Who is watching the Sales Managers??

I see a number of companies expecting FLMs to know what is expected of them in their role as a Sales Manager. This becomes especially apparent with newly appointed Sales Managers.

The single most frequent issue I see is a lack of appropriate performance management tools/ performance metrics being provided to the Sales Managers to help them take on the challenges of managing a sales team.

Too often we see complex metrics implemented and incentivised for the Sales Team without the same thought being put in place to measure the FLM’s Performance.

I would strongly advocate that the senior management team of every organisation needs to prioritise and formalise the Key Performance Drivers that a Sales Manager will be measured on and then ensure these are highly visible and understood by each Sales Manager and the Senior Management Team. These Metrics must also be intrinsically linked to the Sales Managers Performance review and incentive payment as well becoming a priority for Senior Management review on an on-going basis.

We have seen that the delivery of highly visual performance metrics by way of Dashboards and Reports that help the Sales Manager (and the Rep!) easily identify performance gaps and that also provide a vehicle for easy dialogue and actionable follow-up between the Sales Manager and the Sales Team have massively aided in the improvement of the overall effectiveness of the Sales Force.

So perhaps the key question to ask is, “What are the metrics that Sales Managers’ performance should be being measured against??”