In Control

Here’s a new twist on sales management: the self-managed sales team. Yes, that’s right. From Seattle to Miami, and everywhere in between, experts and management consultants are recommending self-managed sales teams as a way to streamline corporate structures and simplify the sales process.

According to Jeff Blackman, a Glenview, Illinois-based sales trainer and author of Opportunity $elling (Successories, 2000), “Salespeople have to start self-managing. There’s no choice about it. The reason is simple: Nobody else will take responsibility for your success. If you are a salesperson today, you must take charge or your performance will falter.”

He’s not kidding. Buyers are more demanding than ever, profit margins are shrinking and waves of corporate consolidation and downsizing are eliminating multiple layers of management. Sales that used to be relatively easy are now more complicated. The upshot? This is a time when self-responsibility is the only path. “The old ways – the tools that let you succeed so far – don’t work any more,” says Ron D’Andrea, executive vice-president at BayGroup International in Darien, CT. “To keep succeeding you need new tools, new ways of thinking.”

Some of these new ways of thinking include having a self-managed sales force. But it hasn’t happened yet. “About 20 percent of today’s salespeople are genuinely self-managed,” estimates Jim Pancero, a sales trainer based in Milford, OH. “The top one-fifth of many sales forces already are practicing self-management. But the other four-fifths aren’t and, in most cases, they aren’t even close to doing it.”

Why? For one thing, self-management isn’t easy. “Self-management requires relearning how you think about yourself and your place in your company, and even in the world,” says Newcastle, Washington-based sales trainer George Walther. “We can learn tools and attitudes that enhance our self-management,” he points out. “However, we have to be prepared to accept change on many fronts.”

Changes from the Top Down

Sales consultants agree that the first big area of change requires reorienting the thinking of sales managers, many of whom quite strenuously oppose sales force self-management. While they may not publicly acknowledge this opposition, they nonetheless often systematically undercut it.

“Sales managers need to learn to let go,” says William Skip Miller, a Los Gatos, California-based sales consultant and author of Proactive Sales Management (AMACOM, 2001). “Too many sales managers manage in ways that create dependence on the part of their salespeople,” he explains. “Too often, their days are spent saying, ‘No, no.’ They need to rethink their jobs.”

That’s food for thought. It’s easy to castigate salespeople for their dependence, but is their corporate culture reinforcing it? In most businesses, the sales force is behaving exactly the way the organization is directing them. If they are dependent, that’s probably because the company is pushing them in that direction. “A lot of sales managers are still acting like police,” admits Austin McGonigle, an Atlanta sales trainer.

“I tell clients, ‘Fire all your sales managers,’” says Blackman. “That’s a first, essential step in building a more effective sales force. You don’t need managers – you need leaders. And there is an important place for sales managers who transform themselves into leaders.”

Do that and you are a large step closer to sales force self-management. However, you still have to take another prerequisite step. “Eliminate the ‘administrivia,’” urges Curt Tueffert, national sales manager for Digital Consulting & Software Services, a technology consulting firm in Sugar Land, TX. Many salespeople are drowning in “administrivia” – what Tueffert calls the avalanche of paperwork that piles up on salespeople’s desks. By his reckoning, this paperwork eats up as much as two-thirds of a salesperson’s time. Furthermore, most of it “is unimportant, and filling it out distracts from the person’s job – which is selling, not filling out papers,” he says. “Management needs to eliminate all paperwork that does not have a clear purpose.”

That’s not news. However, what is important is that until the paperwork is pared down to the essentials, few salespeople will welcome further imposition from on high of yet another edict. In fact, many salespeople will see a command to self-manage as just one more burden piled on by out-of-touch management. In short, they will give it little or no attention.

Sell the Benefits

Curbing the paper flow is just the first step, however. Go through the stacks and eliminate anything that’s unnecessary. Tell salespeople exactly how this has lessened their burden. Then move in with the real pitch. “Sell them on the benefits of self-management,” advises McGonigle, who puts real emphasis on sell. “So many companies ignore this and then they wonder why their self-management initiative is faltering. Before salespeople will energetically embrace self-management they have to understand the benefits – what’s in it for them.”

In other words, to get a sales force self-managing, it needs to be persuasively sold on the idea. What is in it for your salespeople? “When they are self-managed, they will make more money,” McGonigle points out. Why? Because they will be free to prioritize their own leads and, over all, they will be able to make more and bigger sales, faster. “There are many benefits for salespeople in self-management, but you have to spell them out. That’s how to get them behind the program,” he says.

