Manage by being there - all the time

More and more sales organisations are focusing much needed attention on coaching of sales management. This is a good thing. Increasingly, senior managers are setting 'non-negotiables' for first level sales managers to meet once a week with their direct reports for 'coaching meetings.' These go by many names -- Assessment / Deployment, Focused Coaching, Weekly Check Ins, etc.

Sales force automation packages provide reams of data about accounts, activities, and results to discuss. The coaching meetings can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours each.

These regular discussions with sales representatives are VERY important. Repeat, they're VERY important. Analysis of activities and results is VERY important – otherwise it’s more difficult to plan what you need to do more of and what you need to do differently to achieve your desired result. Setting accountability targets and following up on them week after week is VERY important.

But remember... these meetings are "managing by managing" meetings. They aren't managing by "being there all the time."

Vince Lombardi once said: "You never win a game unless you beat the guy in front of you. The score on the board doesn't mean a thing. That’s for the fans. You've got to win the war with the man in front of you. You've got to get your man."

If you're the coach, you've got to be there with your sales people while they do that, while they're selling, while they're calling prospects for appointments, while they're following up. If you’re the coach, you have to be:

1. Observing
2. Diagnosing
3. Modelling and teaching.

The amount of time you spend in these 'being there' activities will vary. In some organisations, it’s 'three days a week.' In others, '1 day of calls with each sales person per month.' Another variation is that the level of face-to-face coaching depends on a number of things:

• The level of opportunities in the pipeline
• The level of sales skill and experience of the sales person
• Areas in need of development based on the personal development plan

The point is - set a standard that enables you to be there with your people, and stick to it. Why? If you don't know that 'Frank' and 'Frances' are killing sales opportunities because they ask three times too many of the wrong type of question, all the numbers and Assessment / Deployment meetings at the end of the week aren't going to help.

Manage by being there.

"We don't manage by managing. We manage by being there - all the time."

-- Chuck Sussman, President, Pretty Neat Industries, Inc.