propeller, and an important method to propel employees' work is motivation.
The supervisor should train them personally: This not only demonstrates the supervisor's business ability but also allows the supervisor to impart their sales skills and communication techniques, reflecting the spirit of mutual improvement and goal achievement.
Key performance indicator assessment: Develop routine and temporary assessment indicators based on work content. This allows sales staff to pay attention to the company's routine indicators while also completing monthly key tasks. When sales staff complete the indicators well, management has achieved its purpose.
Supervision: Let sales staff understand the significance of supervision to better cooperate with the supervisor's management. A supervision mechanism ensures that even when the supervisor is not present, employees can follow the rules and do their work well.
Try every means to stimulate sales staff's initiative. This requires the marketing supervisor to position themselves as a service provider, doing logistics and service work for sales staff. The success of sales staff is the success of the supervisor.
Of course, the above aspects of managing sales staff do not represent the entirety of reality and may be simple, but don't forget that both execution and management start with the simplest things. Only when simple things are done well can more management skills be developed.
At the same time, with the changing marketing environment, management work is increasingly shifting from management to service. This requires marketing supervisors to adjust their mindset, position, and way of doing things in a timely manner to continuously improve their management work!
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