Are you a production oriented sales manager or a development oriented sales manager?

Production oriented sales managers tend to concentrate on doing whatever it takes to hit the numbers. Driven by sales goals and benchmarks, they often get the results at the expense of developing their salespeople. Development oriented sales managers on the other hand tend to focus on the fundamentals and teaching their salespeople how to do the job, confident that the numbers will naturally follow.

Both types of sales managers can bring in the numbers, but managers who concentrate strictly on making their sales goals will always have to work harder than those that are development focused. This is because they are not developing their sales people with the ability and sales skills to leverage themselves.

Production focused sales managers are commonly overlooked for promotions because the production oriented sales manager ends up driving the sales in an organization and is reason enough for management to want to keep him or her in that job. On the other hand, someone who has carefully groomed a sales force to drive sales will, when promoted, leave behind salespeople who can continue to hit the numbers.

The real distinction between these two types of sales managers lies in coaching. The production oriented manager may be known as an "unconscious competent". This sales manager knows what he or she is doing, but isn't teaching it, or can't teach it, to his or her salespeople.

Your job as a sales manager involves much more than just developing business and revenue for the company, it also involves developing people. Good sales managers are teachers and coaches as well as sellers. That is why you should focus on developing the skills of your salespeople throughout the sales process.

The following are a few key elements that should be included in every sales managers development process:

Emphasize specific skills such as prospecting, qualifying, strategizing, and closing.

Teach by example. Plan a sales activity with a sales rep, and critique it immediately afterward. Assess its effectiveness, constructively critique each participant's role in the call, and explain why a particular strategy was followed up or why a particular line of questioning took place.

Share your own experience. Talk about strategies that did or didn't work against a particular competitor, or discuss qualification techniques which have let you understand the prospect's political environmental.

Focus on fundamentals of selling, and let your people develop their own style. Learn to separate personality from skills and activities, and asses each of those categories independently.

Ask your salespeople to develop a personal business plan that focuses on non-financial objectives such as improving the way they make sales calls and presentations, building customer relationships, and increasing their product understanding. Take time to review them with each rep, and then integrate those performance goals into the compensation plan so that they will be rewarded for meeting them.

Be specific and realistic when you set a time frame for improvement. Check with your salespeople to make sure their plans are realistic.

Don't get caught up in having each person immediately make quota. Instead, concentrate on developing good sales skills and on participating in sales activities. If your salespeople continue to perform well in their sales activities, their performance will pay off over time. Eventually, they will make quota.

Taking the time to coach and develop your salespeople will lead to large dividends in the future. You will be rewarded with a powerful sales force who can bring in the numbers, without your participation as a "super closer". You will keep your team motivated, and you will see less turnover. In addition, you will be able to groom a successor so that you can move up in the ranks of management yourself.