It’s with pain and a bit of frustration that I have to say this.  As an avid defender of the sales community, and a passionate participant, it doesn’t feel good to call out this elephant in the room, but it must be done.

It’s nothing knew. My observation is not revelational. Many of us are aware of the problem, we see it, we subconsciously feel it, and worse we suffer it’s consequences.  Yet, in spite of all this we do little to address the problem and even worse, leverage the benefits by fixing it.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about the failure of frontline sales managers.

If you’re a frontline sales manager, before you get all worked up and start throwing things at the monitor and cursing my name, it’s not completely your fault and we can’t fully blame you. Leadership, enablement and the general culture in sales as failed you. We know you’re working your ass off to make the number, but we haven’t prepared you properly and that is our fault.

Here’s the deal.

As a culture and from an enablement and sales leadership perspective we have not provided, consistent, solid guidance and descriptions of what good frontline management looks like.  Too often we provide loose, disconnected and academic guidance and training, if we provide any training at all. If we do provide training, it often lacks applicability. Making matters worse, we rarely manage frontline managers to the training and unwittingly incentivize them towards competing behaviors.