I don’t know about you, but when I first was hired into a sales position, I wanted to become a sales manager. In fact, I made a decision that I would learn and imitate pretty much everything I could from my first boss. I concluded that I had to be like my sales manager to get his job, I was influenced by his behavior, by his interaction with management and by the specific actions he took with me to make sure I hit my goals. But my first manager was a bad role model, he produced great results but had trouble growing people and spent most of his time undoing problems that he had created.
You have heard it said before “monkey see – monkey do” and that is one of the main reasons why Sales Management training is so important. Every sales manager has 5 specific roles they play. Leader, Business Manager, Coach, Recruiter and Trainer. We help our clients understand the Behaviors, Attitudes and Techniques required to drive growth and execute their responsibilities in each of these roles. Managers need to learn and develop unique skills based and this requires focus. Traditional sales management training has focused on generic accountability and enhanced people skills. However, sales managers don’t have generic jobs and people skills accomplish only so much. A manager’s training should enable them to effectively execute the management tasks that are relevant in each of their particular roles.
Our experience has shown us clearly that sales manager training yields a higher ROI than sales rep training. Research shows that >85% of all sales training is targeted at front-line salespeople, not sales managers. We believe it should be the other way around. Train 1 salesperson and you’ve improved 1 salesperson. Train 1 sales manager and you’ve improved 1 sales team. Ready to grow your managers?
We should talk. Contact Matt Nettleton, Sandler Training, DTB at matt.nettleton@sandler.com or 317-695-8549.
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