It's a simple fact of business: Without sales, no one else downstream can do their jobs. Because of how vital sales are to a company, CEOs frequently tend to misuse their best people. When they misallocate key players, their small to medium-sized businesses tend to go in one of two directions. They either stay small to medium, or they go out of business. When you ask why, it most often comes down to a violation of one or more of the three sins of sales management. Having the right people in important spots is absolutely the secret to success.
In business, there's little to no forgiveness for these sins:
- Sin No. 1 … is committed when the CEO or owner wears the hat of the sales manager. If you are doing that, you're essentially relegating both the CEO job and the sales manager job to part-time status. In effect, you're saying, "I'm going to grow my business part time." If you want your business to grow, you must grow your sales force, and you need someone doing that full time.
- Sin No. 2 … is to make the best salesperson the sales manager. It can work, but seldom does. The usual scenario, however, is you lose your best salesperson and get a mediocre sales manager. The role and the responsibilities are entirely different. A salesperson's role is to win new customers and nurture the ones you have, thereby differentiating you from your competitors. The sales manager's job involves recruiting, training, coaching, building and developing.