Leadership for the sales team is one of the most critical elements of making a rep firm more profitable and more secure with the principals the rep firm represents.

Evaluating the Salespeople

This approach assumes that there is a sales leader. The rep firm has a person who steps up to the challenge of managing the sales personnel.

Who is this person? Generally, the sales manager will be one of the owners of the rep firm. It is mostly not possible for a rep firm to afford to hire an individual to be a sales manager. As a result, someone from “inside” needs to take on the job. The sales manager must have a clear understanding of their approach to managing the sales team.

Preparation for the Sales Manager

When the sales manager recognizes that they are taking on the job, they must figure out what their style of management will be. What are the most significant measures of salesperson performance that will guide the sales manager?

Where can a sales manager get the training that he/she needs to put him/her in a position to succeed as a sales manager?

Books are a great starting point. By reading about sales force management the sales manager can broaden their outlook. The sales manager needs to become a “student of sales management.” In addition, books on leadership are a good addition to the sales manager’s background.

Zeroing in on the Salespeople

After the sales manager defines their approach to working with the sales personnel it is time to evaluate the individual salespeople. Developing a list of key questions about the salespeople is a good starting point.

Equal Treatment Vital

The sales manager should avoid personal bias when evaluating the individual salespeople. Liking or disliking the salesperson is not relevant. Emphasis should be on performance.

Some of the questions and considerations are:

• How is the salesperson’s actual sales performance for the top five lines represented by the company? What is the trend of the salesperson’s performance over a three- to five-year period?

Judging the salesperson by their performance on a line-by-line basis is very important. A salesperson can be successful with one or two lines while not performing across the board for all of the key lines the company represents. This is a trap that the sales manager has to avoid. Just because a salesperson generates good commissions in total is not enough.

The rep firm is in the business of multiple-line selling. Therefore, the ability to represent and succeed with many lines is key. The rep firm is dependent on its salespeople to ensure that each of the lines is happy with the firm overall.

• What are the individual salesperson’s relationships with the key customers that they sell to for the rep firm? Examining these relationships is a critical part of the sales manager’s duties.

Ideally, the sales manager will have the time and determination to interview each of the salesperson’s key customers.

This is probably not possible, so a written questionnaire is the next best approach.

Asking the customers about the salesperson’s work with them is critical to positioning the sales manager to work with the salesperson to improve their performance. Some of the responses will demand a phone or in-person follow-up. The sales manager needs to know, not guess.

• What is the quality of the salesperson’s planning for their territory/account list? Do they have a plan for each key customer and each line that they sell to that customer? How in-depth is the salesperson’s knowledge of the account? Does the salesperson have a very good working relationship with all of the key people within a customer?

Interviewing the Salespeople

The best way for the sales manager to understand the depth of the salesperson’s knowledge and the substance of their planning for the individual customers is by sitting down with the salesperson and talking through every key customer and each line’s results with that account. This seems like a very tedious exercise, but I don’t see any alternative to this type of in-depth analysis.

Summary

First, there has to be a sales manager. Next, the sales manager has to develop their leadership approach. Then the sales manager can turn to the evaluation of the individual salespeople.

By working with the salespeople individually and in-depth the sales manager pushes the salespeople to do a more complete, more professional job building on a line-by-line basis with their significant customers.

The process pays off with more successful selling by each of the salespeople. The dividends can be huge. Everything is dependent on the sales manager’s commitment to the task.

These few thoughts on sales force management are a good starting point for the sales manager to develop the sales force over time.

Good luck and good selling.

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