Top Sales Manager Blog

There are two kinds of sales managers. The first one, a more focused type, concentrates on improving his sales reps’ strengths while downplaying their weaknesses. The second type of sales manager is one who shapes his sales reps to become all around regular jack-of-all-trades.

Which sales manager is more effective? 

Imagine a clear glass ceiling over the heads of your salespeople. The height of the ceiling represents the amount of talent each salesperson possesses—some high, some low. The question is: can a person who lacks certain core talents for the job ever be successful in his or her line of work? The answer is NO.

Every person is unique, and therefore every salesperson is unique as well. And all this uniqueness add up to vastly different potentials. If you try to make them something they are not…its one of the worst things you could do as a sales manager.

The point I’m trying to get across is… harness their talents – and minimize their weaknesses.

I’ve seen dozens of sales managers commit these two mistakes over and over again.

1. They focus on “fixing” their salespeople’s weaknesses.
2. They try too hard to get their salespeople to be more like themselves

These are average sales managers.

DON’T be average. A top-performing sales manager pushes the limits of what his or her salespeople is good at. If a certain sales rep has a knack for selling a particular line of product, invest on that talent and avoid assigning him or her to products he or she isn’t doing very good at. It’s starting to sound a lot like common sense, isn’t it?

You shouldn’t worry about missing out on anything by training your sales reps to be better only at what they’re already good at. A sales team is called a team for a reason. By investing on your sales reps’ talents, the entire team covers a broader range of expertise and still excels at the job.

Force your sales reps to improve their weaknesses and you risk doing an “okay” job of everything. Like the Chinese proverb says, “A tiger does not change its stripes.”

So which type of sales manager do you want to be? Someone who invests on talents? Or someone who bets on the weaknesses of his sales reps?

To learn more about sales management training, get our free video on the sidebar of this post or by clicking here.

Tell me your tips and ideas by leaving a comment below.

Filed under: Leading, Motivation by ralphburns