CEO Spotlight: Stepping Up to Sales Management

Bill McDermott is CEO of SAP. In this monthly Selling Power magazine column, he shares vital lessons about selling, success, and winning. Each column includes a short video featuring McDermott, so you learn from a role model whose clarity of thought and passion for winning generated extraordinary results. Check out Bill McDermott’s new book, Winners Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office.

Early in my career at Xerox, I was so hungry to manage my own sales team that I lobbied for a chance just to interview for a position that opened up. The job required overseeing 16 marketing reps cold calling small and midsize businesses in a vast territory that stretched from Manhattan’s Upper East Side into the Bronx and Harlem. By the company’s standards, I was too inexperienced to transition from a salesperson to a sales manager, but I interviewed my heart out, going so far as to promise my potential boss that, if she gave me the job, I would lead my team to become the company’s number one new-business sales team in the country.

Maybe it was my brazen confidence that convinced her, or maybe it was the detailed sales plan I prepared before my interview. Whatever the reason, I got the gig and became the youngest sales manager in my company’s history. I stepped into my first management role with a big promise to keep – taking my team to number one – and quite a few challenges.

I’d never managed people, aside from helping my father coach youth basketball and overseeing friends who worked at the deli I operated during high school. The management-prep classes I’d taken taught me some basic procedures, such as how to track people’s progress and review their performance, but procedures aren’t leadership. Still, I jumped into the job with optimism and began to employ a combination of tactics that eased my transition.

First, I appointed four “mini-team” leaders and had the other salespeople report to them. These four people were stronger than the others, and by distributing power I was able to develop a culture of creative collaboration, as well as one of accountability and responsibility.

To set an inspiring tone and convey my high expectations, I immediately told the team about our audacious goal: we would be the company’s number one new-business sales team in the United States by year’s end. The declaration shocked some, but then something happened. People’s eyes widened and chins lifted. They were intrigued. Striving to be the best was a motivating goal in itself. Such a high aspiration excited people. It gave them a higher purpose, a meaningful cause – a reason to push themselves more.

Inspiration, however, would not be enough. To catapult my team to the top, each person had to reach his or her full potential. Raising everyone’s level of performance was my responsibility.

So I embraced the role of coach. Even before landing the management position, I’d always gotten tremendous pleasure helping my peers succeed. If a co-worker needed to be reenergized, I invited that person to join me on a sales call. When I overheard a customer giving a colleague a tough time, I suggested ways to win the client over. Because I had a habit of sharing everything I knew with everyone I knew, I seemed to attract followers before they were assigned to me. As a manager, I continued to teach people how to sell well.

Just because I was a coach, however, did not mean I stopped being a player. I never barked instructions from behind a desk. Instead, I went into the field with my reps daily, dispensing advice as we walked the streets and knocked on doors. Once inside, I role modeled how to ignite conversations, problem solve, and seal a deal. As a player-coach, I sweated alongside my teammates, earning their respect while improving their game.

I also made it a point to learn every sales rep’s particular talents. No one excels at everything. Some are rock-star closers while others write killer proposals. We each soar in areas others do not. After I identified each rep’s unique strength, what I called “inner magic,” I insisted that they all “pollinate” the team with their talent so everyone improves. As a result, we all became stronger.

I also cared about what mattered to people beyond their professional aspirations. What were their dreams? One person hoped to travel to Europe. Another wanted to buy a house. Everyone’s personal goal was posted on a wall for the entire team to see, share, and work toward. That’s how our quest to win became personal.

If at any time people performed below their potential, I didn’t scold. Rather, I asked what they needed from me to succeed, and together we created a plan of action, to which I held them accountable. I truly believed that fear or intimidation wouldn’t yield long-term success, so I exercised kindness and optimism. As we collaborated, we also became friends.

As we charged toward our goal, we incorporated lucrative pricing and packaging strategies into our pitch, but by far the most important idea that I drilled into my team was this: the customers’ needs always overshadow our own. Only if we met and exceeded our customers’ expectations – presenting and then delivering solutions undeniably valuable to their business and different from our competitors’ offerings– would we, as a team and as individuals, win.

And we did. We won! By the end of my first year as a manager, we were the company’s number one new-businesssales team in the country.

Looking back on that amazing year, I realized that a few takeaways became part of my permanent managerial mind-set:

1. Don’t let anything or anyone limit your dreams. Ask yourself, “Am I using my lack of management experience as an excuse to lower my team’s standards? Am I waiting to set audacious goals until I feel more confident or get someone else’s approval?”

2. Strive to inspire, not just to manage. Ask yourself, “Am I giving my team a meaningful reason to achieve – a cause – that goes beyond a numeric goal? Am I telling people what to do, or am I inspiring them to do great things?”

3. Be a player-coach. Ask yourself, “How often does my team role-play scenarios and share best practices? When was the last time I joined each of my sales reps in the field?”

Here are a few questions for sales managers to consider:

Have you set a bold and audacious goal for your sales team? If you don’t, you are sending a message that you don’t expect your team to win big.

Do you know the personal interests of the salespeople on your team? If you don’t, you won’t be able to align their personal goals with your team goals.

Are you hiring people who are better than you? If you aren’t, you’ll create a ceiling for achievement that will sabotage your company’s market potential.