Sales Manager Fears, Fails, and Fixes: Fast Actions to Prevent Burnout & Failure! [Webinar Recording]
Sales Manager Fears, Fails, and Fixes: Fast Actions to Prevent Burnout & Failure!
[Video Recording]
[Video Recording]
I’ve got a quick time management tip for all of you super-busy frontline sales managers.
At 23, in my first sales management job, I was buried by everything my team needed and all the things I didn’t know how to help with. Sound familiar?
Here’s the best time management tip that you can learn that we teach in our quick and easy time management course for sales managers (it’s called Own Your Day)
It’s all about getting out of the reactive mode and into the proactive mode.
READ: 4 Time-Saving Tips for Sales Managers
And here is the most fun and hardest part of what we’re teaching.
You’ve got to learn to say NO. Why?
Because that team of 8 to 15, new, experienced reps that you’re there to lead, serve, motivate, and nurture, will suck you dry.
I’m telling you, it will happen.
Because we’re all in the business of making money and doing it as fast and as easy as possible.
That makes you the go-to for all their questions.
And my goodness, they’re going to keep asking until you teach them to fish, which takes longer.
So it is a vicious, vicious cycle.
READ: Top 8 Sales Management Productivity Hacks
One of the most important skills that we teach new managers (who literally hug me afterward) is what to focus on first, second, third, and fourth, what to get rid of, what to delegate, what to do immediately, what to schedule for later, etc.
But here’s the crux of the skill: it’s saying NO to the rep request that’s coming at you right now.
You know the ones—people telling you about the call they just had, the deal they closed, or asking a product question. And all of that hits you before 9 am.
But here’s how to say no without being a jerk:
Scheduled meetings. When you build a sales management cadence, you’re not saying no, you’re saying, “This is so important, let’s talk about it in our scheduled call coaching,” or, “Bring that story to the huddle.” That way, you’re acknowledging their need but pushing it into the cadence.
This is probably the #1 best time management skill you’ll learn to take back your day and stop working before it’s dark (winter excluded 😉). You’re welcome.
Don’t have a cadence yet? Or a way to manage the requests? We’ve got you covered. Join our certification program, Own Your Sales Manager Role.
Managers/Leaders: What does it take to run a successful sales rep 1:1 meeting?
Ten bucks say you and your rep have different definitions of “success” here.
As a Rep, we want:
As a Manager, we want:
Mostly, we need to be done with this meeting and get on with the next one right? Maybe during this time we could also look at the pipeline, the call coaching scores, review company announcements, and check off all vacation requests? Like really, can we just check them completely off the “to-do” list for at LEAST a month?
If I’m reading your mind right now, it’s because these are the questions I get when teaching managers the ropes. Things like…
“Why do I need a separate deal strategy, pipeline, and 1:1?”
“Do these need to be monthly or is quarterly OK?”
“I can do all this in less than 30 minutes, is that OK?”
And the fundamental difference here is that we have 8-15 of these to do a month and our reps have one. We need the team to perform and cause fewer issues, and they need to feel connected to their boss, their team, their career growth, and their company. And you guessed it, their 1:1 time is where it happens.
A recent Forbes article taught us that today’s hiring generations care most about 3 things:
Ready for a perspective bomb? Imagine you have kids (if you do, imagine you have easier kids 😉). Yeah, you could probably keep them alive with 60 total minutes/day of feeding, maybe some basic hygiene and transport, but keeping them alive is very different than ensuring their happiness and development as human beings. We’re all trying to spend MORE than a few hours/day with our families right?
I know, your reps are not your children.
Or, are they?
At my very first management job, I managed a little retail pop-up at Lindale Mall in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Funny how that experience was SO cool in my twenties, cringy in my thirties, and now just a sweet memory.
In that job, I learned the hard way how important it is to teach yourself (or your team) what a successful meeting should look like. I learned that if you don’t have a plan, agenda, or at least a list, then what you will have is a train wreck. Your meetings will be too long, too short, too impersonal, or too casual. However, with a little pre-planning and strategy, your sales manager meetings can be both impactful and efficient!
I will never forget my first “team meeting” at the retail store. I prepared for DAYS and my 45-minute meeting went TWO HOURS long. The patient, part-time adults working there were DYING of boredom. Every new manager has felt this pain, right? (Please, tell me I’m not alone). That experience stayed with me as I left retail and went into the bright shiny world of sales.
In the sales world, there are so many important sales manager meetings. As a fledgling manager, it was hard for me to understand the nuances of each separate type of meeting.
So, for all of my newbie sales managers (or future sales managers) I wanted to break down the top 8 essential sales manager meetings you need to master and provide a little insight that I wish I had in my early days.
