The Management Curve

The Management Curve is a blog by Paul McCord about technology and the change it is currently and will continue to bring about in how salespeople and the sales function are managed.

Sales management has changed little over the millennia. Sales managers on all levels have focused on one thing–the bottom line. Were the sales made or not. The other aspects of management–developing the human assets of the department, market analysis, non-human asset management, and the other traditional areas sales management has been charged with have come in a distant second–if at all–to that one big picture item, the final sales results.

Much of ’sales management’ has been nothing but driving the herd. Few managers have had the skill–and equally, the information required to really manage.

Most managers have not been trained to be effective coaches and mentors to their team members; few have been trained on how to manage the assets under their control; and most have never been trained on how to analyze their market or their competitors. In fact, many, if not most, have been promoted to their positions not because of their management potential but as a reward for superior sales.

Their management style has been to manage through the herd mentality: everyone takes this training; everyone read this book; everyone use this prospecting method. Rather than managing and coaching, sales management to a large degree has been simply trying to move the herd to an acceptable or better end result.

The herd mentality of sales management is coming to an end. Technology is providing sales managers with more and more real data on their individual salespeople, their markets, their customers, their competitors, and their products and services. The days of little accountability for anything other than the bottom-line are about over.

This change is currently coming slowly but the tsunami is coming. Sales managers at all levels will become more accountable than they can imagine at this moment.

The purpose of The Management Curve is to discuss this change–or, depending upon the guest author, dispute that such a change is coming.

• We’ll discuss what’s happening and what is around the curve.
• We’ll look at specific CRM, SPM and SFA programs and discuss their pros and cons.
• We’ll have guest sales trainers and consultants discuss what they see happening in this area.
• We’ll have technology developers discuss where they see the technology going and how they see it being used–and how it will change management
• We’ll have managers and salespeople discuss how the technology is affecting them, as well as what they would like to see in the future.
• And we’ll have corporate executives discuss what they hope the technology will accomplish for their organizations.

Our discussion will be focused on technology and sales management. Consequently, this will not be a general sales management discussion or how various other technologies are being used by salespeople and managers. If you would like a more general discussion of the various technology being used in sales, I’d recommend Sales Team Tools as a great source.

We’re always looking for input. I encourage you to participate. Feel free to post pertinent comments–and disagreement is welcome.

By all means, let me know your thoughts–good or bad–about the blog, the content, and the articles posted. Just shoot me an email to pmccord@mccordandassociates.com.