skill levels, and much more. To do this, you first must be an excellent listener. Second, you must be able to effectively solve problems and conflicts with others. Third, you must be able to put the needs of your people before your own—
including your need to want to personally sell yourself. Fourth, you must be actively engaged with your products, services, people, and processes, and demonstrate that you can lead by example. Salespeople will only follow and respect you if you can lead by example and make them feel as important as any other person in the company, including yourself.
5. Are Great Talent Managers
If meeting and exceeding your sales objectives is your ultimate goal as a sales manager, you cannot do it alone. Therefore, your number-one responsibility as a sales manager is to recruit and retain great salespeople. Great managers are always looking for top talent, even when their positions are currently full. They will consistently measure the talent they have and find ways to continue to improve it. Great managers will also seek out people they can reasonably improve, and continuously push them to higher levels of performance by moving them outside of their traditional comfort zones. According to business success expert Brian Tracy, “Ninety to 95 percent of people will withdraw to their comfort zone when what they try doesn’t work. Only that small percentage, 5 or 10 percent, will continually improve themselves; they will continually push themselves out into the zone of discomfort, and these are always the highest performers in every field.”1
Hiring Sales Managers from Salespeople
As previously discussed, many organizations tend to hire sales managers internally from their own salespeople. In many cases, the person promoted is often the top sales performer—which may or may not be a good idea. When looking for strong leadership qualities in a good sales manager, the person standing at the top may not be the only person you should consider. Oftentimes, it is all the people at or near the top who should also receive equal consideration. If you are pursuing this option, here are a few things to look for in your salespeople to see if they may make a great sales manager:
• Do they have a high level of integrity?
Warren Buffett has spoken many times about how he looks for three things in people—intelligence, energy, and integrity; and if they don’t have integrity, you can stop there. So should you. When hiring a sales manager, you are placing a great deal of trust and responsibility in the hands of a single person; so you better make sure that he/she is morally grounded before you even begin. If they are a highly successful salesperson but tend to lack honesty and integrity in how they work with others, pass on them.
• Are they considered a team player?
This is where most companies fail to differentiate a lone-wolf from a coach. Moving from an individually motivated salesperson to a team-oriented and selfless sales manager is a transition that many fail to successfully make. When evaluating a salesperson for a management role, take note of how they have worked with and willfully supported other salespeople in the past. This is often a good indication of how selfless they are capable of being; especially if they were able to produce as a high-performing salesperson at the same time as helping others.
• Do they work and communicate well with others?
Great sales managers try to make themselves accessible to others and typically operate from a more “open-door” policy of communication. Look for salespeople who exhibit these same qualities in how they work today and try to avoid salespeople who tend to “go quiet” or shut down communications in their everyday sales lives.
• Are they respected by others within the company, including their sales peers?
Just because somebody may be the top salesperson at your company doesn’t always mean they are highly respected by others. People may admire what they have accomplished but not always how they went about accomplishing it. By asking your sales team who they tend to respect the most within a sales team, you may learn a lot more about certain people then you thought you knew. Remember, if you are promoting from your sales ranks, that means that the same person you are promoting will have to then command the respect of his/her former peers in their new role.
• Do they know what a great salesperson inherently is and how to find them?
Since talent management is the most important responsibility of a sales manager, you need to find somebody who knows what makes a great salesperson, and why. If they do not know how to find them, they can always learn, but they have to know what to look for to begin with. One of the best ways to help identify this is to ask your management candidates what makes a great salesperson, and why? If they are not the number-one salesperson in your organization, ask them what they think makes the number-one person so successful.
• Are they problem solvers or complainers?
A potential leader is somebody who asks “why” and will typically recommend solutions to problems, no matter what role they are in. If you have salespeople who are able to highly produce yet also suggest ways to fix problems facing the organization, these are much more desirable traits for a sales manager than somebody who deals with problems by merely complaining about them. When it comes to the high-stress role of sales management, look for people who will try to solve problems instead of just identifying and amplifying them.
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