Many Sales Teams Are Over-Managed and Under-Led

By Walter Rogers
President and CEO
Baker Communications, Inc.

There is probably no bigger disconnect in the sales manager’s life than bridging the gap between managing and leading. It has become axiomatic in performance improvement circles to talk about managing things versus leading people, but the pressure placed on sales managers these days to get things done relentlessly skews their focus towards the “managing things” side.

“Things” refers to anything that is measurable or deliverable or controllable; systems, processes, quotas, plans, deadlines, data, metrics – these are all things. These things involve the sales team and they are often affected by the performance of the sales team. Therefore, when the manager becomes aware that the “things” are not measuring up, there is often a tendency to treat the sales team members as “things,” too, as in one more set of buttons to be pushed to control the process. At that point the sales manager starts issuing directives: do more of this, do less of that, increase this by 20%, get this done by Friday, make more calls, enter more data in the CRM, and on and on. To the sales manager, it might just seem logical to get people to do “things” differently and performance will improve.

The problem, as many exceptional performance improvement specialists have observed over the years, is that people are not things, so, technically, they can’t be managed. You can’t just control them or order them around or redefine their process and their goals and expect them to perform better. People are, well, they are people, which means they have hopes and dreams and feelings and unique gifts and talents; people have different motivations, which are connected to their own unique emotional and behavioral styles. You can’t push them like buttons or move them around on a board like chess pieces. Instead, you must...

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