Managing 'Top Dog'-Back Off or Bite Back!

Successful sales management requires the manager to promote commitment as an intrinsic element of sales team membership. Having 'committed' people is a real bonus, but it does not happen by chance, because commitment is sought, nurtured and developed in the same way as other performance indicators are, like 'closing sales' for example.

In a world where 'greed' is frequently viewed as an acceptable trait and 'high ego' a characteristic tolerated without comment, obtaining commitment from salespeople, maybe viewed as outside the boundary for many aspiring sales managers. However it is an important requirement in the formation of a cohesive and properly functioning team.

In my first post 'How Well Do You Know Your Salespeople' I described 'Top Dog' as a high performer and questioned the judgement of defining 'high performance' in terms of sales quotas. 'Top Dog' maybe exceeding their sales targets but they maybe doing so at a high cost to the organisation. What do I mean by this? Well, my research has revealed that 'Top Dog' is not that easy to manage. How many sales managers will admit to constantly running after 'Top Dog', trying to get them to comply with the rules: reports are frequently late, you can't get them to go on training courses, expenses go unchecked, they are unwilling to help others out, because they complain they are too busy, and seem committed to nothing or nobody but themselves. They are left alone for fear as to how they might react and use their results as a weapon to beat the sales manager with. In other words the sales manager begins to retreat and tolerates this situation and in doing so, by implication is condoning 'Top Dog's' behaviour as a model for other to follow. 'Top dogs' standards now become embedded within the team, they call the shots, they rule the sales roost, and consolidate their position over time, to the extent where the dynamics of the team never have a chance to surface.

Why have I isolated 'commitment'? I haven't, this was simply plucked from our list of 29 SPI's but it is no less and no more important than any of the others. I felt that it would be a difficult one, to write a standard for: refer to my previous post: 'How To Write A Sales Performance Standard' if you can manage to write a standard for commitment, the chances are you will find little difficulty in completing the remainder on the list. Remember you are not alone here, you have two others assisting you, so if you get together as a team for one hour per day and complete a standard each time, you will have the exercise completed in less than a month. So now, when it comes to commitment, how are you going to express your expectations for your salespeople? To help you here I have compiled a 'standards index' and I'm using the word index instead of manual because I think it sounds better. When you view this document you can see now how my 'little formula' is beginning to take shape. The operational standard I have described, is mine and I'm not stating it is the right or wrong way to judge commitment, you will of course have your own take on this, I'm simply using this as an example.

I would be interested to know how you would write this standard and you are welcome to get in touch with me, by either subscribing to my blog and/or posting a comment.
Look forward to hearing from you.
Back soon again.
Regards
Dave; http://www.davidquinnandassociates.ie/