5 management mistakes and how to fix them

Being a sales manager is not easy, especially level 1 management, where you are in direct contact with your sales people. You have to find the balance between managerial fundamentals, coaching, guiding, innovating while driving the business of your team. In working with our clients to boost their sales performance, we have identified 5 critical mistakes to avoid. Long before you look at strategy, talent, processes or systems.

Not enough knowledge: long or short, available in several versions according to your interlocutors, the mastery of the sales pitch is not enough. Long gone are the days when simply listing the most common objections was enough to anticipate and deal with them. The complex salerequires a sense of perspective to be able to deliver the knowledge and insight that your customers expect about your solutions and their impact. And this without the need for a pre-sales consultant or product specialist. A structured Onboarding with clear KPIS is a good start. An annual certification program is a real plus. The ultimate goal is a culture of continuous learning 🧑🎓 and knowledge sharing.

Sales and nothing else: You don’t need to be an organizational architect to succeed in sales management level 1. Not yet. However, unless you are taking over a business that has just been turned around by your predecessor and your job is just to manage single-digit growth, your business acumen or your new sales methodology will not be enough. Performance needs alignment📏🔨🪛 of processes, tools, resources, skills – including your own – within and outside your department. Not only of Sales KPIs. Managing a team sport requiring strong cross functional leadership and communication skills.

Perpetual change: every leader wants to leave his mark on his organization. Fed up with the literature on change management, the must is to be the change agent that triggers the wave that will reform the organization. Sales managers are no exception. New processes, new methods, new approaches, new at all costs and all the time. 🥱😡Thebalance of the organizations is thrown off. Resist the temptation to change just to shine. It is your image that you will damage if you lead your team to Burn out. Consult with your teams, prioritize 3-5 initiatives, get your teams on board…and stay focused.

Management styleManagement style: this problem is the inability to adapt your management style to a specific business situation and to the talents that make up your team. A representative example is the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency, or between optimization of skills and autonomy. Business situations such as a 180° turn or a start-up require a minimum of proficiency “Repeated feedback, iterative learning, direct and interactive management.🎖️🥳 Ditto for managing junior salespeople. Growth management business situations, or senior management, demands delegation and autonomy. 😎Confusion between the two, or the inability to navigate from one style to the other, can seriously damage your career

Culture: the company culture is only worthwhile if it is shared by everyone and everywhere. Otherwise, it has little chance of shaping behavior, inspiring your decisions and motivating your actions. There’s no point in putting “Trust” at the top of the list if your managers’ managers are followers of the ” skip meetings” without feedback to the relevant manager. There’s no point in posting “Accountability” on the walls of your new premises if you have a bad habit of intervening on every deal.🤑👮♂️ Try to identify the boundary, perceived differently by everyone, between support and intrusion, contribution and micro-management. Play “The Manager Disappears“👩🚀 and let your team take the reins of your Forecast calls, your weekly meetings. And delegate.

Want to know more?

Go to Bold & Sharp. Follow us on Bold & Sharp

Think. Good selling.