(Entertainment-NewsWire.com, October 17, 2013 ) Dallas, TX -- Top sales trainer Frank Rumbauskas, the New York Times best-selling author of Never Cold Call Again and several other books, poses a tongue-in-cheek but very serious question: How many of today's sales managers are truly qualified for the job?
"My concern stems from my own experiences working for several completely unqualified sales managers during my career," says Rumbauskas. "Very few, if any, top-performing salespeople want to go into sales management. They have more freedom and make more money as star producers in selling. The result is few, if any, qualified candidates for sales management."
To back up his concern, he cites a few key issues:
- During his time selling in the world of Fortune 100 corporations, companies had a policy of only hiring new sales managers from the 'outside' -- other companies and frequently, completely different industries. The intent of C-Level management is to bring in a so-called fresh perspective, but in reality, these people had little, if any, knowledge of the company and/or industry.
- Many of these large organizations operate like the government, and it's difficult to impossible to get fired for non-performance in sales. Rumbauskas personally worked with many people who had not made a sale in over a year, and in some cases two years, yet they would, on rare occasion, get promoted to sales manager. These usually turned out to the the 'little dictator' management types, Rumbauskas comments.
- Finally, and perhaps most alarming of all, failures at other types of management, such as customer service, would be moved over to sales management out of the bizarre policy of simply not firing people.
Rumbauskas tells us about one sales manager in particular, the worst dictator type he'd ever had to deal with. "I'd come into the office each morning to find a printout of yesterday's activity from my telephone. He was very passive-aggressive type and would never confront me directly. He was fired shortly after I quit, and today is serving a twenty-year prison sentence for his attempt at a very violent form of revenge on his former employers."
What is the solution?
"You're not going to find top-performing salespeople who want to take a pay cut, have less freedom, and more stress by moving up to sales management. The trend is to go with independent contractors, especially as the government burden of taxes & regulation continues to increase on employers," says Rumbauskas.
