China’s Senior managers and HR professionals have to deal with sales teams all the time. There was a time when you could divide the Chinese sales landscape into two groups. Aggressive western-style salesmen who were difficult to deal with, and more passive Chinese-style salesmen who were easy to deal with but didn’t always get the job done. Now everyone is aggressive and difficult.
As business in China slows, there will be more and more pressure for staff to support line managers — especially in the are of sales and top-line growth.
Sales management for non-sales people starts with these 5 areas.
1) Managing & goal setting
2) Hiring
3) Training & Coaching
4) Structuring the department
5) Compensation
Managing – Salesmen can be jerks. Being aggressive and determined and focused makes them effective salespeople – but lousy colleagues. Don’t let these people bully you or BS you, as they will try to do. Salesmen are goal-driven, and sales management is about setting good goals and making sure that they get met.
Hiring – You want to find the middle between 2 extreme sales-type personalities. Aggressive salesmen will convince you that they have all the answers, but they tend to lie and will probably disrupt your operation. If you go the other way and hire a friendly “relationship” salesman, you are sure to enjoy their company but you won’t get rich paying them to schmooze all day. HINT: Pay a little more and hire someone with a few years of sales experience IN YOUR INDUSTRY. Develop them to be your sales manager.
Training & Coaching – You do the product training in-house. Bring in pros to do the sales training. Your job as a coach is to make sure that the training has an impact. It’s best if your coaching relationships with your team are warm and cozy and life affirming – but it’s not necessary. Weekly, scheduled meetings to review performance and set goals is fine. Delegation is an important part of coaching, but requires regular feedback.
Structuring the department. Structure develops whether you put it in place or not. If you organize the sales department according to your own plans, it may be very effective for you. If you allow your department’s structure to “just evolve organically”, it will be effective for someone else. In China, you should always know where you want people to rise to. Have their promotions in mind and be more proactive than you would be in the US.
Compensation. Commission and performance based compensation plans work well. But you also have to be ready to fire the under-performers. When compensating sales teams, make sure that you are identifying and rewarding appropriate behaviors.
