Business Management Structure

I think it's worthwhile to start this blog off with with a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately, and which is deeply important to me.  It starts with a question: "Have you ever had a manager/boss you liked?".  Or perhaps, better worded, "Have you ever had a manager/boss who was motivating and enabled you to use your best talents and abilities to maximize your potential at your job?". 

For majority of the people I've talked to in my life, the answer is either flatout "no", or "I had one good boss..." or "Well, there were some things I liked about some more than others...".  I think I have met one, maybe two people in my entire life that have actually stated that all their bosses have been great.  Now, we can go around in circles about whether or not the boss or the attitude of the employee has more effect, blah, blah, blah... (yeah, that's right, I said it).  But from the perspective of a business owner, the goal is to improve and control what you can, and looking at your own structure rather than blaming an employee is far more productive.

So I guess I'm taking this from the perspective of the business owner.  In my (unresearched) opinion, there are very few "good" managers out there.  Good being defined as one who does what I suggested above:

"Is motivating and enables employees to use their best talents and abilities to maximize their potential at their job." 

I think I've been pretty lucky at my current position in this arena.  These problems seem to be minimized more than they have been elsewhere in my career.  But I think this problem is especially prevalant in the sales industry.  I have long wondered why Sales Managers are so horrible at their job??  In my experience, they tend to exhibit the following qualities:

Control Freaks
Micro-managers
Egos - always thinking they can do a better job than their subordinates, even when they've never been in the field
Use stressful tactics to motivate - pushing, threatening, making employees feel insecure
Believe that if employees simply put in more time and more effort, they will reach goals (no matter how unrealistic)
Disrespect for a good work/life balance

The funny thing about this is that sales is already one of the most stressful jobs in our country; and they think that adding stress and pressure is going to get more productivity out of their workers?  Now, granted, not all employees and certainly not all Sales Reps are as sensitive as I am.  I think I naturally take things harder than others.  But I've discovered that people also tend to levitate towards me when they feel uncomfortable, insecure, or just need someone to vent to.  Thus, I have had a LOT of conversations with colleagues about the demotivating tactics of our managers listed above.

Here's the interesting piece of this analysis: these are the qualities I've observed in successful Sales Reps:

Control Freaks
Micro-manage themselves
Tend to put a lot of pressure on themselves
Believe their bosses are right, and that if they just work harder and longer, they will achieve their objectives
Have an extremely difficult time maintaining a positive work/life balance

Hmmmmmmmmmmm… very interesting.  This tells me something that explains why the tactics of the managers don’t work so well.  The Sales Reps are already putting high pressure and stress on themselves; if they weren’t pro-active self-motivators, they wouldn’t have been hired in the first place.  Therefore, the additional pressure and stress added by management puts them in overdrive and leads to less effective work at best, and burnout at worst.

This also tells me something about the structure of Sales organizations, and solidifies a thesis I came up with recently.  This is generally how the hiring and promoting happens within a sales organization:

Impressive candidate is hired as a Sales Rep

Sales Rep delivers outstanding results and impresses upper management

Sales Rep is promoted to Management position to reward them for good work

Sales Rep may continue working up the ranks

Now, in my humble (and again, unresearched) opinion, based solely on experience, I think a Sales Rep and a Sales Manager have two distinct purposes. 

Sales Rep:  Build business, hit monthly numbers

Sales Manager: See larger opportunities amongst closed deals, build big deals and relationships that will pay off in the long run

Unfortunately, I think most sales organizations see the Sales Manager as the person who is supposed to keep tabs on the Sales Rep and basically be their “parent”.  BUT if they are hiring the right people as Reps, they are already managing themselves and do not need a “parent” to keep them in line, rather they need a “big picture” person to tie together potential opportunities they don’t have the time to look at or pursue.  That’s my justification for the above defined purposes of Sales Rep and Sales Manager.

What I’ve seen happen over and over, is a situation where a top-producer gets promoted to management, viewing this as an opportunity to manage his “less-productive” counterparts the way he manages himself.  This results in micro-managing and intense pressure on the sales team, and in the meantime the “big picture” high-level client development falls to the wayside because the Sales Manager is more concerned with monthly quotas.

My next blog post will go into detail about the solution to this issue because, quite frankly, this post is already REALLY long!!!