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Liu Chuanzhi, Chairman of Lenovo Group, divides a company's operations into three core parts: "building the leadership team, setting strategy, and leading the team." As a sales manager in any company, in addition to the ever-increasing sales pressure and fierce market competition, you often face personnel management issues. How do you lead your sales team effectively? How do you unleash the team's maximum combat effectiveness? How do you select and cultivate successors for key positions? How do you ensure you build a team, not a gang? "Management centers on people." Only by managing people well can the team work with passion and motivation, enabling everyone to follow your thinking, making your work easier and more controllable, ultimately achieving desired goals. I believe every excellent manager has many methods for leading a strong sales team. Here, I share my humble opinions for discussion:

1. Lead by Example "If the leader is upright, his orders will be followed without explicit command; if the leader is not upright, even orders will not be obeyed." Often, a team's style is gradually shaped by the supervisor's personality and work style. A positive supervisor will inevitably lead a positive team. For example, an extroverted and decisive leader often brings passion and swift action to the team; an introverted and steady leader may lack passion but ensures stability and order. Therefore, as the team leader, you must maintain a passionate, responsible, decisive, and swift work style, be mindful of your words and actions, consciously cultivate a good working atmosphere, and influence your subordinates through your behavior.

2. Fairness, Justice, and Transparency Although the principle of the "Three Fairs" may seem like a slogan, it is crucial in leading a team and serves as a benchmark for excellent managers. Often, team turnover is closely related to the direct supervisor; many team members leave because they feel the supervisor is unfair or biased. Therefore, it is vital to create a culture of fairness, justice, and transparency within the team. When handling work issues, the supervisor must adhere to this principle, not favor anyone, discuss matters based on facts, and avoid personal bias. Only then can every member be convinced, enhancing their positive perception of you and their willingness to follow you wholeheartedly.

3. Capability Assessment To implement the third point, you must first be familiar with and deeply understand every member of your team. If you are newly taking over a team, your first task is to quickly learn from the previous supervisor, HR, and team members through one-on-one communication, meeting performance, and team activities. Understand each subordinate's abilities and personality, not just work capabilities but also their family, children, and hobbies. Only by knowing your people well can you categorize and organize them effectively.

Overall team assessment involves two aspects:

  1. Assess each team's current basic situation, its biggest strengths and problems, the overall capability of team members, and combat effectiveness. Determine methods to cultivate and improve personnel.
  2. Conduct a four-quadrant matrix analysis of attitude and skills for each team member, dividing them into four types: A) Good skills and good attitude: prioritize their use and consider job adjustments as needed; B) Good skills but poor attitude: focus on communication to restore their mindset, strengthen result management and daily communication; C) Poor skills but good attitude: often new employees lacking guidance, so assign experienced salespeople for regular coaching and have the direct supervisor provide field guidance and training; D) Poor skills and poor attitude: optimize them out and recruit new people.

4. Systems and Standards As you gain deeper understanding of team members, you will gradually become familiar with each team's personnel situation and issues. Through observation and practice, various problems will emerge. Therefore, you need to review existing company systems and standards. If they exist, immediately rectify and emphasize them, then implement. If not yet established, set them anew, referencing suggestions from superiors, senior managers in other regions, and subordinate supervisors, and actively involve frontline staff in the process. This will make implementation more practical and reduce resistance. "Without rules, nothing can be accomplished." Once systems and standards are set, everyone must comply, and managers must lead by example. Only then will team members accept and follow them.

5. Goal Setting Without measurable monthly, quarterly, and annual assessment goals, team members work like headless flies without direction. Only with clear goals can everyone strive toward them. As is well known, goal setting should follow the SMART principle: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. However, in management, goal setters sometimes fail to adhere to this principle, often setting goals with personal motives, such as lowering targets to allow subordinates to earn more bonuses. Over time, subordinates take this for granted, and when company targets become strict, these individuals resist first, causing instability and increasing turnover risk. Another issue is setting goals too high, making them unattainable, which diminishes motivation and leads to a laissez-faire attitude. Therefore, when setting goals, ensure they are achievable with maximum effort, meeting the supervisor's expectations and enhancing the individual's self-identity and sense of accomplishment.

Additionally, managers should set capability development and promotion goals for different subordinate supervisors based on their abilities, and supervisors should set development and promotion goals for their sales staff. Goals create requirements, requirements drive effort, and effort leads to good results!

6. Talent Development Talent is the core of high performance in any team. During team operations, focus on building a talent pipeline. Consider three aspects:

  1. Capability gradient assessment: Divide salespeople into three categories: Elite (strong abilities, industry and practical experience, often informal leaders who can manage and supervise when the supervisor is absent, with influence); High performers (dedicated, consistently meet performance targets, potential elite candidates, and role models for new employees); Average performers (average performance, at or below team median, needing more development and improvement plans). Use these categories as references for annual salary adjustments, monthly bonuses, or extra rewards.
  2. High-potential development: Based on each team's structure, managers should cultivate their successors, and supervisors should develop successors and key personnel. By continuously developing elite and high performers, build a sales talent pipeline, increasing team ambition and combat capability. When vacancies arise, suitable candidates are ready to fill them, minimizing sales losses from turnover.
  3. Emphasize training: Based on different team capability structures, develop annual training plans so that personnel at all levels can improve through various training. Don't rely solely on company training, as opportunities for frontline staff are limited. Organize internal training, inviting excellent directors, managers, frontline supervisors, and salespeople to share their work experiences. This enhances summarizing and presentation skills and provides practical training.

7. Healthy Competition Every sales team needs healthy competition; without it, the team stagnates, lacking cohesion and passion. Therefore, supervisors can design different reward programs based on peak and off-peak seasons, using competition mechanisms to energize all teams. For example, new colleagues' good performance can stimulate veteran employees' fighting spirit, or encourage excellent teams to compete for the top spot. The basic principle is fairness, justice, and transparency. However, a key point is to promptly honor promised rewards without delay, so team members trust you and willingly participate in reward programs, achieving beyond expectations!

8. Follow-up and Coaching As the sales team grows, supervisors' management energy is limited, so two tasks are essential:

  1. Follow-up: Regularly evaluate and follow up on all work goals you set, as not all salespeople will achieve expected results. Everyone understands goals differently, so monitor work processes, listen to reports, track progress, and correct issues to achieve good results. A good follow-up process usually leads to good outcomes.
  2. Coaching: There are various coaching methods, including work skill coaching and mindset adjustment coaching. Most supervisors focus on skill coaching to improve capabilities and achieve performance. But don't neglect mindset coaching. Combine work guidance with heart-to-heart communication to deepen relationships and recognition, provide encouragement and praise, making employees work with more passion and efficiency.

9. Team Activities Leading a sales team means getting your brothers to follow you willingly! Work together toward common goals! Therefore, besides regular work communication, supervisors should show their human side by organizing team gatherings, outings, and team-building activities regularly. These activities strengthen communication among team members, reveal different sides of each person, and increase consensus and tacit understanding!