How to become a “roving sales leader”
March 18th, 2009
Management By Walking Around (MBWA) took the management world by storm in the 80’s.
The author of this ground-breaking management theory was Tom Peters.
He was immediately hailed as a “leadership genius” and touted as “one of the top management gurus to come along in over a century”.
It really wasn’t that big of a deal.
MBWA is really just common sense…
As a sales manager, you can become a management genius too by simply providing your salespeople with “roving sales leadership”…just like ol’ Tom advocated over thirty years ago.
The first and most important things you need to do as a top performing sales manager is first establish trust with your sales reps. One of the ways you can do this is by understanding first hand the challenges and triumphs they are experiencing in the field first hand.
To learn even more about consistently putting deposits in “The Trust Account”, order the Top 15 Sales Management Tips from the form on the right side of this blog. Better yet, they’re free.
By entering into your sales rep’s universe and staying there completely uninterrupted, you get to know what’s really going on. Your salespeople are your major source of information, so to be a great sales leader you need to stay close with both your salespeople and with the issues that they face.
If you have been spending a lot of time in the office lately, set up a daily auto-responder in Outlook that says that you’re unavailable from 9 AM to 5 PM every work day. Better yet, block out 9 Am to 5 PM in Outlook as “busy”.
Then get out there.
Get to know their customers and their market firsthand; it’s the only way for you to learn how they really do their jobs. And do it without interruptions.
Go to your salespeople – enter into their environment; you create a sense of collaboration and commitment to the cause in doing so…and make a ton of deposits in “The Trust Account” in the process.
Post a response to this post and tell me how you have been successful in setting the bureaucratic distractions aside and getting out in the field with your salespeople?
Tell me what you think on how you get out with your salespeople by posting a response to this post.
To learn even more about sales management training, get our free ebook.
