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Managing a Sales Career

Managing a Sales Career

(OnTarget. Vol 4, issue 4 2005)

I can’t remember giving much thought to my career during the early years. All that seemed necessary was the need to do well. The benchmark that guided me was the choice and quality of the company car I got to drive. What ‘doing well’ meant didn’t seem to need explaining at the time. With the magic of hindsight, I could have managed my career better. Wherever you are in your sales career, perhaps you can benefit from the helicopter view that I have acquired.

Ambition used to be defined by what a person wanted to become. To be elevated to a senior position and given a better title seemed desirable. Certainly the money was. Competition was fierce, or so it seemed. The number of senior positions available is always limited and the more promotions you achieve, the fewer places there are to be promoted into. If this isn’t enough to put today’s ambitious person off, over the last several decades, companies have being trying to take out layers of management and flatten organisations to make them more competitive. Tom Peters, (www.tompeters.com) has a lot to answer for!

Perhaps options other than advancement were always available and I just didn’t think about them. Now I can add a variety of things to the life plan - things I want to do, things I want to experience, and things I want to accomplish. If you really want to push the frontiers of personal development, add ‘who you want to become’. We are all different, as many personality and motivation models reveal. The starting point, if you want a starting point, is to understand yourself.

As I have latterly been enlightened, my ambition has been largely driven by a need for freedom and challenge rather than any desire for authority, power, or money. I learnt this new way to describe my motivation from a trainer accreditation course run by Novations. Embedded in the course I was learning to deliver, was Brooklyn Derr’s Career Orientations model. It uses the labels, Advancement, Challenge, Security, Balance, and Freedom to describe people’s needs at work. It seems that many sales people are highly motivated by freedom and challenge. A field sales career is certainly a good place to fulfil such desires.

Having the responsibility that goes with a management position might be uncomfortable if you value freedom and challenge above other motivators. Interestingly, over the course of my career, I have heard and observed many sales people struggling to come to terms with their first sales management position. I have known more than a few give up and go back to a lone ranger role. I nearly counted myself amongst their ranks. It took two years before I gave up the notion of giving up my ambition and ‘Manager’ status.

Experiencing a career plateau is inevitable for everyone. This is a period when promotions or advancements stop. It may not spell the doom portrayed in the classic ‘Peter Principle’ mini book by Laurence J. Peter. The ‘Peter Principle’ states that everyone is eventually promoted into a position that they are unable to carry out competently, and that is where they stay. It is hard to discredit this idea unless you believe that most people can continually grow in competence for ever. Laurence invented another phrase, ‘the lateral abrasque. He used this phrase to describe how organisations promote incompetent managers into lone ranger positions, where they can’t do any harm. This is necessary to unblock the promotion ladder and allow new, more competent people to take up the vacated positions.

There aren’t enough promotions available to satisfy the demand. Promotion opportunities reduce as organisations flatten so most people will experience position plateaus in their career. You can’t have a lot of control over this outcome. On the other hand, there is no need for people to experience contribution plateaus.

Organisations require people to continually increase their contribution. Failure to maintain overall progress begins a decline that competitors are quick to take advantage of. Paul Thompson and Gene Dalton of Harvard carried out extensive research into career development and produced the Four Stages™ model. It describes how people’s careers develop in an organisation. This epic work demonstrates that even competent and independent contributors cannot stand still. In my experience, sales targets regularly go up and rarely if ever go down. Unless you can maintain your sales ability at the peak of what’s possible, it is very hard to stand out as an individual contributor.

Stage three of the Four Stages™ model shows that organisations need people who can multiply their contribution by working through others. Perhaps surprisingly, the Four Stages™ research reveals that having a management position is not necessary. People can work interdependently to increase their effectiveness and contribution without a manager’s role or title.

In this sales example, one individual set aside her short term interests and invested in a multi country sales opportunity. Most of the credit for the sale, and the compensation flowed to the local country sales people. The time she invested compromised her ability to achieve her own target, resulting in a 14% shortfall. The company won a major global customer. Recognising this person’s contribution, the global head of sales invited her to take up a global account management role.

These days pursuit of promotion may not be the easiest way to increase contribution and be seen as a high performer. While promotion opportunities are decreasing, leading organisations are increasingly seeking to empower people. It is the organisations who can create communities of effective stage three contributors who will outperform their less competitive rivals.

Questions and comments to Clive Miller.

Clive Miller
E-mail: info@salessense.co.uk
Web: www.salessense.co.uk
Tel: 0118 933 1357
Four Stages™ is a trade mark of Novations

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