There is no immutable rule for a sales manager to manage salespeople well, and no book dares to claim there is a complete set of tricks that you can simply follow by rote. Managing salespeople well is not a fixed proposition; it is targeted and adaptive management that changes with the environment, circumstances, and the different people involved.
So, fundamentally, if a sales manager wants to manage salespeople well, they must rely on exploring targeted methods in reality. In other words, to manage salespeople well, experience must come from reality.
Fortunately, everything has its patterns. Although the techniques and methods for managing salespeople vary, there are still some basic principles to follow when it comes to personnel management.
Although I am also an "old sales manager" who has fought in marketing for over a decade, I still lack the confidence to clearly tell everyone how to manage salespeople well. I just took the opportunity of a training session, during a sales manager training class, to write this question on the whiteboard and let everyone discuss it in groups based on their own experience, conducting a brainstorming session, and finally arriving at some basic principles.
In the end, I summarized the discussion results into two parts. The following are some of the basic contents.
The first and second groups were composed of older sales managers promoted from veteran salespeople. The results of their discussion were simple and comprehensive:
The manager must first be familiar with the business to win people over. If the manager earns the respect of the salespeople, the manager's work may be relatively easier, and the subordinates may be more obedient.
Although the manager cannot go to the market every day like the 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, the salespeople will think the manager is just someone standing higher than them but useless to the market!
The manager must fully understand the salespeople, including their culture, quality, skills, personality, and hobbies. The manager must put down their airs, first make friends with the salespeople, and then manage them.
Position each salesperson and create a development plan. Everyone has expectations for the future, and the expectations of salespeople are often not only in their own hands but also require the guidance and support of the sales manager. Therefore, a good manager is one who can plan for the future of salespeople and help them improve. At the same time, since each salesperson has a different personality and behavior style, the manager should help them find a suitable position within the team or even the entire enterprise, so that a manager who enables salespeople to fully leverage their abilities is a good manager. When salespeople feel the manager is good, they will naturally follow the manager's arrangements.
As the head of a marketing organization, the manager must establish a sound supervision and management mechanism that is integrated with the company's business goals. That is to say, 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 everything at once," without focus or method.
Establish an effective training mechanism to help salespeople 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 manager can establish a good training system within the team, the overall quality of the salespeople will improve, and they will become more self-disciplined, not requiring much management but able to motivate themselves.
The manager should lead by example as much as possible. The manager 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"—this 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 by grasping the key points and using role models to lead everyone forward. As for paying attention to specific events, it means going deep into practice. Practice is also an important criterion for testing the quality of management.
Regularly visit the salespeople's management areas to solve specific problems. Not only manage with mouth and pen, but also measure the depth of management intervention with your feet—this 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 it is not systematic, each aspect is the experience of many managers in reality.
In the same class, the third and fourth groups 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 "Three Fairnesses" principle of fairness, justice, and openness. To manage salespeople well, the first step is to establish a good team order. Therefore, the marketing manager must establish a very selfless image; otherwise, every salesperson will view the manager as biased and belittled, and it will be impossible for the manager to manage the team well.
II. Key Measures
Make a good plan: Clarify work goals for each period and determine the work plan. Let salespeople fully utilize their abilities and levels under the constraints of goals and plans.
Motivate frequently. The manager should act as a propeller at this time, and an important method to promote employee work is motivation.
The manager should train them personally: This not only demonstrates the manager's business ability but also allows the manager to impart their sales skills and communication techniques, reflecting the spirit of mutual improvement and goal achievement.
Key indicator assessment: Develop routine and temporary assessment indicators based on work content. This allows salespeople to pay attention to the company's routine indicators while also doing the key work each month well. When salespeople complete the indicators well, management has actually achieved its purpose.
Supervision: Let salespeople understand the significance of supervision to better cooperate with the manager's management work. The supervision mechanism allows salespeople to follow the rules and do their work well even when the manager is not by their side.
Try every means to bring into play the subjective initiative of salespeople. This requires the marketing manager to position themselves in a service role, providing good logistics and services for the salespeople. The success of the salespeople is the success of the manager.
Of course, the above aspects of managing salespeople well do not represent everything in reality, and they may be simple, but don't forget that whether it is execution or management, it starts with the simplest things. Only when the simple things are done well can there be more management skills.
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, so as to do management work better and better!
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