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The Seven Sins Of Sales Management

Guest post by: Fiona Challis

Article Overview: Are you a sales manager that needs to get the very best from your sales team this quarter? This controversial article highlights: • The many pitfalls that sales managers fall into, but very often fail to recognise themselves. • How sales managers could be limiting their team’s performance rather than maximising their team’s performance! • The practical tips, tools and techniques you can use to make minor ‘tweaks’ to your current approach and maximise your sales team’s potential quickly & easily.

The Seven Sins Of Sales Management

The Seven Sins of Sales Management

Are you committing them?

What are the seven sins?
The ‘seven sins’ are a set of beliefs that sales leaders/mangers hold but very often fail to recognise themselves. These beliefs influence their attitude, which in turn influences how they manage their sales team, which in turn influence their sales people’s performance.

Why are they sins?
The ‘seven sins’ are no more than a belief you may hold, however they are beliefs which could be limiting your team’s performance rather than maximising your team’s performance! That is why I call them ‘Sins’

How do I know that they could be limiting your team’s performance?
Prior to forming Sales and Sensibility, I spent the majority of my career in sales leadership. So the answer is simple, I have made all of the above mistakes! Ask any great leader if they made mistakes, the answer will be yes! Great leaders believe that success comes from being able to indentify your mistakes, learning from them and having the confidence and skills to adapt your current approach to improve your performance. That is what our ‘Seven Sins of Sales management’ workshop is designed to help sales leaders achieve.

How do I know if I hold these beliefs?
To determine if you hold any of these beliefs please read each of the seven statements below. If you read the statement and agree with any of it, you are holding some of the beliefs that may be holding your team back. It is crucial that you be honest with your self whilst reading the statements.

How can I change them to maximise my sales team’s performance?
The first step to changing beliefs is to become consciously aware that you are holding them and understanding why they could be, limiting your team’s performance. The second step is to take action. Below each of the ‘Sins’ I have provided some practical tips that will start you on your journey to maximising your teams potential.

Sin 1
One to one’s are a great chance for me to update my sales figures and find out what my team need from me. I always send out a summary of the actions so that I can track my team member’s performance and regularly give feedback on what they can do to improve their performance.
Do you agree or disagree?

• One to ones are not for the sales manager they are about your sales people
• If you simply update sales figures, what value are you getting from your one to ones. Rather than fill in a spreadsheet ask you team members to give you a review of their performance to date.
• I see so many managers that are ‘shouldn’t’ all over themselves in one to ones. You should do this, you should do that … If you tell sales people what to do, guess what it is your action not theirs. They do not take responsibility for them, and in many cases, they will not take action. Ask your sales people what they could do & coach them to come up with their own solutions and actions.
• After one to ones, ask your sales people to send you a summary of the actions that they agreed to. This way they own the action and they will be more committed to taking it.

Sin 2
I know what I want to achieve from my team this quarter. I have created my sales plan and have set the team some challenging team goals, which I believe they can achieve. I have issued the targets, KPI’s and goals to my team so that they also know where they are going and what they need to do.

• A leader is someone that people want to follow; a manager is someone who people feel they have to follow.
• Involve your team members when setting team goals. You will gain a better buy in, you make the team goals their own and as they are more involved in the team success they will want to follow, you rather have to follow you.
• You may know where you are going however; it is very dangerous to assume that your members do. Treat everybody as an individual and help them to create their own plan to achieve the target. Establish what is in it for them personally if they do achieve and ask them how under achieving could effect their personal goals.
• Proper Planning Promotes Positive Performance




Sin 3
My team members would say I am a firm but fair manager. I feel that I do get the very best out of my people… when they get a big win they know I will congratulate them but equally they know I will encourage them to go out and get another big win. I am supportive to my team and they know that they can always come to me when they have a problem.

