Has the role of a sales manager become too big for most managers to handle? Have you reduced the scope of the manager role at your sales org? How?
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B2B Marketing in Media2 months ago
Sales managers also have to be technology gurus and learn more about how technology is changing the landscape of sales, not just management. We have to add this extra layer of knowledge and insight about all the various tools. So now we have 300 CRM systems, 300 sales intelligence tools, and we have AI in the mix. How do we infuse that in a way that it's practical and productive for all of us?VP Sales in Software2 months ago
There's an element of the post-Covid and Covid era that has, at least for me, made my calendar busier than ever. While I am most productive at home, I don't have breaks unless I schedule them on my calendar. So, I feel like we are getting more bombarded, especially since there's an overload in technology stacks. Half the time, I feel like I'm a therapist at work, which could be because I have a platform for mental health, and that's fine. I know others feel like therapists as well, especially with Gen Z entering the workforce. I do feel like it has taken on more than it ever has, and I think a lot of it has to do with the work-from-home element where people just see you're free on your calendar, so they think, "Oh, well, she can meet at that time, so let's just book it." What they don't know is that I've been in meetings for six hours straight on Zoom, and I can't smile anymore.
VP Sales Enablement in IT Services2 months ago
I agree that the role has become too big for managers, and I see a lot of foundational parts of the manager role falling to the ground—things just not getting done. There are symptoms around a lot of our management team not doing some of the foundational things that we expect them to do. To some degree, we're guilty of contributing to that with sales tool overload, data overload, information overload, and the fact that oftentimes we promote high-performing individual contributors into leader and manager roles without effective training and development support. VP of Sales2 months ago
If the scope has become too big for sales managers, revenue operations can help. They can definitely automate a few things, decreasing the non-selling time—which includes their individual as well as team development and coaching time. Anything that takes away from core selling activities is where GTM operations or revenue operations can come into the organization and help make it more efficient. If sales managers are pulling data or reports and finding out what KPIs are going up or down, all those tasks can be offloaded to revenue operations. They can then save that time and spend it with their team on coaching and development.There are two types of sales managers: those who carry some quota, and those who just manage teams without their own individual quotas. There are two different ways I have seen of working with these types of people on how to manage their time, how to prioritize their responsibilities, so that we are not unnecessarily increasing the scope on them and burdening them, causing them to become frustrated and not productive enough.