In the classic movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin plays the role of a tough sales manager from “Downtown” who is sent out by corporate to a local sales office to motivate a sales team falling behind quota. He hurls insults & vulgarities at the sales team, and challenges them to close business or they will be fired permanently. The question is: Does this style of management really work, or is a more collaborative approach better served?
We tested both approaches with sales reps at several clients & found that early on, the intimidation factor actually did increase “paper activity” in the forecasts. However at the end of six months, over half the team treated with the tough approach had left the companies with no additional revenue contribution.
On the other hand, the sales teams that we worked with in a more collaborative approach, using the techniques from our game planning service, rebuilt their pipelines & eventually started closing significantly more business.
The lesson is, by being collaborative with the sales team & mutually uncovering reasons why deals are not closing, you can increase team productivity & save in the huge costs of having to recruit & retrain new sales reps.
This latter approach may not work in every situation, but is worth trying if members of the sales team have had a history of success with prior companies. Make them allies instead of enemies. Save your tough approach & “walk in the woods” approach for individual one on one meetings with reps, thus avoiding costly mass defections.
Palladin Consulting can help. Contact us to find out how.
http://www.palladinenterprises.com/Sales_Marketing_Channels.html to see the Glengarry Glen Ross Video.
June 30, 2008 at 7:11 pm
The tough approach makes for good screenplay copy but could be disasterous in the real world. The challange of the sales manager is to identify motivation at the individual level. Then to encourage and develop it. If it is lacking, you are better off moving on.