The Sales Management Holy Grail: The ONE on ONE
Sales Managers today only conduct a One on One with their sales professionals 23% of the time. Unbelievable! This really means that sales managers are only meeting with their sales professionals once a month.
Can you meet with your sales rep only once a month and really understand what’s happening? Or even provide some coaching and developing?
“Wait a minute! I talk to my sales pro every day! We discuss what is happening today, how pipeline is looking and if his forecast has changed.” Says one Sales Manager I spoke with last week. When I asked him about the trends he sees in the team’s sales activities (i.e. Sales Calls per Deal closed), the validity of their forecasted accounts or how the sales rep spent their time managing the territory, I got the answer “Oh yea, I slip that in the conversation.” (By the way, this SM is missing quota).
The One on One meeting between the Sales Manager and the Sales Rep is the most important meeting both of you will have that week.
It is where the strategy of the organization and the Sales Manager meets the tactics needed to make the number. Without a FORMAL, ORGANIZED interaction, the coaching and developing toward world class performance fails. How do we know? The average tenure of a Sales Manager is 19 months. Where are you at in your tenure? Are you living on borrowed time?
World Class Sales Managers make their quota by doing several things correctly. The most critical is a scheduled, one hour One on One meeting every week with their sales professional. The impact for these Sales Managers is exceeding quota by 15%, decreasing turnover over 20% while decreasing the length of the sales cycle sometimes by 45%.
Ok, what do I do?
Three Main areas critical to conduct a One on One by Sales Management:
- Get into a cadence with your sales professionals. Every week, same time, same place for one hour is the ultimate rule. Unless there is a natural disaster or a much deserved vacation, this is meeting that does not get canceled. Most average sales managers do not schedule these meetings. Are you average?
- Establish an agenda. Would you attend a customer meeting without an agenda? Or an objective? Set this plan and review the same items every week. I have literally witnessed dozens of sales manager’s complete step 1 only to use the allotted time up discussing one account they will never sell anyway. Don’t waste time. Talk about stuff that’s productive and stick to the agenda.
- After every One on One there needs to be homework. Why? It reinforces the learning and takeaways. This is why your teachers gave you homework. This is why you hated doing it. But it reinforced the coaching and developing (and there are no dog eating homework excuses for not doing it when it comes to money).
You will get a lift in revenue and lower your turn by using the magical, anti-climactic tool called a One on One. If you blow this off, you are making your job harder than it needs to be. And you will fall into the category ‘average’. Do you want to be average?
Check out these World Class Sales Managers. People like Josh Bergere at Caliber Collisions, Darren Barnes at Aramark Uniform Services or Tony Valli at 3 Day Blinds. A true representation of World Class Sales Managers.
What do you think about One on Ones?
If you enjoyed this post, get free updates by subscribing by Email or RSS.
