Warning – the below post includes no pics of hot college cheerleaders, nor does it include any hot pics of men in cheerleader skirts.
Full Disclosure – the above sentence is purely for the SEO spiders in a shameless attempt to increase webcrawler traffic.
But I’m really not going to wear a cheerleader skirt. Even though that seems to be most of my job. I’m a sales manager, which can mean many things to many things. And sometimes different things on different days to the same people. Most of the time, I concentrate on the sales part of the title, as I’m one of the leading sales people in my office. That’s actually the easy part. After 14 years in the same industry, with the same company, in the same location, I know my market. I understand who the players are and how order go to market. I understand what projects to go after and which ones to take a pass on. And I win more than I lose, which at the end of the day is a pretty good marker for success.
The manager part is way harder. Like many industries, ours does not hire managers, we promote them from within. Just like principals that are promoted out of the classroom, this can be a hit or miss proposition. Many great sales people can’t manage worth a damn, and for the first few years I was in this position, I was one of them. On the upside, I was only managing two people besides myself, so my ineptitude was pretty harmless. Fortunately for me, as our group expanded to where I was managing more people, my company realized that we probably needed some training. I balked at some of the training, but what it did teach me was that I needed to learn how to do this thing. So I read some books, and I read some blogs, and I started to work at it.
And what I’ve come to realize is that there are bunches of different types of managers. There’s the minutiae manager, who never misses a meeting or a follow-up call, who has all their reports in on time and doesn’t have any trouble with paperwork. It may come as some surprise, but that ain’t me. There’s the rah-rah manager, who inspires their people to ever greater heights by their boundless enthusiasm and love for the job. That’s not really me, either. I try to be more of the analytical and fun manager, but I end up more the grumpy cheerleader.
I’m snarky by nature, but I have an ability to see complex things in fairly simple terms. This allows me to slice through a lot of BS and tell people what’s really going on. I have to fight my natural bitchiness to keep the message positive, but I am at least able to boil things down into one or two sentences that are easily understood by everyone. This talent for synthesis is something one rep of mine remarks on frequently, and I tend to use it a lot when I’m trying to inspire my folks. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Some folks just aren’t ever going to get it, no matter what, and eventually with them you’re going to cut bait. But most folks just need to understand the process (or maybe have the process tweaked for their talents) in order for them to succeed. So I spend a lot of time being the grumpy cheerleader. How do you manage people?
Personally, I rule with an iron fist. And my reports will be on time, because I assigned others to do them.
Well… it is extremely difficult at times. One of my personal failings as a manager is that I “like to be liked” way too much. Being respected is key, being liked is not necessary. Group managing is not that hard. Managing each individual takes more talent and training. That is what’s important. Your people are individuals and are to be treated as such.
Promoting from within, although sounding fantastic, is “usually” not a good idea. As you noted, the best sales person MAY not be the best manager. Plus, the remaining members of the group will generally be unhappy that they weren’t chosen. Have a nice afternoon.
thankfully, i haven’t really had to do much in the way of management in quite some time. i tend to shape how i manage by the people i am working with but i lean towards being fair fun but anal 🙂