Now, is this a list of all the sales manager meetings you will be a part of? No, but it’s a good place to start if you need to either begin setting up your schedule or if you need to take back control of it. As a manager, sometimes your day can get away from you while you are working hard to help each member of your team. If that’s the case, use this list to find the right meeting to address the question. How would you spend the extra time you’ll get back each day?
Fact: Sales management is the busiest job in the world. Okay, maybe that’s not a real fact, but if you’re a sales manager, you probably feel like it is. Chances are, you’ve got a pretty tremendous and stressful workload. According to the American Institute of Stress, 39% of stress reported amongst employees in the US is caused by an overwhelming amount of work.
So, what happens when you can’t get it all done? For starters: you go home later, you feel less satisfied with your accomplishments, and you add an extra level of anxiety to your plate. Let’s get some of that time back in your day.
Here are our top 8 sales management productivity tips:
Start by leaving your reactive self in the past. How? First, we need to identify your priorities. I get it, you received 100 emails just in the time you are reading this blog. But you were not hired to write emails. So, let’s take a closer look at what you were hired to do and what your priority should be. Next, set your daily goal to hit that priority. Setting (and hitting) that goal will make you feel a lot more productive and will make it easier for you to stay on track. Finally, we need to learn how to recognize whether the new things that come our way each day are proactive versus reactive. This will help you say “no” at the right times and help you prioritize the things that you really NEED to get accomplished.
Hint: Reading emails = Reactive. Helping reps with questions that pop up = Reactive. Calling a strategy meeting to help a rep hit their goal = Proactive! Creating a new KPI report = Proactive!
Your meeting cadence is the process that organizes your team’s regular interactions. When scheduled properly, the cadence will prevent you from handling a series of reactive “fires” every day. Create the cadence that works best for you and your team. We’ve taken a bit of time to dive into the 8 essential sales manager meetings. Check out this deep dive and learn which meetings are short, which are long, which are 1:1, and which should be done in a group. Read more here: 8 Essential Manager Meetings. While you’re working on your meeting cadence you can also perfect your 1:1 meetings.
Have you used the Eisenhower Matrix before? If not, it all starts by asking yourself 2 critical questions. Is it urgent? Is it important? From there we break things down into 4 groups.
Let’s dive in a little deeper to see how these questions help us categorize each task. First are the urgent items. Urgent means time-sensitive and goal-related. Maybe the customer is on the phone and needs an answer to close the deal, or maybe the contract department is reviewing your deal in 1 hour and you need to tie up a few loose ends first.
Next are the important items. Important means it is critical to the mission but it is not time-sensitive. These important things can be scheduled out. This might be mapping out a strategy for a certain campaign, or reviewing the team\’s numbers to ensure they will hit goal.
Now, let’s see how the two questions help us categorize our tasks
Spoiler alert: You’re about to find out that 3 out of 4 requests aren’t urgent OR important. Oftentimes, they’re actually something your rep can figure out on their own. So, we need to get REALLY good at pushing pop-up requests to meetings, delegating to others, and taking them off your plate!
Here’s how we’ll do it:
“Hey, (Rep) this sounds AWESOME! But I’m late on a deadline right now, could you bring the story and the call recording to our call coaching session next week?”
OR
“Whoa, (Rep), I need to stop you a moment. This sounds important and I want to give it the time it deserves. Please put it on the agenda for our 1:1 next week?”
If you’re on Slack, it could sound like this…
OR
I probably spent 3 hours preparing for my first team meeting. From the scheduling, to figuring out what to say, to deciding what I needed, to realizing I forgot really important things, it was draining, to say the least. What I realized is that if I streamlined the process and prepared for each meeting the same way, I could save myself HOURS of previously wasted time (I only say wasted because those hours were not helping my team reach goal).
Through that painful process, we developed the COACHN Model™. This acronym is about to make your meeting preparation SO MUCH EASIER!
COACHN℠ stands for:
C: Clarify Expectations – This sets the tone for the meeting. “Last time you decided to work on your intros and I know we have a few calls scored. Let’s see how you’re improving.”
O: Observed Behavior – You start first, lay out facts, and list your observations before you…
A: Ask Questions – Great leaders talk in questions. Have them prepared before your meeting.
C: Commit to Actions – Your number of action items should be 0-1, their action items can be anywhere from 1-4
H: How Can I Help – This helps the rep learn to trust you. Growth is good, but we cannot grow unless we can admit that we need help!
N: Next Steps – We are agreeing at the end. “You own this, I own that, we’re going to meet again ______. Will you (rep) please send the invite!”
Use a standard coaching form. Define what “good” is across the company. If people move or shift, you don’t need to retrain or redefine these elements. If you need a place to start, you can grab our Call Coaching Activities here to help you prioritize and plan your coaching sessions.
It’s time to put your reps in charge. I get it, you want to help them. But you need to stop giving the fish away. Stop solving all of the problems and owning all of the actions. It’s time to teach those reps to fish instead!
