Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

What makes a great Inside Sales Manager? Ask Pete Tarbox!

This week, I've had a significant amount of commentary on a number of posts I've written on what makes a superior sales manager. There's been a bunch of traffic on my posts entitled 5 Great Sales Demotivators: Decrease sales by following these practices, and Increase sales by conducting an effective Telesales Employee Performance Appraisal, among others. Earlier this week, Pete Tarbox weighed in on what he feels are traits that are critical in being a successful inside sales manager. Pete's been around long enough to have seen a lot, and I profiled his techniques for selling to the Defense Department in my 5 Critical Tactics when Selling to the Defense Department post.

I like Pete's approach to management excellence so much that I'm producing it verbatim here. What do you think?

Traits of an excellent sales manager:

1. Like a great rep, a great manager listens and asks probing questions before taking action. This is crucial when diagnosing a sales situation.
2. Comes across as truly wanting to help their reps (instead of beat them up). I've encountered a number of VP's who will react in a negative, emotional way before (or without) making sure that they really understand what's going on.
3. Helps their people to build skills by teaching in detail (or getting someone who can, like you) what needs to be done, as opposed to only saying what needs to be done (such as "you need to talk to executives").
4.  In my experience, people who have actually done the job at their company - or are willing to learn in detail what it really takes -  make the best sales managers. I once had a new VP come in and learn NOTHING about our product or market. He thought that he could increase sales by teaching new sales techniques (he never learned what the real problem was, nor did he understand our market). That's an extreme case, but I frequently see VPs hired that come from other markets - and then come in and show a lot of aggression to their sales force. People who are promoted from within are able to better empathize with their reps and translate winning skills.
5.  Do not overload their reps with non-value-add tasks. Forecasting, reporting, tracking all serve a purpose and must be done - but that needs to be balanced with actual selling.
6.  The best also understand how to carve up territories in ways that make sense for their people (provide enough opportunity without providing too much busy work), i.e. when you have 12 multi-divisional accounts and are asked to generate a "quick" overview for a meeting tomorrow... or all of a sudden find yourself in the middle of 5 enterprise upgrades (which may not represent current revenue opportunity but must be successful in order to keep your customers and have future opportunity).
7. Helps to insulate their people from constant change (this is a tough one because things are constantly changing, but it's demotivating to work a bunch of accounts that then get handed out to other people, or to start and stop on an account, and so on).
8. And like all managers - makes it fun to work for them, communicates to their workers the linkage between their activities and the big picture, communicates corporate objectives.

(Geoff here again) Thanks for your perspective, Pete. Managing is never easy, especially when times are tough. In my experience, managers never get enough time sharing best management practices and discussing areas of challenge with one another. But a number of inside sales managers read this blog, and we have some very good posts that managers can read by clicking on the Management Techniques link on the left side of this page. Our telesales management classes are always popular, too.

Pete's thoughts provide some great food for thought, and represent timely discussion points for sales reps and managers alike. Why not add them to your Best Practices Playbook?