Alternative Sales Manager Titles
In today's fast-paced and competitive business environment, organizations need sales managers who can lead their teams to achieve extraordinary results. While all sales management roles are critical, the role of a Sales Leader is becoming increasingly important for organizations looking to stay ahead of the competition. In this blog post, we will explore why a Sales Leader may be better than other sales management roles.
Sales Leaders have a unique perspective on the market and customers. They are focused on building strong relationships with customers, identifying new business opportunities, and developing sales strategies that are innovative and effective. By building relationships with customers, Sales Leaders can gain valuable insights into what customers want, which can be used to develop tailored sales strategies that meet their needs.
Sales Leaders are highly skilled in managing and developing sales teams. They have a deep understanding of what motivates salespeople and how to create a high-performance sales culture. By setting clear expectations, providing ongoing training and coaching, and incentivizing performance, Sales Leaders can create a sales team that is focused on achieving extraordinary results.
Sales Leaders are visionaries and thought leaders in their field. They are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to improve sales performance and drive growth. By staying up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies in their industry, Sales Leaders can develop sales strategies that are ahead of the curve and deliver results that exceed expectations.
Sales Leaders are highly effective communicators. They are skilled at conveying their vision and strategy to their sales team, as well as other stakeholders within the organization. By communicating effectively, Sales Leaders can build support for their initiatives, create alignment across the organization, and drive success.
While all sales management roles are critical, the role of a Sales Leader may be better suited to organizations that are looking to stay ahead of the competition. Sales Leaders bring a unique perspective on the market and customers, are highly skilled in managing and developing sales teams, are visionaries and thought leaders in their field, and are highly effective communicators. By leveraging these skills, Sales Leaders can help their organizations achieve extraordinary results and drive growth.
Have a great week!
“Businesses wonder why it is still hard to be thought of as the brand of choice with customers. How can our business make more profitable transactions and stay out of the commodity battle with low profits? I equip your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate explosive revenues with greater profits!”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lWIVasmkFsoYL4h0AqIZgH6LC3qaw_gI/view?usp=sharing – client profile sheet
https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Process-Uncovered-Success-Influence/dp/0578421518 - Book
The Ringleman Effect And How It Affects Engagement During Meetings
Ever wonder why some meetings it seems like everyone is engaged, but others people seem to be staring off at other screens. Some people are busy working on other things and now really paying attention to what the team is discussing? We are not talking about the mute button issues here either.
There is an effect that occurs especially in large meetings known as the Ringleman Effect. The Ringleman Effect is basically summed up that as when group size increases, engagement decreases. That’s right, when the size of the meeting grows then engagement actually decreases. This is why we have people asking to please repeat the question quite often.
During large meetings people tend to start working on other tasks “multi-tasking” which is actually ineffective. Science has shown that we are unable to focus on more than one task at a time with effectiveness. Think about how many crashes occur while someone is reading a text or email on their phone these days while driving.
The size of the meeting will dictate the expectation that the attendees will have. Most won’t realize it until they are in the meeting and see the list of attendees growing. When I speak about trust there are certain levels of trust that are given in one-on-one interactions compared to larger groups. So as the meetings get larger trust actually goes down. Trust effects engagement levels.
If we want to have higher levels of engagement in our meetings we need to start looking at who really needs to be in the meetings for the specific topic. We need to focus on who really needs to be in the meeting and not just dropping a calendar on every person’s schedule just to get the masses. I know some people in larger organizations will say that they need to get managers involved as well to move things along. Do we need them on the initial call to understand the situation though?
People also get irritated when a meeting is set up when they already have one or two meetings scheduled during that time. They feel like others don’t respect them enough to look at their calendars before setting up a meeting. That means that trust goes down.
What can we do to drive higher levels of engagement during meetings?
We can look at the topic at hand and only invite those that need to be invited to the meeting as one option. Do we need to have the finance team, engineering team, and management when there is a small quality issue with the manufacturing plant forgetting to paint the product, or packaging the product improperly?
We can set up a couple of meetings to focus on specific topics. Yes, it will take more time for us, but in order to get more traction, we need to move forward faster. We can also only have the specific team members needed for each topic to talk so there aren’t others sitting online wasting their time as well as not paying attention.
We can set shorter meetings and keep them specific in topic so we are only running 15 to 30 minute meetings instead of trying to block out the entire hour which people are less likely to give up. The smaller window of time will be a smaller investment to the attendees which will garnish more engagement.
We can also focus on building rapport with others. If there is extra time, then we can catch up with team members even virtually. We can see how they are doing, catch up on topics they may mention that they spoke in passing during the meeting. Show others we care will go a long way in gaining engagement during our meetings.
Focus on the other people we are asking to spend the time with us and how we can better use their time and we will have more effective meetings with more engagement.
Have a great week!
Have a great week!
“Businesses wonder why it is still hard to be thought of as the brand of choice with customers. How can our business make more profitable transactions and stay out of the commodity battle with low profits? I equip your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate explosive revenues with greater profits!”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lWIVasmkFsoYL4h0AqIZgH6LC3qaw_gI/view?usp=sharing – client profile sheet
https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Process-Uncovered-Success-Influence/dp/0578421518 - Book
https://kevinsidebottom.kartra.com/page/5AF12 - Sales Process Uncovered Online Training
https://kevinsidebottom.kartra.com/page/68N10 - Trustworthy Online Training
What Employees Think Management Does
Most employees wonder what their management and leadership teams are doing day to day. Constant commands of new requests rain down from above constantly. When employees state that they are too busy the response from management is that they just need to prioritize.
The funny thing about prioritization is that each day it changes to the new fire that has popped up as being the most prioritized issue. Employees are just asked to do more without clarity or help in some cases. This is a huge frustration with employees and typically drives burn out.
