For many years, the Council has been preaching the mantra of having sales managers spend at least 3 hours a month on coaching and developing each direct report. This year’s work on sales manager effectiveness has dramatically re-confirmed that advice.

It is once again true that the average amount of time a manager spends with their direct reports is the best, single predictor of the quality of the relationship. Once somebody spends a material amount of time with their manager, it is then more of a matter of what happens in that time.

The alarming part is that 47% of reps report receiving under the magic 3 hours and 6% of reps report receiving no coaching at all. Thus, for many sales leaders the simple advice is to start by inspecting how some managers spend their time. When you don’t see an average of 3 hours occurring, then you should try and engineer an occasion where you can observe the manager and the rep work together.

Sometimes you will find that the rep has no great desire to spend time with their manager. Depending on the rep’s performance level this might be an acceptable reaction, though not one you would like to encourage. This is when you might want to consider moving reporting relationships.

A lot of the time, the issue is simple lack of staying power. The weekly pull-ups are too easy to push off since something else will always seem more urgent. This is where a simple coaching pulse survey can work wonders as it permits periodic inspection and sends a clear message that senior managers value these interactions.

At other times, however, it will be because the rep perceives little value in the nature of the relationship. And it’s these times when both parties have implicitly decided to take “a break” from each other. The most typical complaint is that a manager either ends up tracking rep activities or that they end up with a recital of their aspirations for that person; well-meant but not usually perceived to be very helpful.

Getting people to spend at least 3 hours per month with each other certainly doesn’t quite solve the problem but it does indeed get them a lot closer to having a relationship they can both build off. And our current work around sales managers has found a new and differentiating set of behaviors that will be newer to all but the highest of performers.

SEC Members, we will discuss these behaviors in great depth after May 6 once we’ve finished putting together all the findings from our latest research.

Related posts:

1. The Management Behavior You Must Avoid
2. Think You’re Good At Coaching? Your Reps Don’t.