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How Great Sales Managers Get Better

If you’re not making big mistakes, tearing down processes that work just fine, and hanging out with freaks, then you’re not trying hard enough to become a better leader. So says management guru Tom Peters. And his thoughts are echoed by many others who have carved out careers helping great managers get better. In fact, the recurrent message from those  who urge you to become a better sales manager can be summed up in two words: embrace change.

Indeed, the very notion of improving at anything requires change. As the saying goes, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

This is not the time to reflect on past successes and resist doing things differently. “We ask leaders to be ‘good stewards’ of the assets they inherit,” says Peters. “But in an age where permanence is a dangerous delusion, we must instead ask leaders to challenge the legacies they have inherited, create entirely new value propositions, and then to get out before they get stale.”

If you can’t pledge to change significant aspects of how you manage your sales team, it may be time to get out of the way and let someone take over who’s willing to improve the system. Is that unsettling? Sure, but doing nothing different should be even more unsettling.

As Mark Twain, one of history’s greatest observers of people and how they work, said, “Twenty years from now, you’ll be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.”

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Make Your Conversations Count
Customers long for greater value and more meaning from their business relationships, but the trend today is toward fewer real conversations. What used to be handled face-to-face is now tackled with an e-mail or via teleconference. “There is no real warmth or curiosity,” says Alan Gregerman, author of Surrounded by Geniuses: Unlocking the Brilliance in Yourself, Your Colleagues and Your Organization (Sourcebooks, 2007).
“We seem to have forgotten how to write or interact with any real passion, even though that’s what life is all about.” Conversations that matter require people to be engaged, to honestly care about each other more than about any financial return, and to sharing inforation, insights and questions of value. What’s more, says Gregerman, “to be capable of meaningful conversations with those we serve, we need to be capable of having them with each other in our own companies.”

Declare War on Yourself and Your Business
“Pursuing relentless improvement means declaring war on yourself — continually assessing every aspect of what you do and how you do it with the determination to raise the bar,” says Mark Stevens, CEO of MSCO, a marketing and strategy consulting firm. Too often in today’s business world, Stevens argues, what passes for leadership is really “followership” — executives imitating the icons of business stardom. “You can certainly learn from successful business leaders, but you can’t copy them. A successful manager needs to wake up in the morning and be himself instead of assuming a role that’s inconsistent with his personality. Wage war on yourself, but don’t dress in someone else’s clothes.”

Manage Yourself
The late Peter Drucker insisted that those managers who get the best from their staff are the ones who also manage themselves. He suggested that every manager periodically ask themselves three key questions:

• What am I doing that does not need to be done at all?

• What am I doing that can be done by someone else?

• What am I doing that only I can do?

Trust Others Before They Earn It
Leaders often don’t enjoy the luxury of an orderly decision-making process. Mergers, acquisitions and alliances happen quickly. Yesterday’s fierce competitor is today’s colleague in the next cubicle. The need for speed means there often is no time for a “get-to-know-you” period. “Leaders need to get past their tendency to divide the world into us-versus-them and start extending trust to partners who look, act and lead differently,” say David L. Dotlich and Peter C. Cairo, authors of Unnatural Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2002). And trust begets trust. When employees feel trusted, they are energized, more willing to initiate ideas, and more likely to fulfill expectations.

Create a Culture That Embraces Mistakes
“These tumultuous times beg for bold initiatives to increase the odds of even staying afloat,” says Tom Peters. He emphasizes that this does not mean tolerating sloppy work or reneging on accountability. Leaders improve when they learn about problems promptly, adds Kathy Bloomgarden, author of Trust: The Secret Weapon of Effective Business Leadership (St. Martin’s Press, 2007). Reacting to a major mistake provides a chance to dig down to the problems that allowed it to occur and to make fundamental changes in processes that will ensure quality. Says Peters, “My all-time favorite PowerPoint slide among the thousands in myportfolio: ‘Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.’”

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