Employees want to feel like they matter. When management tells the employee to do a new task that has popped up without support that feeling of frustration sets in. It can feel like a hamster on a wheel every new day. When it comes time for the end of year review the main goals that were requested at the beginning of the year have been missed. The only trigger for a raise, promotion, a future with the organization was missed because of the ever changing priorites.
What can employees do? Can they fight back? Should they push back to management? Will management accept this stance? What is management doing to help the employees become more successful?
Most employees think of management as people sitting on a couch enjoying their favorite cereal, in their comfy pants. Meanwhile the employee is struggling to keep going. The employees become resentful that the manager is just barking orders to keep from being on the hotseat like an underperforming NFL coach.
Managers are meant to keep things moving forward by managing people and processes to maintain the flow. Just like a flowing river, if something gets jammed up then the water becomes stagnant and smells awful. Managers are there to keep things flowing. They manage a group of employees typically called the span of command.
Managers are working hard trying to manage priorities of the organization as those issues arise. They don’t want to keep pushing new orders, but they have to so they can stay in their position and collect their paycheck. Far too often new managers are not equipped to grow trust and influence with those that they manage driving dissention and hate in their groups. This then turns into having to fill another spot on their team when employees have had enough and leave.
Gallop did a poll and found that this lack of loyalty to the company can cause turnover, which can cost businesses approximately 1.5 times the annual salary of every person who quits.
What managers need to think of themselves is team leaders. Leaders help their teams by pouring into them and helping the team grow together. By investing into the team and helping them get better as well as fighting for their team, the leader will be rewarded with trust and influence. Leaders don’t just bark orders, they serve the team members. They serve by going the way and showing the way.
If you are in a management position, think about how you can serve the team so that they can improve. By serving you will get higher levels of engagement and success with your employees. Heck, they may even stay with you instead of chasing a pay raise at another organization.
Employees want to feel like they matter. If they feel like leadership and management does not care for them, they will ultimately disengage and look for other opportunities. We have just gone through what people are calling the great resignation. Leadership and management need to look themselves in the mirror and evaluate how they are leading their teams. They are costing the organization a great deal of money if they don’t take this hard look in the mirror.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I equip your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate explosive revenues with greater profits!”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lWIVasmkFsoYL4h0AqIZgH6LC3qaw_gI/view?usp=sharing – client profile sheet
https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Process-Uncovered-Success-Influence/dp/0578421518 - Book
https://kevinsidebottom.kartra.com/page/5AF12 - Sales Process Uncovered Online Training
https://kevinsidebottom.kartra.com/page/68N10 - Trustworthy Online Training
What To Expect From A Sales Manager
They may challenge our assumptions, but to help us make sure we effectively thinking through the process.
Welcome back,
Today we are going to look at what we should expect from a sales manager. I’m sure anyone in sales has horror stories of bad sales managers. It’s okay if you are currently working for one, you don’t have to raise your hand if they are near J
I am asked what makes a good sales manager, and what should I expect from a sales manager. This blog is not going to say what a typical sales manager is, it is going to discuss what we should be expecting out of sales managers. That’s right when we interview with sales managers, we should be looking for a few things. These will be indicators about what we are about to get ourselves into in hopes of avoiding a bad situation.
I have had a couple Rockstar sales managers, a couple really bad sales managers, but mostly just okay sales managers. I know what to look for in a sales manager that I figured I should share with you so you can avoid some difficult relationships in the future.
I have had two really bad sales managers in the past. The first one should have been fired based off how sexist, manipulative, and degrading he was about others. He took his title to his head. The other was kind, but did not know how anything worked at the company even though he had been there for twenty plus years, and he could not offer help when asked. He was like a cockroach. He knew how to survive in the corporate world, but just didn’t add much value. It was unfortunate that this happens, but I’m sure this manager was not the only one.
With the bad out of the way let’s start with what we should be looking for in great sales managers. When we think of a sales manager, we should be thinking about someone who will invest in us and grow us. We need someone that will be a coach. Not like a coach on a football field that yells in plays and tells us to execute what they say, but someone that will ask us questions to pull out our own unique solutions to the problems at hand.
When I went to get certified by John Maxwell, my eyes were open to this new type of coach. A coach that has passion to grow those under them and help those they manage find their own true answers. Most managers want to manage people and processes to keep things moving smoothly, but a coach will encourage us to try for more than we think possible and to find the best answer within us. They want to invest in us as well.
These types of managers are also very transparent and knowledgeable about the products and processes of the organization. They know how to guide us around the pitfalls and educate us why we don’t want to go down a certain path, but still give us the option to choose our paths. They will ask us questions to make us think about why we are doing something and then ask us to provide why we believe this is the best path to take. They may challenge our assumptions, but to help us make sure we effectively thinking through the process. Not allowing us to just wing it.
Sales managers should also be looking for their replacement. Maybe the sales manager will be promoted someday, change corporations, or maybe they will expire. The sales manager should be functioning just like a leader that is looking to grow others around them so when the sales manager is gone, the organization will still thrive and move forward. They should be focused on leaving the organization better than they found it. Not because they want all of the applause, but because they value other individuals highly.
We need to stop looking at sales managers as people that just merely manage people and processes to keep things moving along, we need to expect more out of them to be coaches and leaders that want to grow people around them. They foster a culture of possibilities and adventure to personal and professional growth for their employees. Isn’t that someone you’d like to work for?
If you have a great manager that you’d like to mention in the comments below, please do so. I am always looking for people to interview and find out what makes them great and what values they focus on. It will also help all of you get better understanding as well.
Have a great week and I will see you next time!
Link to this week’s Youtube video
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”