Your role as a sales manager puts you smack in the middle
between the company and the salesperson. At times, even the best
companies make decisions or take actions that are difficult to
understand. You might find yourself disagreeing with a given
strategy or decision, yet it is your role to support and sell the
company’s position as best you can.
Poor managers tend to fault the company rather than support a
decision that makes them uncomfortable. It is often easier to blame
the home office and join in the chorus of naysayers than to take on
some of the ownership for an unpopular decision. Yet when you play
the “blame game,” you might actually be increasing the
odds that one or more of your sales representatives will leave the
company. The way managers accept and help their employees manage
through change can help to increase loyalty to the organization.
When times get tough, poor managers seem to experience an erosion
of employee loyalty and engagement, while the very best managers
actually enhance it.
In the same vein, you must distill all the comments you get from
your salespeople and represent their concerns back to the home
office. Will changing the products really help them sell more? Is
the territory really getting weaker? You must filter out legitimate
reasons from all-too-common excuses and then, as diplomatically as
you can, fight for the issues that are important to your team
members.
Serving as a buffer is especially important for your star
performers. Simply because they are selling many times more than
others are, they might need that much more support. Internal people
might resent how often they call them for favors, not realizing
just how much more they are selling. Sometimes stars can leave more
than a few corpses in their wake after visits or calls to the home
office. You might need to follow up to repair the damage.
You are the glue that will bind a good performer to the company.
In many instances, you will also need to be a shock absorber.