Management, and particularly sales management, operates on and obtains its results from the staff that are managed. This clearly puts emphasis on the behavioural skills required to promote good human relations and helpful attitudes. These skills are developed mainly from:-

• An interest in individual needs and points of view

• Readiness to direct time and thought to analysing attitudes

• A sense of justice or fair dealing

• Respect for the personality of others

To enable the staff that are managed to develop their abilities profitably for themselves and their company, good human relations alone are not enough. The manager has to define tasks, set proper objectives, and maintain firm control. The basic skills required to do these things are:

• Analytical Ability:

Information coming to Sales Managers is of all kinds, from verifiable facts to rumour. It is important to be able to sort the wheat from the chaff, to see the relevance of items of information to one another, and to draw conclusions which seem to fit the facts. Again, when a problem arises it is necessary to analyse it to seek its causes (is it a symptom of something wrong elsewhere?) and establish it’s true importance.

• Judgement:

All their decisions express the judgement of the manager on a situation or a person. Having analysed the available information he must then judicially weigh the evidence in order to decide on the best course of action. Few decisions can be wholly right or wrong. Most involve a balance of advantages and disadvantages - “Trade Offs”.

• Communication:

What is clear to them must be made clear to other people also. They should ask themselves what every individual needs to know, and why, what reaction they expect from them, and how they will know whether it has occurred. Good communication is not only a matter of clear thinking and expression. Since it takes place between at least two people the communicator should be able to see their communication through the recipient’s eyes.

However, these characteristics must be underpinned by the core competencies:

The Attainment of Targets:

• Always attaining targets by the time deadlines
• Knowing what to do and doing it, when performance deviates from plan

Ability to Get Things Done:

• A good “objective” setter, planner and above all controller
• Always finishing what they start

Co-Operation:

• The ability to work with others in a friendly co-operative manner - inspiring others to co-operate

Initiative:

• Having both the desire and the ability to ornate and develop constructive ideas
• A self-starter able to work with minimum brief