Colleen’s Blog

Did you know closing ratios on deals that employ traditional selling methods (e.g., cold calls and direct mail) have not changed since the 1980s? Seriously. They’ve not budged at all since “Eye of the Tiger” was a hit song on the radio. And yet there are still salespeople and team leaders today—four decades later—who remain stubbornly fixated on this entirely outdated way of looking at sales.

I recently worked with a client on a new program and got the opportunity to interview a few of their sales managers. I wanted to identify what differentiated top performing managers from poor performing managers. There was one aspect, in particular, that stood out.

Too many leaders today are still stuck in a “behind the desk” mindset. They fixate on managing data rather than on managing their relationships with people.

As sales managers, you can’t solve your team and company’s problems if you're not talking to customers directly. Especially during these uncertain times, I know many of you have become comfortable with just sitting behind your desk. However, you need to get out and talk to customers or, at least, talk to them virtually.

I’ve recently been involved in a pilot coaching project with a large organization where we are teaching their sales managers how to coach. These sales managers have been incredibly effective with their coaching and getting their teams to accelerate results. 

I recently completed a number of studies regarding sales leaders and their salespeople. And one element that keeps resurfacing is that their salespeople are reporting that they want their leaders to be more solutions-oriented. When I examined this closely to determine what that specifically meant, I discovered salespeople want—during a coaching session or sales meeting—the sales leaders to help them solve their problems.

   We've seen a lot of very high performing sales managers that come through our program. And one thing I noticed was that most of them were never the best salesperson in their organization. In fact, the majority of them had very little sales experience. They had enough to be credible in the marketplace and they had enough sales experience to know what it is like to face rejection and to get a big win.

I am sick of sales managers complaining about their top sellers not being team players.

Many sales managers are complaining about their top sellers because they're not team players. It goes without saying that top sellers have to be acting in a legal, moral, and ethical manner at all times. We also want them to get along with people, but they don't need them to be team players.