China ex-pat managers: You shouldn’t be directly managing more than one layer of your organization’s stucture – at least in your sales / marketing department. If you aren’t tagging your older guys to do the worst, most difficult management tasks, then you are passing up a great training/development opportunity – and depriving yourself of some hilarious hi-jinks. But the mistakes they learn from while you’re watching are a lot cheaper then the ones they make when they are on the road seeing a huge potential account.

How do you turn senior salesmen into sales managers and supervisors? 5 Steps

Make them trainers.

Orientation programs. Have them help write it if you don’t have one yet, and implement it if you do. Nothing helps a new hire get off on the right foot like a decent, relevant orientation training that explains why the company exists, what it wants to do and how it tries to operate. You’ll do the hardcore skills training next.

Skills training. Mediocre training instructs about procedures and instructions. Good training replicates experience. Invest in a Train-the-Trainer program, and have your guys do a better job delivering solid training to all new hires.

Make them supervisors.

The heart of sales management is numbers. Goals, closes, number of meetings, number of calls. Get your older salesmen into a management mind mode by focusing on goal setting and data collection. You can work together to decide on remedial action.

Make them bankers

Give them SMALL amounts of money to dole out. Rmb 500 – 1000 per month range. Enough for pizzas, lunches, networking events, etc. Gives them god-like power in the eyes of their team – and in their own.

Make them HR managers

Have them do appraisals of the team after 3 or 6 months. Some bosses like to get sales managers involved in staffing and hiring decisions – but that’s a tough call. HR is tricky, and I’ve always liked to make it a specialty. Training and supervising are everyone’s jobs, though.

Make them leaders

Have them help someone do better. Get closely involved.

Have them fire someone. This is hard, and not for every management candidate. But for young managers in a big US firm, this could be an important experience.

Last week we boldly asked a very tough question: Who are your customers — and who do you want them to be? Now we are back to ask you another potential stumper: Where are you spending most of your marketing budget?

Are you spending the most time, money and manpower going after your existing market, your target market – or do you have no real idea?

Spending on your existing market makes sense – if you are expanding it or blocking the competition from making inroads. Spending on your target market is ok as long as you have the goods and services to back up your claims once they take a look.

If you have no idea, however, then you are just throwing money away and squandering valuable resources.

Sales
Do you know who your front-line salesmen are speaking with? Are they making calls or answering them? If your guys are out there beating the bushes for business, then you have to know who they are looking for. Are they taking the high road and forgoing short-term sales for long term brand development? Or are they going for quick commissions by selling the easiest deals to existing clients. And if they aren’t even making calls and just picking up when the order phones in, then you can rest assured that your market is choosing you and not the other way around.

Marketing
If you want to break in to a highly sought after demographic (i.e.: profitable), then you may have to market, advertise and build a brand. This will take a while and cost you quite a bit. If, on the other hand, you already have mind share among your target market – or you want to strengthen you position among existing clients – you should focus on building customer loyalty and stronger relationships. Advertising probably won’t help – but direct marketing might.

Product Development
You are probably doing this, whether you know it or not. Hopefully you know it. If you are developing products, services or packages for your existing market then you are reinforcing you are strengthening the market’s brand perception of you in that space. No problem, if that’s where you want to be. If you are developing offerings for your target market, then you are stretching your brand and investing in your future. You are NOT, however, making money in the short term. You are risking it.