Does Your Company Have a Sales Leadership Culture?
Most B2B companies care about and invest in their sales culture, but often forget the importance of building a sales leadership culture. Their best sales reps are promoted into a sales management positions, but continue to focus on all the activities they did so well as a sales rep, like closing deals. Meanwhile, only the top performers on the sales team are doing well, and the rest are just supporting the manager. No one taught the sales manager how to enable the sales team to generate higher revenue by focusing on coaching, leading, and developing their sales team.
How Do You Build a Sales Leadership Culture?
We recommend starting with a framework or system for how sales managers provide valuable insight and coaching to their respective sales teams. An easy way to get started is to simply map out the most important review meetings. For each review meeting, document the agenda and coaching questions that will drive the discussion. Here are some examples:
Weekly meetings are often focused on sales activity and establish a strong coaching routine with clear, consistent goals for the sales rep.
Monthly meetings are typically highly-structured pipeline and forecast reviews, that provides reps a clear picture of the future, along with their commitments and campaigns.
Quarterly meetings are excellent opportunities to look back at the year or an individual quarter and determine where each rep showed strength and where they might need improvement.
Ad Hoc meetings are scheduled as needed around the creation of a call plan for an upcoming sales conversation or the development of opportunity and account strategies.
Unlocking the Potential of the Whole Sales Team
Making sure your sales manager is focused on coaching and guiding reps rather than just closing deals is how you unlock the potential of your whole sales team, not just the top sales performers. Clarify the manager’s role as coach and leader—and not as a “super rep”—and make sure the manager functions as the leverage which enables the sales team as a whole to drive higher and higher revenues.
