Sales Managers: Should You Prove Yourself By Selling In Front of Your Team?

Congratulations!

Youre a sales manager now, responsible for the productivity and careers of others.

How does it feel?

Probably a little strange if youve been kicked upstairs after being a top seller, yourself.

But youll get used to it. In fact, youll get so used to it that you may not do any selling yourself, after a while.

Your job will be selling your salespeople on selling more.

And youll have mixed emotions about that, being tied down to a desk, filing reports, doing administrative work.

But an insidious process will also be underway that youll be unaware of.

The longer youre out of the day-to-day selling game the more youll come to doubt your ability to open and to close deals. And your once legendary performance as a seller might be wiped out of the corporate memory, and even your own.

Along come your new salespeople, and they do fairly well, and some are exceptionally effective.

Theyll look at you with derision, and possibly contempt, while lionizing their own efforts as being the heavy lifting of the company.

You, the benchwarmer, will seem wimpy. Ill bet he wasnt so hot, theyll think and possibly whisper to each other.

Ive faced this situation as a sales manager and as a consultant. You run headlong into the credibility buster: Winners DO, while the losers TEACH.

I like to counter that perception, directly, by strutting my stuff, on occasion.

Ive been known to get on the phones and to make cold calls right next to my salespeople and trainees.

They hear me practicing exactly what I preach, and I get a chance to encounter exactly the forces theyve been telling me theyre facing.

Invariably, we gain respect for each other, but we also make more sales, because literally, everybody is PITCHING-IN.

When I get a sale, I hand it to someone who is struggling, to prime the pump.

And often, they match it quickly with one of their own.

Aristotle, I believe, said when youre instructing others, Example is more efficacious than precept.

And that means people will get you and respect you when you put theory aside and actually show them you can roll up your sleeves and do the job, yourself!

Best-selling author of 12 books and more than 800 articles, Dr. Gary S. Goodman is considered a foremost expert in telephone effectiveness, customer service, and sales development. A top-rated speaker, seminar leader, and consultant, his clients extend across the organizational spectrum, from the Fortune 1000 to small businesses. He can be reached at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

5 Training Tips for Sales Managers
How do you get your sales team solidly behind your telephone sales campaign and telephone sales goals?Here are 5 Training Tip...

Is Your Sales Team Paralysed By the Fear of Failure?
Selling for a living can be living under a constant push for figures. If you are struggling as a team to hit your sales targ...

Selling is Personal Communication and Relationship Building with the Prospect
If you are a sales manager in charge of training new recruits and sales people you know you have your work cut out for your. ...

The Forward Thinking Sales Manager Begins with the End in Mind
If an outside sale is truly a sales process, then there are steps involved for each sale. Since we agree on this fact, it mak...

Hiring a Sales Team for Your Flea Market Business
Most people begin selling at the flea market to either empty out their garage and attic, or build a part time second income. ...

Sales Performance Management
Sales management is an integral sub-system of marketing management. It translates the marketing plan into marketing performan...

Hire the Right Sales Manager
Although every organization is different, hiring a sales manager is not as simple as it looks. In fact, the wrong sales manag...

Sales Managers: When Should You Fire Your Best Salesperson?
There are just some topics that you shouldnt bring up in polite company.I could name them, but Id be out of line.Yet I cant r...

Automate Sales and Start a Revolution
Sales Management can learn by example from Henry Ford. Almost a hundred years ago Henry Ford revolutionized an industry. This...

Great Sales Managers Make Less than all their Sales People
Are you a great sales manager? Well if you really are a great sales manager then every single one of the sales people under y...

Tracking Your Sales; The Sales Managers Most Valuable Tool
If you are a sales manager you need to have the company and the front line workers always ask customers who come in and buy; ...

Sales Management by the Numbers
If you ask me how much Bobby will sell this month, there is only one way to tell. It isnt by what Bobby wrote on his forecast...

Retail Manager — Productivity and Developing Your Team
Retail Managers have a lot of information to process in the course of one day. They must decide what to act on now and what t...

How to Create A Vision For Sales Success
Imagine youre on a crowded company bus. It is a dark rainy night so you cant see outside. The bus is on a winding mountain pa...

What if There Were No Sales Managers?
Every one knows that sales people are very personable types. They Relationship builders, they people people and some say that...

Being a Good Coach
Every sales manager or director knows that they have to spend some time training and working with their staff so they continu...

Improving Sales Effectiveness - The Question is Why?
Achieving sales success is crucial to every business, after all sales is the only revenue generating function within a compan...

Six Steps To Sales Performance Management
In todays day and age a lot of senior managers and sales managers struggle with maintaining their top line growth performance...

The Value of a Glengarry Sales Manager
In the movie, Glengarry Glenross, the sales manager is a jerk, an acerbic cynic, a malevolent force, a take-no-prisoners, I-d...

A Sales Process Must be Certified to be Successful
If you were required to certify your sales process to be listed as a sales manager, could you? If you are like me, you have f...