Skill sets for success as a sales manager are not always the same as skill sets for successful sales people. Knowing how to inspire, motivate, coach and hold sales people accountable for their behaviors is the foundation for improving sales as a manager.

Making the top-producing sales person the sales manager might be seen as a reward, but without the skills and regular management training, the previously successful top sales producer can become a disaster.

One of the downsides of the longest business expansions in U.S. history (the 90's) is that an entire generation of sales professionals have worked all of their professional lives knowing nothing about selling in hard times and how to deal with them. It is not surprising therefore that unskilled sales managers with no management training can commit many of the following errors without recognizing why sales fail to increase.

1) Refuse to accept personal accountability for the behaviors and production of your sales force. Spending time blaming the sales people, the market, the economy, the product or the company will never increase sales. Accepting the excuses from sales people does them a disservice, as well.

2) Neglect to develop the sales people you manage. The top job of the sales manager is not to sell. It is to develop the sales people on the team. The problem with promoting the best producing sales person to the sales management position is that they probably think sales would go up if everyone sold the way they did when they were the top producer.

3) Focus on the results rather than the behavior, attitudes and beliefs. Results are clear to everyone. They may even be posted on the wall or the company Intranet. Knowing what behaviors, attitudes and beliefs enable sellers to sell is the first step. The second step is to know how to change the things that get in the way.

4) Don't use all the data you can get; Never evaluate your sales people. It just doesn't make sense to stay in the dark when highly accurate, dependable assessment tools will tell you precisely how and why your sales people sell.

5) Manage all your sales people the same way. Managing everyone the same way will result in frustration, lack of clarity, and missed opportunities for growth in the ability to sell.

6) Forget the importance of profit. Sales volume is not the indicator of success. Dropping the price may get the sale, but it leads to leaner margins, lack of confidence and a poorly performing sales force.

7) Focus on the problems rather than the objective. Know your target market and limit your presentations to qualified prospects. Learn as much as you can about the prospects in your target market.

8) Being a buddy not a coach. Your sales force wants to get better. If they don't, see #11. Sales people need a mentor, a coach, to spur them to leave their comfort zone to find new success.

9) Don't set standards and never rank your sales people by anything other than revenue. Without clear expectations, without the awareness that there are varieties of ways to succeed, and without the knowledge of where they stand, sales people flounder into isolation and alienation.

10) Never train your sales people. Thinking you know everything the sales team needs to know about sales limits them to your experience. Without continual refinement in the rapidly changing marketplace, you can find yourself unprepared to meet unexpected challenges.

11) Condone incompetence. Sales people can actually believe their lack of competent performance is acceptable when they see no consequences for lacks in performance.

12) Recognize only the top revenue producers and then only once a year at bonus time. Failure to see the team as the reason for sales success leads to isolation, lack of camaraderie. Recognition of everyone's efforts strengthens the team and leads to greater initiative.

13) Always see conditions instead of obstacles. Seeing a down market (or anything that gets in the way of business) as an unchangeable condition leads to excuse-making. Accepting excuses de-motivates the sales force.

It might seem to make sense that people trained in sales and marketing and people who have demonstrated success in selling would make good sales managers. However, expecting a great sales person to become the sales manager and to learn on the job can have unfortunate consequences.

This is often the case in a down market. They are unable to assess, develop, track and coach sales people who are struggling to learn how to sell in such a time. Pushing harder on the sales force only produces anger, resentment and resistance, not more sales. This insensitivity comes across as poor management and shows you are not paying attention to what is going on with your sales people. Churning and burning the sales force doesn't work.

So what is the answer? Find people in sales with the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that will make them successful managers AND train them to manage the sales force. Show them you believe that developing sales people is their job. Show them you believe that well-developed sales people with strong coaching and regular tracking will produce sales.

© Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.