3 key focuses for effective frontline sales leadership

Zach gave this presentation at the Future of Sales Festival in December 2021.

My name is Zach Barney, I’m VP of Sales at Vehlo. I started out in 2010, working for a mortgage startup. I have been in software sales my entire career. It's all been software, it's all been sales, and the past nine years I've been in leadership-type roles.

In this article, I’ll talk about the characteristics of the frontline sales leader role and I’ll also discuss the three key focuses for effective frontline sales leadership.

Here’s our main talking points:

The role of a front line sales leader
Being in a leadership role
#1 Regular team meetings
#2 Field work
#3 1:1s
Bonus insights 🎁

Let’s go ahead and dive in 👇

The frontline sales leader

What we think it’s going to be like 💭

The frontline sales leader is the hardest role in an organization, at least on the sales side.

Going in, this is what I thought my job would be like having these young hungry people, just super anxious to succeed and look to me for coaching.

I'll lay out the game plan, and show them how to do it and we'll make a lot of money and everybody will get promoted.

Turns out, it was a lot harder than I anticipated.

What it often ends up as 💬

What often happens is sales leaders get overwhelmed. You go from being a rep, where your sole focus is driving revenue, closing deals, working your pipeline and prospecting, day in and day out.

It's hard work, but it's simple work because you're focused.

Salespeople need to be incredibly selfish with their time. It needs to be about their deals because that's what the company hired them to do and how they drive the most value.

When you move into a leadership role, everybody wants a piece of your time.

Not only do you have reps to manage and coach, but you have other departments that want to collaborate and strategize with you.

It makes it hard to find time in the day to actually do your job. I've gotten overwhelmed almost every single time with how busy I ended up being, and ultimately ended up becoming a master of none.

It's a big problem.

Being in a leadership role: You’re a boss, act like one

Say ‘no’ to the busy work 🚫

When you're moving into a leadership role for the first time or in a new company, you need to get comfortable with saying no to the busy work.

If somebody asked you for a report, and you've already built a dashboard in Salesforce or in your BI platform, point them there.

Just like as a sales rep, it's okay to say no to something that doesn't directly drive revenue, as a manager it's okay to say no to something that doesn’t directly affect you coaching your team to success.

Automate what you can 🤖

Before you can point somebody to a dashboard you've already built, you’ve got to build the dashboard!

The first thing I do when I take over a new team within our portfolio, is build individual dashboards and team dashboards for every single team and person I manage, with all of their key performance indicators and any information I want to see.

This way, I don't have to go back and redo it every time. Any information other people are going to ask me for, I can just point them to the dashboard and save myself from busy work every time that's asked by my boss, or my counterparts in other departments.

Focus on the 3 most important parts of your job

You should focus on the three most important parts of the job of the sales leader, which are:

Regular team meetings 🔁
Field work 🔨
1:1s 🫂

Those are the three most important things you have to own and do to be successful. Everything else is ancillary or should fit into these three things.

#1. Regular team meetings 🔁

Most managers have a team meeting and it’s a key meeting, so let's talk about what should happen within those team meetings:

Performance updates: Performance updates for the team should be done here if they have to be done in the meeting. You also have great tools like Slack and Volley that allow for asynchronous meetings.

Group forecasting: This is when you ask the whole team for their number.

Share wins, losses and challenge deals: This is a fantastic time to have your team, share successes and losses and get help from each other. It will allow people the opportunity to collaborate and allows you to keep your eye on future leaders, as well as help win more deals because you have more eyes on it than just that one individual.

Product training: The product team often wants to do training on another feature, edition, or other improvement to the product, which is fantastic because it means our team is working hard to improve our platform, making it easier for my team to sell. However, product will want to schedule a one or two hour meeting to walk through this and train people, so force it down into being part of your regular team meeting, if at all possible. Nine times out of 10 it'll work out and free up an hour or two from your team's time.

Skills training: It's important to continuously train, nobody is above continual improvement. There are new products, mindsets change, and new roles coming out all the time that need to shift the way we sell. You can do those skills training in a team environment during your regular weekly meetings.

Leadership opportunities for ambitious reps: Team meetings are the opportunity to allow people to step into micro leadership responsibilities. Give people the opportunity to step up, share some responsibility and allow them to grow. That's the purpose of key meetings.

