How Many Salespeople Should You Have Before You Hire a Sales Manager?
That was the question posed is posed to me quite frequently in my travels. The answer is: “It depends.”
To properly answer that question you must first ask: What is the maximum number of salespeople the owner, General Manager or Operations Manager can lead, coach, train, motivate and manage effectively?
Part of a Sales Manager’s role is to recruit, hire and train all new salespeople as well as coach, development, train, motivate, supervise, administrate and lead the existing sales staff daily while holding them accountable to performance. In addition, recruiting, contrary to how most companies handle it, is an ongoing daily function that is very time-consuming it is not realistic for a Sales Manager to facilitate more eight to ten salespeople ideally with twelve be the extreme maximum.
Typically, a Sales Manager is also involved with installation and service/maintenance as a liaison to assist with install coordination and customer satisfaction as well as service and customer care training and aid in service lead generation. The Sales Manager will also generally act in concert with Marketing Manager, if not bearing a co-title and role.
If you already have salespeople, but do not have a designated person in the position of Sales Manager, someone in the company MUST wear this hat and carry out the duties and responsibilities of the Sales Manager.
In most small companies, the role of Sales Manager is facilitated by the Owner or President. If the company employs a General Manager then he/she would probably bear this role. As a last resort, the Operations or Installation Manager could handle the role, but it is not recommended as the skill set for sales is unique.
Given that in the above scenarios the person wearing the Sales Manager’s hat is now multi-tasking with responsibilities for another role or position, this individual is probably not spending much time on the critical activities and duties required of an effective Sales Manager as already discussed.
I suggest that even if you only employ one or two salespeople that you consider designating or hiring a Sales Manager. At least the salespeople would be managed, coached, trained, motivated, supervised and lead properly (hopefully).
In fact, you could hire a Sales Manager at the same time you hire your second salesperson and have them trained together so that the Sales Manager learns the salesperson’s role.
As the second salesperson comes online, the Sales Manager now can begin to take on the active management and coaching role and begin to develop the team and internal systems and plan to add the third salesperson.
Comment & Respond
Print Article
