When organizations need to improve sales results, they often focus on enhancing salesperson skills and competencies rather than sales manager enablement.
Traditional thinking tells us to focus on salesperson investments because they represent the larger population and are the front line of customer and prospect interactions.
However, modern sales enablement organizations are dramatically increasing their investment in sales manager enablement and prioritizing internal and external resources to support the effort.
Here’s why sales manager enablement should be the priority:
1. Sales managers and leaders are typically recruited from within.
If sales manager enablement is limited, new managers rely heavily on how their prior sales managers behaved. New, under-supported sales managers need help understanding and adopting effective motions and behaviors to thrive in the modern selling, managing, and leadership age.
2. Sales managers are stretched.
The span of control has increased beyond the point where most managers spend enough with their direct reports, much less keeping up with supporting large deals and attending to expectations from leadership, finance, and sales operations teams.
3. There’s a lack of support from centralized functions.
Better support from marketing, sales operations, sales enablement, and training teams would be beneficial. Typically, support staff need more relevant sales or sales management experience to understand and support managers’ needs to succeed.
4. Sales leaders set the pace in times of significant organizational change.
Change is constant for sales organizations, and sales managers are often the glue that keeps them functioning. During significant organizational change, sales managers need lots of help. They cannot do their jobs effectively in these situations without internal or external support.
5. Getting the right individuals into sales manager roles is challenging.
It’s unlikely for sales managers to achieve their potential and accelerate salesperson performance without the proper sales enablement support. Several studies have shown that more than half of sales managers receive limited or no sales enablement investment. How can they possibly succeed?
Sales manager enablement is the linchpin for establishing and cultivating the sales leadership competencies needed to build and maintain a high-performing sales organization.
If you need to improve your organization’s sales manager enablement, it might be tempting to start small. We strongly recommend bold action.