Building the Perfect Beast
HR managers generally consider the sales departments to be one of the more difficult areas of the organization to deal with. This is particularly true in China , where quality is often a problem and holding on to talent is a major challenge. So as we enter a new year, HR pros can expect to spend a good amount figuring out ways to attract and retain the best sales team that money can buy.

4 factors will move sales to the top of the HR priority list when it comes to Sales Management in China:

Drive to localize – Sales and marketing are prime candidates for localized management. Local customs and language make expats unsuitable. The challenge will be finding local pros with the skills and experience to get the job done while still integrating with your international organization.

Expansion . For many MNCs , the heavy lifting as far as building an organization and setting up systems & infrastructure is complete. Now is the time to leverage off those accomplishments by rolling out new branches or expand sales territories. That requires new salesmen – and new sales supervisors & managers.

Profits . The China Boom means new pressures to boost profits and build up the bottom line. Country Heads and MDs made some big promises at the close of 05 about how great this year’s results were going to be. Now HR needs to put a sales machine in place that can make those predictions a reality.

Turnover . Always a problem in China , the pressure to retain good salespeople will be tremendous this year. Every senior management team and HR department will view hot-shot sales people as a quick fix for last year’s profit shortfall, and they will be right. Be on the lookout for headhunters – and don’t be surprised if they start making big offers for entire teams with experience and a track record.

Smart HR managers will focus on Sales Management first, and worry about staffing up the rest of the department later. Sales managers are generally one of the toughest positions to fill successfully. Why? Because the skills needed to manage a sales team are almost completely opposite those needed to be a successful salesperson .

What should you expect from a top sales manager?
First and foremost, a good sales manager must a good salesman. There has been a little controversy about this in some quarters, so let’s make this point clear: In order to manage a sales team, you must be a competent, experienced sales person.
A sales manager must also be capable of strategic planning. Annual goals and long term marketing decisions are crucial to your company’s future. The days of just slapping 10% on last year’s sales totals are over. You need someone who can help steer the company’s growth.

Your sales manager should also work with your marketing team to help develop new products. The sales manager should know what is happening on the ground, and what clients are saying now and will be saying next year.

Sales managers lead the sales team.
That means training, motivation, management, goal setting, and compensation. You need someone who can put together a commission plan that will encourage the behaviors your company needs without bankrupting it. Sales management is more than just throwing money at a mob of unruly salesmen. He has to be able to motivate and maintain high quality standards.

A typical job specification for a Sales Manager may start out like this:

A good sales manager is highly organized, with strong goal-setting and planning skills, experience managing a budget, a good communicator who can motivate individuals and build a solid team. He must be strategic, analytical and patient. Most of all, he should have natural leadership skills and be able to train and develop a staff of young salespeople into a cohesive, professional, effective team.

The challenge for the HR department is finding such a person. Although good sales management requires sales skills, sales people generally make awful managers and supervisors.

Salesmen are, by definition, aggressive, selfish, reactive and action-oriented. Salesmen are notorious for their short-term, opportunistic mind-set. The very best sales professionals are competitive, petty, mercenary, disloyal and arrogant. And those are their nicer qualities.

Salesmen that perform well are very difficult to manage because they know that they are profit centers, and therefore immune to almost any criticism – particularly in the competitive China market. Experienced salesmen are in high demand, and know they can switch jobs easily. Salesmen that are NOT performing well are not worth holding on to, and you may eventually have to get rid of them. Young salesmen are nice-enough, but rarely produce significant results. Once they start to perform, you are back to the problem of arrogance and disloyalty.

A good sales manager will solve a lot of problems, but finding one that management can live with but who can effectively manage a sales team is a huge challenge.

As with most other HR staffing decisions in China your decision comes down to ‘buy or build’.

Buying, or hiring a sales manager from outside of your company, is slightly more challenging than hiring a manager to run any other department.

There are three basic requirements for an outsider to run your sales department.

1) He must be able to sell – preferably a product or service related to the one your company produces.
2) He must be able to manage a sales team comprised of salesmen who will probably loath and resent him for being an outsider who is trying to tell them what to do. For sales managers, this includes motivating and developing effective commission plans.
3) He must be able to train new salesman, so that he can replace all the old salesmen who will quit when he starts telling them how to do their jobs and under-paying them.

It would also be nice if he had contacts in the industry – particularly among loyal customers who will follow him to your company. When interviewing, be sure to ask how long before he can be productive. You want a sales manager who can “hit the ground running” and start producing sales right away. Many HR managers have run into problems with new sales managers who required months and months to “get up to speed”. A final warning about bringing in an outsider to run your sales team: beware of corporate culture issues. Sales is one of those areas where corporate culture issues are extremely important, and many departments have had disastrous results when an newcomer is introduced who doesn’t fit in with the existing operating procedures.

While a little new blood can be valuable and helpful, the HR manager has to know what to expect from the new hire.

Building, or promoting a sales manager from within is a challenge that may take years of careful planning and development.

I’ve got two words for the HR manager who wants to develop sales management talent internally: Structure and Training.

An HR manager who wants to insure an adequate pool of potential sales managers should start out by encouraging a highly structured sales department. If your department is operating on the “Star System” or the 80-20 rule, where 80% of your sales are being brought in by one or two sales ‘stars’, then you are playing with fire. The real danger is that one of these stars decides to leave, and you don’t have anyone to fill his shoes.

How can you combat this problem? Structure your sales department. Make sure that you have a hierarchy of sales representatives with different levels of experience and responsibility, and make sure your top sales people are delegating authority to them.

Does your department have supervisors, assistant managers, key accounts, specialist and designated customer service representatives? If your department is made up of one manager and a gang of sales associates or reps who don’t have any defined responsibilities, then you are not preparing your company for the possibility of turnover. Who is most likely to resist organizing your sales department into a hierarchical structure? Your existing sales manager or sales “hot-shot” who doesn’t want to give up control. You would be wise to start tackling this issue sooner, rather than later.

The second requirement for building a deep sales department that will supply managerial talent is a training and development program. Forget the myth of the “natural born salesman”. Sales pros are built, not born. On the job training has it’s limits, and if you don’t have a formalized sales training process, that should be one of your first priorities for the new year. Complement a basic sales skills training program with leadership, time management and communications skills training to help determine who among your existing staff has the potential to lead the team. If your company has a management development program, make sure it includes sales representatives.

HR managers can’t afford to just cross their fingers and hope that a good candidate for sales management magically appears. The market for top sales managers in China is starting to get very competitive, and there is a good chance that you are going to need to address the issue this year.