Unbound Growth Blog

Last week my husband asked me to teach him how to play piano. The extent of his piano skills was playing with one finger the Miami Vice theme song. Showing him how to play reminded me how I first started and also how many sales people and managers end up starting in their roles as well.

First thing on Monday morning one of our inside sales clients, let’s call him Scott, told us that their manager insisted that they send a proposal to all the opportunities in their pipeline that “might possibly close this month.” Didn’t matter what was happening or not happening in the conversation.

Yesterday was the beginning of 4Q16 (the beginning of the end), and I got up early to make sure I had time for plenty of coffee, yoga and reflection before I started the day with 90 minutes of back to back coaching calls at 8am. It`s not very often that every one of those calls are around the same issue, but yesterday and into today was one of those times.

This is a question that came up several times last week and twice this week already. First was from a current client who is a salesperson at a small but growth focused technology company. Like many other small and growing companies, there is a small sales team (less than 5) and one member of the team is also the “sales manager”.

This post has been sitting in draft for a few weeks because for me, there is no easy answer. When I heard Chris Beall, the CEO from Connect and Sell say at the Sales 2.0 conference in Boston that he didn’t believe that sales managers should coach- my ears pricked up and the room went silent. That’s a pretty bold thing to say and goes in the face of the accepted best practice being touted by many in the sales development industry.