• If I asked your sales people, ‘Do you see your manager as a problem solver or an inspirational leader?’ which would you prefer it to be? Coach and inspire sales people to come with solutions to their problems rather than solve it for them.
• Do you remember the song ‘I get knocked down but I get up again’? That is what this belief will do to your team. When recognising performance, recognise everything that your team member did well and ask them ‘If you were to advise your other team members on how they could achieve a big win next time, what would advise them to do? This way you celebrate their success, you recognise everything they did well and you have confirmed that they know the steps they took to get the ‘big win’ which inadvertently teaches them what steps to take again to get another ‘big win’

Sin 4
My team are all experienced and they have a natural and structured sales process that they follow. They have had product training and sales training so they are equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to do a good job. I continuously develop my team members by listening in or going on customer visits so that I can show them how ‘it’s done’ and advise them on what they could do to improve.

• Knowledge and skills training are of course necessary however, there is a little thing that makes a big difference missing from the above statement and that is attitude. To create top performers you need to develop their skills to achieve however if you do not also develop their will to achieve, so their attitude to succeed you are wasting your time and your money.
• By going on visits with the belief that you need to ‘show them how it’s done’, effectively the message you are giving to your team members is that you are better than them and that they are doing things wrong. To gain more from your sales people coach them. When you go on visits, sit back and watch them, see them demonstrate the sales process, ask them what they feel they did well, what they feel they could have done better and coach tem to implement the changes in the next meting. Your team members will feel more confident, motivated to show you that they can improve in the next visit and supported by you.

Sin 5
I know my team well and have a very good relationship with them. I know who my top performers are from the sales figures members and I encourage my average and under performers to learn from them. I reward my top performers by providing them with cash incentives and the opportunity to gain management development training so that they can, one day further their career.

• Forget about sales figures for a moment and make a list the top 5 attributes of a top performer? Beside each of the attributes, list your team members that hold that attribute. Now look at your sales figures and compare the list. What steps could you take to develop all of your team members to have all of the attributes of a top performer, make a plan and take action to develop each individual; that is how to increase the number of top performers and your sales figures.
• Cash incentives do not motivate everyone and most sales people hate the top performer being ‘paraded’ in front of them so by doing this you could actually de-motivating some of your sales people so establish each individuals motivational drivers.
• Your top sales people may not necessarily be the best managers. Identify the skills they already have and develop the skills they do not have before talking about management development otherwise, you could be setting them up for a fall.

Sin 6
The current economic climate is certainly a big cause for a concern and it is challenging times for my team. Over the last year, I have over achieved my team targets and increased the team’s productivity however my team have let me down in the past few months and sales results have dropped as customers feel the pinch of the credit crunch.

• Have you ever heard they sating that there is no ‘I’ in team. Your team are a refection of you. If they fail, you fail, if they over achieve, you over achieve. Managers who claim the success and blame the under achievement of their team are limiting both their own and their teams performance. A team will only follow a leader that supports them so stand by your team.
• If you believe the recession is to blame for your sales results then you are giving your team the perfect excuse to blame their under performance on the recession and you could be giving your team a limiting belief. To get the very best out of your team, start talking about opportunities the recession could bring and brainstorm ideas on how you can use this approach with your clients to retain customer spend.

Sin 7
It is a competitive market place that I work in so my sales people need to be hungry to earn money, they need to be driven by targets, they need to be ambitious , be tenacious and they must be able to ‘talk the talk’.

• Sales people do need to be goal orientated and focused on achieving results however; a target is not a sales person’s goal. A target is a means for the sales person to achieve their goals. Therefore, to get the very best out of your team members establish what their real goals are.
• In today’s climate sales people who are more customer-focused than ‘hungry’ are the sales people who will continue to be successful so develop their relationship building skills to develop your pipeline.
• Ambitious to one sales person could mean something completely different another sales person in your team so check their understanding of what ambition means to them, and how they are planning to achieve it.


If you have got this far in the article and still want to learn more then you have taken the first step which is becoming aware of why you may need to adapt your style. Remember it is easier to tweak what you are currently doing than to learn a whole new skills set so decide on what actions you could take and go out there and take them.

‘The Seven Sins of Sales Management’ on 2nd and 3rd April in Berkshire.

Good Luck

Fiona Challis

Sales & Sensibility Ltd
Experts in creating a high performance sales culture
Tel: 01189 767658

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