As the sales manager of your sales team…Who’s your coach? As a sales leadership consultant, I’ve observed the majority of sales managers I’ve met never actually received any training in how to be effective coach and leader. When they were promoted to sales manager they received extensive training on how to analyze financials but were never taught how to actually coach and lead sales people.
How much training and coaching did you receive when you were first promoted to sales leader? Who helped you understand how to effectively motivate sales professionals? How to coach someone through their multiple-stepped selling processes? How to help reps develop effective account strategies?
This is why a coach is so critical. And a lot of times your coach can’t be your boss…especially if they’ve has as little formal training and coaching as you’ve had. Who can you find to be a coach or guide? Someone you can occasionally have a conversation with, to make sure you have the right focus, you have the right direction, and you have the right skills to understand how to best manage and motivate people so they can sell even more. And isn’t that the job of a sales leader?