Inbound Selling

Chapter 9Reflections on Sales Leadership

Looking back on the time I've been managed by others, and the time that I've managed a team, I have so many things I want to share about being a sales manager and leading a team of inside sellers. At times, I felt like I had no control at all. At others, I thought the team was running like a well-oiled machine. It was never perfect, and it was never horrible. Yet most of the learnings came at my highs and lows, not the in-betweens.

As I've already shared, leading an inside sales team is in some ways akin to coaching a team of individual athletes. Specifically, I mean that there's no de facto sense of duty from any individual team member back to the team—at least not the same way it works in a team sport like soccer, football, baseball, and so on. Team-sport members quite literally rely on one another to win games. A quarterback relies on his receivers, a pitcher on the infield/outfield. A direct corollary does not quite exist in the “sport” of sales.

I remember experiencing this clearly when I was a rep. I didn't really pay attention to whether my entire team was at or above 100%. I did, however, care about being on the best team and about my team members all doing well for the most part. So why the disconnect?

Working in an inside sales role where performance improvement plans (PIPs) are always a reality, and your entire paycheck is often tied purely to your own individual performance, it's difficult not to focus only on one's self. ...