Camaraderie: When you do team meetings regularly, people know what to expect and they’re learning and growing together. It builds camaraderie and they become faster friends. A lot of teams are working remotely, and having them all meeting together, at least weekly, is an opportunity to foster an environment of camaraderie so they can be more comfortable asking each other when they need something. You’ll also have lower turnover because of it.

#2. Field work 🔨

What I mean by field work, is you as a manager actually helping your team sell.

Spend 15 minutes before a scheduled call with your rep prepping.

Ask them what the situation is and identify the gaps (the areas where you don't have an answer yet).

Set those as the goal for what you want to accomplish on this call, and then join the actual call with the rep but you let them run it, don't take over.

Lastly, do a post-op immediately after the fact (What happened on this call? Did we accomplish the goals? What's the plan for next steps? What can we do better). That's the way to do fieldwork.

Here are a couple of things you can lump into field work that I tried to do with my team regularly:

Call reviews: You can use tools like SalesLoft, Outreach, Gong or Chorus that transcribes and analyzes the call, and then review it as a team. Give your team the transcript of the call a day in advance to review on their own and a scorecard to fill out using methodology.
Role play sessions: Identify what needs to be done better, roleplay it, fix it and get better at that specific skill.

Field work is incredibly important. Do it with each and every rep at least once a week and as a team at least once a week as well.

#3. 1:1s 🫂

Firstly, 1:1s are not emotional. If your rep needs emotional support, do it separately and have a one off conversation with them.

In terms of your regular 1:1s, they are straight to the point, non-emotional and numbers focused.

Start with the most important thing, which is performance, and you work your way down only as needed.

Meaning, give your team guidelines for how much pipeline, how many opportunities they need to be created, and what their activity levels should be. Set the expectation and review it as a team from a high level from time to time.

What you should care about most is the performance, the quota and attainment.

If your rep hits that number, don’t ask them about their pipeline and activity because obviously what they’re doing is working and you don't need a micromanager.
However, if the number is not being hit, then we take a look at the pipeline. If the pipeline is real, and indicative of this rep hitting their number very soon then great, the meeting's over and I'm not going to micromanage your activities.
On the other hand, if the pipeline is not there, then we need to look at the activities. The problem is mine as a leader if I haven't done enough coaching and training to get my rep to where they're able to close at the same rate as the rest of the team or as expected.
Lastly, if a rep is not doing regularly what they’re asked to do, so if two out of three weeks they’re not hitting their minimum activities, then it's time to start looking for a replacement because that's an attitude and an activity issue, not an aptitude issue.

To sum up, 1:1s are non-emotional and numbers focused. Start with the most important and work your way down only as needed.

Key takeaways 💡

Live and die by your calendar. Your regular team meetings, your field work with each and every rep, and your 1:1s need to be treated as sacred, so block them out on your calendar.

If something comes up and is scheduled at the same time, move the other thing, do not cancel it.

Meet regularly as a team, practice and observe actual selling with each rep, and weekly 1:1s should be formulaic and reinforce the most important aspects of a rep's job.

If you do those three things, then you are 90% of the way there as a leader, everything else is ancillary.

Bonus insights on front line sales leadership 👇

How to retain but also attract top sales talent

The number one tip for retaining talent is caring about the career progression of your employees. Not just say that you care about it, but be invested in it by asking them what they want out of the role.

Then, for recruiting you have to spend time doing it to attract talent. You can't rely on applicants if you want top talent.

Very few of them are going to come in through your job ads so you have to go find them, whether it be working with a world class headhunter, but also doing it yourself.

They say that the top sales leaders should be spending about 20% of their time recruiting.

Top tips for someone interviewing for their first management position

Over-prepare, because hiring managers care about you knowing your numbers. If you’re being interviewed for a first management position, you need to show that you’re numbers focused and that you will take that know-how into a leadership position.

Self education is also important. Read a ton of books and network with a ton of people.

Similarly to getting your first sales job where you have a disadvantage against people who have been in sales before they have the experience factor, here you need to show that you have something else, which would be the hard work and the self education.

How sales leaders can use assessments to help salespeople elevate their performance

The best leaders focus on individual strengths. If you rank the things you can be good at, you should focus on improving the top five.

Don't worry about where you're weak but worry about where you're strong, because you have the aptitude to 10x the performance on those strengths, whereas you might have a 50% improvement on the bottom one.

Focus on each individual strengths and know what those strengths are as individuals.