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February 24, 2012
Four Steps to Effective Sales Management Communication
By:
Sales Managers consistently question how they can be better coaches. They ask questions around “How can my reps do what I tell them they need to do?” Or “What are the best ways to get a rep to perform better?” Some go to the extreme: “Why don’t sales reps listen to me?” or “How can I train them in half the time it takes?”
The cause is not communicating effectively. I observe sales managers (and their leaders) waste valuable time and energy repeating messages, prioritizing wrong activates and spending too much time on non-customer facing activities. The primary root problem of these behaviors is poor communication.
Ask yourself:
It’s worth the effort. Organizations that train and monitor their sales manager’s on effective communication show improvement in numerous metrics:
With the hundreds of field observations and conversations our company has each year with sales reps and managers, some alarming trends are happening. Sales managers are rushing through conversations with their direct reports sacrificing coaching time. Directors are not providing their direct reports (Sales Managers) with the necessary coaching. Poor communication fundamentals are leading to confusing messages, lost productivity and ineffective actions leading to lost revenue.
Sales Leaders must improve their communication skills.
Four Steps to Effective Sales Management Communication
Results are impressive for those who do it well. Check out Rosalba Agnello. Rosalba is a sales manager at HP in their ESSN division based in Milan, Italy. When I observed her sales meetings and one on one sales rep debriefings recently, I was impressed by the way she communicated. She practiced all 4 of the steps outlined above. She avoided the common mistakes most sales managers make in communicating and noticed her sales rep understood the coaching and feedback while immediately taking action. I checked her stank ranking against the other sales managers. Out of 900 sales managers worldwide, she was in the top 5 %. And she works in Italy, a country that is almost bankrupt and has felt the brunt of the economic downturn, especially in Europe. She is a great communicator.
Take a lesson from Rosalba and improve your communication. Work on your communication methods, cadence and messaging to your audience and direct reports. The metrics don’t lie, your performance will improve.
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