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.
- Do you promise to coach but frequently run out of time or other priorities take precedence and you’re always apologetic?
- 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?
- 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?
- Do you constantly promote competition amongst your sales team?
- 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.
