Recently had the pleasure of reading Philippe LeBarron’s book on the habits and practices of top-performing sales managers. In his view, great sales managers make productive things happen. They do so through a unique combination of great people skills, and great inspecting skills. They’re backed by systems that reveal , for everyone involved, the impacts of sales efforts. Awareness of impacts creates a continuous drive to improve impacts.
Great sales managers are typically not numbers inclined, ‘out of the box’, but they’re drawn to metrics by ‘thinking out of the box’ of the challenges they face in ‘making the number’. Like everyone else, when they first became a sales manager they were asked to shift from their strong, natural, people development focus to a ‘making the number’ focus. They, however, see things differently. For them, making the number requires leading a team that’s sufficiently skilled and coached to ‘make the number.’
Great sales managers, apply the same curiousity to sales metrics that they formerly brought to understanding their customers’ circumstances. As before, they take what they discover to create exceptional value for their sales people. They create this value by doing things that make a difference, then providing metrics that help them understand the impacts of their leadership efforts. With one eye on winning each sales quarter, they take a longer view of building back-to-back winning sales years. It shows in the metrics they track in terms of their own performance as leaders: # of star reps, shorter productivity ramp times, lower rep turnover, and % of reps at goal.
In LeBarron’s experience, it’s not by chance or luck that such sales managers are great. They implement exceptional systems that let them discover the underlying performance of their sales process. This lets them improve forecast confidence and get early warnings of impending problems. The best of the best go even further. They reverse engineer what’s being done that makes their colleagues good at what they do. Then they probe for proof that the effort being invested is being invested in the right things, and really making a difference. As leaders, they create new forms of transparency that clarify the Return-on-Sales-Effort and, in doing so, provoke a drive to constantly improve it. They’re able to make a difference, and add value, because they’ve got feedback systems that continuously give them the opportunity to do so. Then, when they sense a chance to make a difference, they do so, in ways that underscore their focus on people development.
If there’s ever a conference of such Great Sales Managers, I’d like to be invited. They sound like my kind of people.
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Philippe LeBarron’s observations come from his 18 years in sales and project management, including seven years as Manager, Sales Productivity, EMC2. The errors, if any, in the above summary are mine. The wisdom is his.
