Three Major Sins of Sales Management

CEOs Must be Aware of How They’re Using 
Key People, Says Sought-After Speaker

It’s a simple fact of business: Without sales, no one else downstream can do their jobs, says veteran sales manager and business speaker Jack Daly. Because of how vital sales are to a company, CEOs frequently tend to misuse their best people, he says.

“There are three sins that minimize the sales management role, which ultimately holds the company back from achieving its growth,” says Daly, author of “Hyper Sales Growth.”

“When they misallocate key players, small to medium-sized businesses tend to go into one of two directions. They either stay small to medium, or they go out of business. When you ask why, it most often comes down to a violation of one or more of these three sins of sales management. Having the right people in important spots is absolutely the secret to success.”

To ensure continued growth, Daly says the people at the top must avoid the following:

Sin No. 1 … is committed when the CEO or owner wears the hat of the sales manager. If you’re doing that, you’re essentially relegating both the CEO job and the sales manager job to part-time status. In effect, you’re saying, “I’m going to grow my business part time.” If you want your business to grow, you must grow your sales force, and you need someone doing that full time.

Sin No. 2 … is to make the best salesperson the sales manager. It can work, but seldom does. The usual scenario; however, is you lose your best salesperson and get a mediocre sales manager. The role and the responsibilities are entirely different. A salesperson’s role is to win new customers and nurture the ones you have, thereby differentiating you from your competitors. The sales manager’s job involves recruiting, training, coaching, building, and developing. Being effective at one of those jobs is not an indicator that a person will be equally effective in the other. Salespeople are used to immediate gratification, involving a deal-to-deal routine. Sales managers, by contrast, must take their time to recruit, train, and coach. A salesperson might easily become disenchanted with the pace of the new role and look for another sales job, perhaps with your competitor.

Sin No. 3 … is probably the most grievous of all. The best salesperson is made a sales manager, but he or she is also required to continue booking business. It’s absolutely ruinous. The person’s focus will remain fixed on the customer, as that is how their compensation is driven. Accordingly, the sales team will be underserved, missing the opportunity for leveraged growth.

The key to growth is to put the right people in the right places, Daly says.
“Since sales drive business, it’s essential to match skills and personality types to the jobs, and to ensure the people can focus on their roles,” Daly says.

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