The Sales Manager Role We Forgot to Enable
By Michael McGowan
“A breakthrough is needed, a different way of thinking and specifically, a way to enable the sales manager.”
Michael McGowan
Mike’s Note: This “in your face” blog by my Sales AI colleague Michael McGowan resonates with my motivation and to train and nurture world class sales managers in their role that gets results. I have done some minor edits. Read on…..
Sales teams are awash with tools: CRM, email cadences, forecasting dashboards, sales enablement platforms. Sales initiatives and most sales tech is aimed at salespeople, with, at best, underwhelming results.
But what about the one role responsible for actually delivering sales growth?
The Frontline Sales Manager is the Growth Lever, not the Sales Team.
Every Sales Manager and Leader Has Two Jobs but One Problem.
Survive the daily whirlwind of firefighting, chasing, checking, and monitoring his/her salespeople.
Build the team’s capability to execute, consistently and confidently to exceed sales revenue results and increase long-term customer loyalty.
That second job - the important one - gets buried. And without it, the short-term looks busy, but the long-term is already undermined. That's the “One Problem.”
The Sales Manager is the Message Who sets the Bar for Success
The starting point for the sales manager is the standard of the sales and commercial environment that is created. The standard of the sales environment has a far bigger influence on the team, than the individual hires do; when the sales manager sets the standards too low, no hiring works out. For example:
The forecasting standard. Is it at "salary bet" level? A sales environment with a high standard of measurement protects growth.
Non-negotiable knowledge and skills acquisition - specific and tailored to the company and customers (not general sales skills that do the rounds on social media).
The Law of the Lid, a principle articulated by John C. Maxwell in his book "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership," states that a sales manager’s effectiveness is directly limited by their leadership ability, or their "lid". Essentially, a sales team’s potential cannot exceed the sales manager leadership capacity to lift the team’s lid to achieve.
The Root Problem - The Lack of a Backroom Team
There is no lack of know-how these days, neither in sales nor sales management. We have plenty of knowledge, frameworks, cases and experience. The root problem though afflicting sales managers since the job was invented is the capacity and bandwidth, not so much execute, but to build the necessary execution skills, customized at the company level, and individualized at the seller level.
We talk a lot about one-to-one coaching in the sales world, but it's impossible and can be costly at any meaningful level. There is the infamous 2-3 day "microwave sales training", which ends up as an embarrassing, chaotic humiliation scene because of no relevant reinforcement. The reality is, the level of knowledge and skills acquisition actually needed to guarantee results at the month and quarter level can only be done with the aid of a backroom teams supported with a customized knowledge base for the company. And the idea of that magic set of sales hands solving all your sale issues is now a relic of past custom. A breakthrough is needed, a different way of thinking and specifically, a way to enable the sales manager to lift the lid of his/her salespeople to achieve sales success.
The Manager Enablement Breakthrough – The Sales Gym
For the first time, the sales manager doesn’t have to do it all nor do it alone. The breakthrough is this: a full backroom team, or what we might call a “sales gym” available 24/7, working quietly behind the scenes to coach, train, and reinforce every critical piece of knowledge skill across the sales team. But these aren’t human trainers; that's not an option for the sales manager from a time or investment/cost point of view.
They’re AI-powered training bots, each one focused on a specific skill, message, sales scenario, or skill capability. Positioning. Value proposition. Discovery. Qualification. Personas. Messaging. Sales Plays. Pipeline stages. All of it, delivered at an individualized level, on demand. What used to take months to do badly can now be done in days, to the excellent standard the sales manager has set.
The Decision is About the Upskilling Environment You Want to Create (the tooling is available to create your own functional sales gym).
The decision facing any company that has its strategy (and possibly new investment) in place is not, should we look at this AI thing. The decision needed is way bigger than that: what's the standard of the sales training and reinforcement environment we need to create that guarantees better sales result? Then, what's new that can help us deliver the environment while I (the sales manager) still have to contend with the day job, the whirlwind that starts in the email box every morning?
The reality is, the level of product knowledge and selling skill acquisition actually needed to guarantee results at the month and quarter level can only be done with the aid of a backroom “AI Sales Gym” supported with a customized knowledge base for your company’s strategy, market, product, sales team competence and the vision to succeed.
Mike’s note: Michael McGowan with Vidal Graupera has opened my eyes and improved my sales competence with their Sales AI technology to amplify the selling skill and product knowledge competence of my customers’ sales teams. The AI Sales Gym approach is a very efficient and cost-effective AI process. Call or email me to explore at no obligation how your company can set up an AI Sales Gym to accelerate your sales team's success, focus sales coaching efforts, and support a solid ROI on your sales training investments!
Michael J Griffin
CEO of ELAvate
A Sales AI Gym Coach
michael.griffin@elavateglobal.com
+65-91194008 (WhatsApp)