Are you a coach, a mentor or a tormentor

I heard a phrase the other day that stuck with me.

Is your Sales Manager a coach, a mentor or a tormentor?

More importantly, as a Sales Manager yourself, do you regard yourself as a coach, mentor or tormentor. I’m sure you don’t regard yourself as the latter, but do check with your people just in case.

Here’s a little checklist to test to see that you’re not tormenting your team.

  1. Do you promise to coach but frequently run out of time or other priorities take precedence and you’re always apologetic?
  2. Do you find yourself managing your team purely through KPIs and other stats and much of the time you just email them to your salesperson and ask for their comments?
  3. If a salesperson’s results are down, do you email them at the end of the week for a telephone conversation to talk about the numbers?
  4. Do you constantly promote competition amongst your sales team?
  5. In sales meetings do you find much of the time is spent with each salesperson talking about their week/month in sales?

Only a short questionnaire but if you found yourself answering more of these yes than no, then you may be deemed as a tormentor even though you had no intention of this whatsoever but just lack time.