Seven Sales Managers, Part 1: Tyrant, Teacher, Closer
Survive, adapt and thrive no matter who's the boss.
[Split into two parts due to email size limits. This is Part 1 of 2. Click here for Part 2.]
A sales career is filled with opportunity and volatility. Salespeople and sales managers churn in and out of company roles like the tide comes in and out at the seashore. This constant flux of hiring, promoting, and firing means that if you have a long career you will be managed by many different managers.
Top sales people are often promoted to front line managers. In a way, this makes sense - those people have demonstrated the ability to sell. They should be great managers, right?
Um, well, not necessarily.
Why Good Salespeople Struggle as Managers
While a top sales person knows how to sell, there are some issues when they are promoted to being a manager.
Their knowledge is personal — they know how they can sell. What worked for them. People are deeply varied and selling skills, styles, techniques are not identical from person to person.
There are skills and attributes that good managers have that don’t really have anything to do with being a good salesperson. Notably missing from most salespeople are many leadership attributes and abilities including
Self Awareness
Empathy
Coaching
Decision Making
Conflict Resolution
Motivating others
Influencing others
Not only are these often lacking, most companies who promote sales people to manager roles just toss them into the role. According to Development Dimensions International’s Leadership Project, people are 40 years old before going through leadership training — 4 years after most have been promoted to a manager! Little wonder there is so much dysfunction with new managers.
Those promoted were often peers and friends of their now-employees. Nothing is done in most cases to prepare managers for this change in relationship.
So as a result, you’ll have some great managers, a lot of OK managers, and a few that make you want to run for the door.
Let’s introduce you to your managers: Tyrant, Teacher, Closer - Next issue we’ll talk about Coach, Tool, Bro, Leader
The Tyrant
The Tyrant demands that you fear him.
A couple of months into a my new job, my manager David called first thing Monday morning and asked how I was doing. I replied. “Had a great weekend with my family and am now …” when he interrupted with
“I don’t give a *&^% about your family. When I ask how you’re doing, I want your numbers.”
David was a tyrant — driving employees with fear. He possessed an ego the size of a house and was a prickly piece of work. He would call once or even twice a day to demand “What, exactly, are you doing right now.” He’d then provide an action-by-action critique of my efforts and compare them to what he would say a “real, competent sales person should be doing.” David was a master intimidator and manipulator who looked for weaknesses to exploit - to coerce people do what he wanted them to do, all while keeping them in mortal fear of losing their jobs.
During the brief period in David’s career when he was a sales person, his manipulation and coercion skills helped him to close some pretty impressive deals. But once he started managing other people, his tendencies toward manipulation and coercion made him a living nightmare for everyone around him. He had no issue using emotional, financial, career intimidation, threats, and even blackmail to get you to work exactly they way he wanted.
“To be on my team, you must present my [42 slide] PowerPoint deck exactly this way.”
“Tell your customer this, in these words then report back to me exactly what they said.”
“If you do what I ask I won’t put you on plan. It’s up to you.”
Actually, it wasn’t up to me. It was up to David. Because, like any other tyrant, once you satisfy one demand, there would be another. Constant terror.
Tyrants feel they know and do everything better than anyone else. They know what you should be doing and how you should be doing it. They fundamentally don’t trust you and your abilities. You get the sense their real goal is to replicate their own sick sales approach through you. Of course, their fear-based tactics — and the things they are manipulating you to do - are, at best ineffective and at worst dangerous to both your career and well-being.
Mark was leading the sales organization at a new company’s initial product rollout. He had become convinced, without evidence, that the sales process should take no more than 3 months for the full sales cycle. (Well, that’s what he told the investors, so he must have believed that 3 months was therefore ordained by God.) By the end of my magic 3 month period I’d built promising pipeline, but deals were still some time from closing. Opportunities were progressing well and on a clear path. I had good visibility to the steps we needed to keep things moving to close. From my view, things looked good. Mark disagreed. It was 3 months. Deals had not closed. Therefore, my efforts had failed and emergency measures were warranted. He wanted me to start coercing clients to try to force one particular deal to close today.
“You know, I’m meeting with the CEO tomorrow morning and we’re going to make hard decisions about who we keep going forward. I’d really like you to be on that list but right now, I’m not sure what I’ll tell the CEO.
Here’s exactly what I need you to say and do in your client call today….”
Does that make your skin crawl? I haven’t even shared what demand he made of me. But you get the idea. The guy was a mobster. He might as well have said
“Nice job you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it.”
Ultimately, I did manage to succeed in these roles, but not by doing what Mark or David required. So I’d share with you the first tip.
There are certain sales leaders who you must satisfy and yet ignore. You have to placate them enough so they don’t fire you while you continue to do the real sales work that will result in your success.
Of course, this implies that you actually already know how to sell before you start working for a tyrant. A tyrant can ruin you he is if your first sales manager.
A salesperson is not a conduit, present only to execute the demands of a tyrant. You are there to serve your customers with your product or service and create as much mutual value as possible. Yet if you work for a tyrant, you’ll need to find a way to keep him out of your cube long enough for you to actually sell.
It is possible to succeed working for a Tyrant. Though, you may decide that it isn’t worth it, many times a change to a new job isn’t immediately possible. So remember
Don’t take it personally, the tyrant does this to everyone
Understand that the tyrant’s goal is to keep you afraid so he can manipulate you. Knowing fear is just a tactic makes it easier to work through.
