Despite the fact that a sales manager is often promoted from being a top sales rep, a sales manager is not going to succeed without possessing certain skills and attributes in addition to being a great salesperson.
We do believe that great salespeople are not born, they’re trained. This is no less true of sales managers and, like salespeople, they will have to put in the work to become trained.
Core Abilities
First of all, the most important skill is communication. What is communication? It is the ability to understand. A total negative communication ability would result in complete misunderstanding. There are various degrees in between total understanding and total misunderstanding.
The next skill would be to have really great control. Control means being able to smoothly and effectively cause things to happen. A total lack of ability to control would be someone who is constantly at the effect of everything and everyone. All people fall somewhere in between these two extremes.
For a salesperson, control means being able to exert positive, smooth control to guide a prospect through the sales process. A sales manager needs to be able to control salespeople so that they truly understand what they should be doing, and do it.
A salesperson must be great at reaching out and contacting people—in other words, should not be withdrawn. A sales manager must also have this skill. Just as in the case of a salesperson being withdrawn, they’ll never be able to sell; if a sales manager is withdrawn, they’ll never be able to manage salespeople.
A sales manager must be certain, which means they have to know. They must know all about their product or service and know all about their company’s sales process. When they don’t know, they need to know how to figure it out. That’s part of certainty—figuring things out.
A sales manager must have confidence, which expresses itself in belief. The sales manager, just like the sales reps, must believe in the product or service the company is selling. They have to believe it’s right for the people being sold to. The sales manager has to believe in their salespeople—and when they don’t, they must believe in their skills to correct the situation. The opposite of belief is doubt—and there’s no surer way to failure as a sales manager than to doubt oneself, one’s company, one’s products, or one’s salespeople. They must have confidence.
Then, just like the salesperson, the sales manager must be competent. Competence comes about by training, and by routine drilling of skills.
To effectively coach and guide salespeople, a sales manager must be great at closing. They should have a great understanding of what closing really is, which means they should get their hands on our book Closing is Not Your Problem, and all other materials we offer on the subject.
Another vital aspect of being a salesperson is caring about the prospect. We teach that a salesperson must approach every prospect as if they are going to have a lifelong relationship—and build the relationship on that basis. That’s how a salesperson obtains lifelong customers and plenty of referrals. This is equally (if not more) true of a sales manager when it comes to salespeople: the sales manager must really care about their salespeople. The sales manager must have a real desire for salespeople to succeed.
Just as a note, sales managers should be training on all of these attributes constantly—even more than salespeople. Sales managers must not only lead by direction but must set the standard and lead by example.
Fully understanding each of these attributes makes it possible for the sales manager to be able to evaluate them in salespeople, which is something we cover in more detail in other blogs this month. A sales manager must be able to accurately evaluate strengths and weaknesses in their salespeople and be able to rapidly bolster strengths and correct weaknesses. They must have the skill to accomplish this without the salesperson feeling like they’ve done wrong or are failing.
Being able to see strengths in their salespeople is especially important because salespeople won’t always be able to see their own strengths.
The most accurate way for a sales manager to get an initial estimation of their salespeople—and of themselves—is through our Sales Skills Analysis (SSA). Utilizing the SSA for their entire team, and then going further and enrolling the team in our Online Sales Training Program, will provide an enormous boost to sales success.
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