Took a while yesterday to speak, by phone, to an old friend/client, whom I hadn't spoken with for a long time. A successful business owner, she'd fallen back into a habit, I thought she'd broken. (Guess she'd gotten too far away from this support group.)
To make a long story, short, if I can, about 2 years ago we'd put a sales manager in place in her company, to manager her 8 sales people (the outside number for 1 full-time sales manager!) He'd done very well, subscribed to the methodologies we'd put in place, righted the team with a couple of good hires and used the systems and processes we put in place, with the Sales Force Toolbox, to help him! As they should have, numbers went up!
Six months ago, out of the blue, he left for greener pastures and my client, much to my dismay (she was too busy!) left the position unfilled and, once again, took on the role of sales manager! Too busy to hire; not too busy to take on the full-time job of managing 8 sales people!
Ever find yourself in this position? Sales Manager by Default! Default is a common word in the computer world…it's where you go when what you're attempting to do isn't going as you'd like it to go, and out of desperation you go back to the original settings.
If you're there right now…bumping-up against the choice:
- I'm the president/owner and chief bottle washer…what do I know about hiring some expensive person to manage these sales people…so I'll just do it myself!
- I'll just take one of my sales people…Joe's the most successful; he can bring the others along!
STOP! You're about to make a terrible mistake! Allocate time, find some outside help if you need to, and hire a real sales manager!
Sometimes ego gets in the way. We think that we're smarter than we are or more capable than we are and we think that we should be able to do something. After all, we're the boss! It's kind of like me thinking, "I've got two legs just like an olympic athlete. I should be able to run a 4 minute mile." Maybe I should and I could try, but I'll fail miserably.
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