Make lists of the minimum you need to do to satisfy the tyrant
Build and work your plan to achieve your territory and quota goals
Make sure you assign the bulk of your time to executing your territory plan and the minimum time on satisfying the tyrant. At the end, you’ll keep your job because you are successful.
Build relationships with your peers — you are in the dungeon with this dragon together — by sharing information and having supporting relationships, you can make it through this.
Bail out if necessary for your well being. Particularly if this is your first sales job. Save yourself. But do so in a way and time that preserves your career.
Understand that this too, shall pass.
The Teacher
Having a Teacher as your manager is generally good at any time in your career, but it is magic if you get one near the beginning of your time in sales. I’ve seen many really excellent Teacher managers.
Teachers often started at the bottom, worked their way up, and developed and organized comprehensive systems for their own success, which they then used with their teams when promoted to being a manager. Teachers thrive in organizations with many teams of entry level sales people who get promoted or turnover quickly.
For people in such early career roles, Teacher managers are masters at getting new reps off to quick starts and learning all the basics. I’ve often seen teachers in higher volume sales teams like Business Development Representative teams, Small Business and Mid-size Business internal teams, and the like. You tend to see Teachers less in field sales, major account, or enterprise sales management roles. Those are lone performer sales jobs, where there is more focus on individuals and less opportunity for the mass learning that happens in bullpen sales situations. But every once in a while you’ll get a great Teacher manager there, too.
Great Teacher Managers
Lay out and teach sales processes and tasks
Clearly communicate the needed elements of success of each task
Model behaviors and often work side by side with you
Provide quick feedback as you’re working to let you improve quickly
Provide opportunities to learn from team members
Accelerate learning and performance
The best Teachers understand where each person is in her development and starts working with them right at that point. This makes it super fast to get quickly going.
Sometimes Teachers are helpful but can be a bit too lock step: “do everything this way.” Many who do this insist on everyone starting at the bottom of sales knowledge using “their” system for every step, wasting lots of time. Often these teachers will feel it is easier to make everyone re-learn everything about selling from the bottom up rather than scoping out what each new person knows and does already.
Real master Teachers, though, always meet the salesperson where they are and say “great, you know these things now lets teach you these, next.”
In the presence of a master Teacher, you’ll feel motivated, supported, challenged, and understood. Teachers insert learning in everything they do, observing rep behavior and then providing individual and group training as needed. And since there is so much for a salesperson to know and do, having a Teacher manager is one of the greatest gifts you’ll ever receive.
The best teachers will challenge you, pretty much constantly, to get better. I’ve known many teacher managers, and their teams were always the best and the best motivated. So if you want to find one to join, those might be two criteria for you to look for.
The Closer
If your manager is a Closer, consider yourself lucky. You have a powerful ally. Closers are unparalleled and instinctive at “grabbing the edge” to bring business home. Working with a closer can be otherworldly. “How on earth did that deal just happen? She pulled that out of the air!” Closers have some attributes you need to be aware of to get the most out of working with them.
Dan always loved to ride along on my meetings. He was fabulous with clients and I learned to bring him along on late stage meetings, after I’d turned over all the stones of discovery, probed needs, pain points, explored and crafted a proposed solution, identified steps needed to move forward. When I wanted to accelerate and slam that deal shut, I’d brief and bring in Dan. Dan has this uncanny knack of looking at everything on the table — all the moving parts in the relationship — and grabbing the edge — the one or two things that will bring this deal to fruition.
Now I’m pretty good at closing, but Dan is in a class unto himself. His instinctive almost feral ability to understand all the dynamics at play and quickly obtain agreement makes him stand apart.
Whether you’re just getting started with your career or in a late stage, when your manager is a closer you really have a “force multiplier” on your side. It is thrilling to have one as a manager. To get the most out of your Closer manager be ready to crisply communicate to them the elements of your client situation:
Make sure you’ve done deep discovery, identifying the current situation of the client — the more information you can provide to your closer manager the more helpful they are. Heck, you should be doing this anyway, right?
Your competitive situation -- risks and opportunities you see and detail behind those.
The full layout of the people involved. Who is your advocate inside the client? Who will be evaluating? Who are the users of your solution? Who wants to see your competitor win?
Why do you think this is a fit? What are the top 3 - 5 reasons the client should choose you? What are the biggest obstacles?
Load your closer’s brain. You should be able to communicate these to your Closer manager succinctly. Have your backup notes ready to dive deeper if they want, but give them the lay of the land and brainstorm with them about where the “edge” is that will let you slam the deal shut.
A caution — I’ve often found that my Closer managers were confident, very opinionated, and often quite quick to come to a decision about where you should focus. Occasionally, this meant that if they had insufficient information, they might get dialed into an opinion based upon incomplete data. When it happened, that was my fault. I learned that it was imperative that I brief my Closer manager fully so that their brains could wrap all the way around my deal to get me the best closing recommendation.
Another thing I learned, is that many Closer managers are simply instinctive sales animals. They often don’t have much self insight and don’t know why they are grabbing a particular edge. So don’t expect them to be able to teach you, other than what you can glean from watching how they work.
Finally, Closers are also often messy, and inattentive to details. You have to be ready to bat clean up. They’ll nail down the deal but leave a lot to be done, moving on to the next closing opportunity with one of your peers. So when working with them, be make sure to capture all the details, plan and execute fully.
Remember, the Closer’s forté is to help you reach in, find the one thing to grab — the edge — and bring this home quickly.
Your job is to do everything else to make that deal happen.