Sales manager time is scarce.  Yet it seems all we do is add to their plate.  Be a world-class coach, seller, resource allocator, motivator, and communicator, we tell them.  Oh, and we can’t really predict why so many deals get stuck, so also be a great innovator.

But good sales innovation requires a certain amount of restraint.  Not only do the best managers know HOW to innovate, they know WHEN to. 

Here is what these managers recognize: not every deal gets stuck for unpredictable reasons.  Innovation is only necessary after the rep has exhausted all the options laid out in the established playbook.

Jumping directly into investigation mode whenever a rep cries “STUCK!” risks involving your managers in way too many deals.

And reps misidentify deals as “stuck” more often than you think, for the same reasons they struggle once a deal truly is stuck: reticence to ask hard questions with unclear answers.  Read More »

Coaching seems to be an ever-green topic that is unlikely to generate any controversy.  At this point, we’d be hard-pressed to find organizations that underappreciate the value of coaching. After all, the Council’s five years worth of data prove that:

• Coaching is a trademark that differentiates a star manager from an average one.
• Coaching can improve sales performance by as much as 19%.
• Coaching drives salespeople to work harder and increases their intent to stay.

Yet, coaching continues to be one of the areas where managers consistently underperform.

• According to our most recent data, 66% of sales reps indicate that their manager does worse at coaching than other manager behaviors (e.g., planning, assessing risks, championing new initiatives, etc.).
• Additionally, an alarming 47% of reps report receiving under the magic 3-5 hours of coaching per month and 6% of reps report receiving no coaching at all.

While the first stat can be blamed on manager quality, the second data point is not entirely the manager’s fault.  Let’s do some simple math:  with the average span of control of 1:8, the expectation is that managers will spend up to 40 hours per month coaching. Desirable? Yes… Realistic? Not so sure…

If we want our managers to spend more time coaching, we desperately need to offload some responsibilities from their plates. Easier said than done.  Our traditional answer has been to relieve managers of some admin duties. 

An alternative answer could be to “outsource” some coaching responsibilities to a dedicated group of specialist coaches who are more passionate and, sometimes, better equipped to deliver high-quality feedback.  After all, why do we assume that direct managers are always best positioned to coach?   Read More »

For the most part, organizations are run with the expectation of driving greater efficiency and productivity. Retailers are expected to improve their revenues per square foot, hotels and airlines strive to improve their yields per seat/rooms, and the mantra is one of constantly doing more with less.

But it is worth remembering that this dynamic is not universal. As William Baumol famously highlighted, a string quartet always has and always will need 4 people, no matter what they earn. Inherently, the complexity of true art requires a certain degree of inefficiency.

And in my opinion, companies should remember this principle when measuring the relative efficiency of their own sales force.

We are increasingly hearing companies cite that reps have become relatively less efficient on a per head basis, even as the rest of the company makes a lot more revenue per head.

The implication is that the direct sales force might need some pruning and that people aren’t pulling their weight. Lean selling is the antidote that’s often prescribed. After all, the rest of the corporation is being run with fewer people so why should the sales force be exempt from this dynamic?

But a fundamental flaw in this judgment is failing to account for the amount of time and “art” it typically takes a rep to complete a new sale. For selling, and complex solutions selling in particular, it requires a slow interaction which ebbs and flows between groups of people who are trying to generate value for each other. Read More »

Recent economic uncertainty has put pressure on sales managers to take on more responsibility. Specifically, sales leaders and the corporate center have increased the volume of reporting requests on managers. Fearing disproportioned time allocation, members asked us this year to conduct an audit of manager time spend.   

When we asked sales reps to indicate how their managers spend their time, a reasonably clear pattern of sales manager activity emerged:

1)   17% of manager time is spent on ‘sales and customer relationships’.

2)   19% is spent on ‘coaching, developing, and motivating individuals’. (For more information here, check out my previous post which shows sales reps essentially spend no quality time with their manager.)

3)   14% of time is spent on planning and analysis and a further 10% on strategizing and deciding what direction to give.

4)   Another 8% is spent on the manager’s own career and development.

5)   The last grouping is a large one and fully 31% of a manager’s time is spent on “fulfilling administrative and corporate requests” and “managing interruptions and dealing with problems”.

It’s this last piece that turns out to be a robust predictor of how reps at any one company perceive the quality of their managers.  Read More »

(This is a guest blog from Charlie Dorrier on the SEC Solutions team.  Solutions helps members generate customized insights, tools, and training programs to improve the overall performance of the sales force.) 

It’s a constant challenge we hear from members every day:  “we’re trying to get our sales teams to spend more time with customers, but there’s SO much other stuff that gets in the way.”  Internal reporting, forecasting, order tracking, competitive research, aligning internal resources – there is no end to the list of “stuff” that makes it hard for sales reps to actually spend time meeting with their customers.

SEC Solutions maintains a constant pulse on the areas where sales teams are spending time across the sales cycle.  Known as the B2B Sales Index ^TM  , this tracking mechanism allows us to provide clients with clear answers when they ask questions like “how much time do other companies in our industry spend in direct contact with customers?”

And as you might expect, the answer to that question is different today than it was just four or five years ago.

The following bullet points summarize some of the most recent trends in the B2B Sales Index^TM, comparing time spend in 2007 through 2009 with the same data from 2004 through 2006.

• Sales reps spent 20% LESS time conducting initial meetings with customers and presenting the value proposition.
• Time spent following up on sales calls with customers was down 32%. Read More »