He was called a “leadership genius” and acclaimed as “one of the top management gurus to come along in over a century”. He earned it. Management By Walking Around (MBWA) was groundbreaking during its time.

But it wasn’t that big a deal – if you ask me.

 MBWA was simply common sense. So okay. Maybe that’s why it became popular in the first place. MBWA was a simple yet effective solution to sales management. I guess that kind of stuff doesn’t come around more than once in a century.

A sales manager could be a management genius too by following what Tom Peters advocated more than thirty years ago—that is, by incorporating “roving sales leadership” into your style of management. I know, we all have our way of doing things. But MBWA is so simplistic in its approach that you might as well be doing it already without you knowing it.

Management By Walking Around talks about establishing trust with your fellow sales reps by understanding first and foremost their trials and achievements through their level of perspective.

You can’t expect to understand your sales reps—and them to understand you—if you’re giving out errands from your comfortable office chair in front of the computer. You need to get out there and know what’s really going on. Like I said in my previous post, human contact is key to any relationship. Period.

If you’re expecting people to email you in the office any time of the day, set up an auto-responder to say that you’re unavailable from 1 PM to 4 PM on weekdays. Set your messenger status to “Busy” or “Not here right now”. Those people can wait. Your sales team, on the other hand, is only waiting for you to make a deposit in their Trust Account.

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Tell me what you think about establishing a personal relationship with your salespeople by posting a response to this post.