If salespeople still are not convinced to join the program, simply spell out what will happen if they don’t. It’s not a pretty picture. “Salespeople who aren’t self-managed are scavengers, not hunters,” says Pancero. “A hunter has a plan, a strategy. A scavenger doesn’t, and most salespeople scavenge because they aren’t operating with a plan. They aren’t proactive. When they become self-managed, they are much more in control.”

“Self-managed salespeople are more confident, more enthusiastic, more professional and more successful. They operate at maximum efficiency because they know how and where to focus their energy,” says Tueffert. “There are many pluses.”

Itemize these benefits, in considerable detail, to persuade the sales force to make the changes that need to be made. Sell salespeople on self-management and, right there, much of the battle is won. Then follow up with teaching skills, most of which are simple – at least simple to understand. Many require willpower and persistence to implement, but with the benefits firmly in mind, salespeople will have the motivation to carry through.

Easy Steps to Self-Management

Exactly what do salespeople have to do to be self-managed?

Step one:

“Focus on what you can do, not what you cannot do,” warns Walther. This is probably the single most critical step, and for many it’s a momentous shift. Salespeople have spent years griping about factors out of their control, from bad weather to cutthroat competitors to unresponsive management. All of these negatives may well be true, but that doesn’t matter, Walther stresses. “A first step is to begin to put energy only into areas where we can create change.”

“Practice self-responsibility,” adds Walther. “Take responsibility for those areas that you can control and do all you can to create the results you want.” Nobody can force a customer to return a call, but self-managed salespeople know they can write down the prospecting calls they intend to make that day – and then actually make them.

Step two:

Set goals and make plans. “Self-managed salespeople have a focus and a vision, and they know where they are going,” says Pancero. “They have a mental road map that will get them where they want to go.” For many salespeople, this represents a massive shift. They are reactive, says Pancero, and self-management requires “a reorganization of the job. You no longer can be reactive. You need to think strategically about goals and how to accomplish them.”

“When you are self-managed, you have measurable goals that have been mutually agreed upon with management,” adds Miller. “The goals help you manage your focus and your time.” Both parts of this are key: the goals need to be not only quantifiable but also a product of discussions with management. Goals then become a kind of compass that allows for effective self-management.

“Management,” Walther says, “needs to help salespeople set goals. Then it should get out of the way and let them go after their goals. That’s the kind of management we need today.”

Step three:

“Use the technology. It’s inexcusable not to put technology to work on your behalf,” urges Blackman. From cell phones to contact managers, technology exists to keep salespeople better focused, more productive and more accessible. “It amazes me, but I am still meeting salespeople who aren’t using the tools for better self-management,” he says.

Just using a contact manager – Act!, GoldMine or any of the competitive applications – is a sizable step towards self-management, Blackman explains. When to-dos are spelled out on a computer screen, the program becomes a powerful management tool. Who needs to be nagged by a sales manager when software is doing the job more thoroughly?

Step four:

Keep your commitments, Walther advises. Often, in the rush to close business, promises are made to customers that can never be kept. However, self-managed salespeople do not do that. They practice the philosophy that when they make commitments, they keep them. That builds customer trust – and just may result in more sales over the long term.

“Stop using words like ‘try,’” says Walther. It’s easy to tell a customer, “We’ll try to make that shipping date,” even when it is obvious that the shipping date will never be met. Never do that, Walther warns. It chips away at a customer’s confidence in the salesperson and may even erode the salesperson’s self-confidence. “Speak plainly, directly,” he urges. That’s critical in self-management because when communication is direct it establishes clear-cut objectives.

Add up the steps:

“To become self-managed, salespeople need to reorient their thinking and ‘Inc.’ themselves,” Tueffert explains. “When they begin to see themselves as their own business, they also begin to readily take the steps they need to succeed.”

“The best salespeople know to look at themselves as though they were a company,” adds Blackman. Just as a company’s reality is revealed by its annual report, a salesperson’s reality is revealed by a close look at plans, goals and activities. “Do this regularly. It’s a real key to effective self-management,” he notes.

“When you see yourself as your own company, you also find it gets easy to see the areas where you can improve,” says McGonigle.

“Learn to be your own manager,” says Blackman. “Look at yourself the way your ideal manager would – and critique accordingly.” That’s not easy. It may even be painful to take a long, candid look in the mirror and then come up with corrective steps. “Most salespeople are so busy trying to make money that they never make any,” he adds. “Start self-managing, however, and suddenly you’ll find yourself really making money. That’s why this is the only strategy for 2001.”