Here are 6 easy things you can delegate TODAY:
This was a tough one for me to really wrap my head around in the beginning. But the truth is that there is a reason that you were promoted to manager. There is a reason that other people will remain as a rep. You cannot control how much other people care. When you care more about their job than they do, it will cause numerous problems.
Let me tell you a little story. Back at the beginning of my sales career, I had a rep, let’s call him “George.” Well, George just could not seem to get himself to work on time. I got one excuse after another. There was a part of me that felt guilty that I didn’t have car trouble and that I could afford a new alarm clock, etc. One Thursday during lunch I left work to go across the street to buy George a new alarm clock (I know, I know). That was when it hit me. What the hell was I doing? If George didn’t care enough to figure out how to get an alarm clock on his phone or borrow a buddy’s clock, or heck, go to Goodwill and buy a used one, then why did I care so much? That was my “ah-ha” moment. I was caring more than George and no amount of new alarm clocks was going to force him to care more.
You need to stay within your span of control. You can control your schedule, your reactions to things, and your time. You don’t control your team, you can’t control a pricing increase, you don’t control what the customer’s going to say, you just don’t. You can influence your team’s skill level, activity, and focus, but you can’t control it. There are a lot of things under your concern, but that you can’t control. There is very little you can actually control. So, stop spinning your wheels and stressing out about it. You can provide coaching and help when appropriate, but “George” is either going to make it or he’s not.
I know this was A LOT of information and your inbox has probably increased by 200 emails now, but if you take the time to start implementing at least some of these sales management productivity hacks that we talked about here, it will make a difference: in both your success and your happiness! You will feel and be more productive. It will just take a little practice!
My first year in sales management was rough. I try hard to celebrate that sweet, young thing instead of cringing, but it’s hard some days. I remember some doozy mistakes:
Go. team.
There were so many things wrong with that email!
Bingo.
Nightmare.
Yeah, these are real stories. It took me about six months to figure out the job and for my team to excel. And we did. We became number one in the division in those 6 months. Most days I think they did it in spite of me! And because I still feel the embarrassment, frustration, and exhaustion in my body as I type this, I’ve spent my career trying to fix it for others.
Factor 8 management curriculum is literally job training for sales managers. Not leadership training with a few sales role-plays, it’s how to do the freaking job. Like I wish someone would have taught me. It’s one of the key 3 ingredients in the over 100+ promotions we’ve earned with our #GirlsClub communities! Here are a few nuggets we teach and share. If you’re a new manager or an aspiring one, I hope you’ll take one (or a few) of our online management courses or programs. They’re bite-sized versions of our Fortune 1000 corporate programs.
Get your house in order. A manager’s cadence is akin to a rep’s sales process. It’s the dance steps, the framework, the skeleton on which you’ll hang your management suit. Get it locked down. We teach about six essential manager meetings:
Each of these has different goals, timelines, and preparation actions, but once you lock these in you’re halfway home to getting a hold of your day. If you’d like to see your family or some daylight hours during your first year, believe me, this is key!
Delegate everything you can to these meetings. Keep the line away from your desk and work through needs in their appropriate meeting. It’s like getting file folders for all the crap on your desk. Be clear:
Sales Reps are like water. We will ALWAYS flow to the path of least resistance.
Asking you to help or do it for me will always be easier than me looking it up or figuring it out. Resist, dear friend, resist. Fish. Teaching. Eating. You get it, right? Remember, daylight hours! When we spend all day with a “line at our desk” (remote equivalent: Slack blowing up), we feel GREAT we helped people all day and we had some answers, but then we get to keep working all night to do our real job.
Get really clear on your job role. You’re going to WANT to solve everything for your team because this validates you. We all feel nervous in these new roles and it’s hard to immediately strike the right balance of power. New leaders are either baby tyrants or mother hens. Leading through telling or leading through helping. Find the middle ground. On two sides of the paper, fill them up. Now you know what NOT to do.
Stop doing your old job. The Peter principle is a real thing. It means you’ll keep getting promoted until you reach your limit of competence. Translated, that means until you quit learning the new job and we find you still doing your old job. Don’t fizzle out at the first leadership rung. No, you can’t keep any accounts. No! Uh-uh! Zip! None. Give it to a rep on your team and help them be great instead.
Celebrate failures and wins. Every week come together as a team to talk about the week’s highlights. It keeps you all focused on the W’s, motivated to do it again, and builds unity. Keep it short, but be sure it also includes failures. The best sellers and managers see sales as a sport in which they’ll continuously improve. That means failing. No’s. Lost deals. Hang-ups. For you it means upset. Missed opportunities. Stepping in it with your boss. Share these with your team too. If you can vulnerably share your journey to being the best leader you can be for them, they’ll cheer you on your journey.
So will I.
[“Sales Shot” Workshop Recording]
[Webinar Recording]