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Military tactics have changed beyond recognition in a few decades. A unit from the Second World War would be overwhelmed in minutes by a modern force equipped with digital surveillance and precision systems. Modern combat is radically faster and far more accurate.
Sales has gone through the same transformation. The traditional sequence — generate leads, qualify, pitch, close — no longer works on its own. And it's not only sellers who are better equipped. Buyers are too. They research online, consult peers and AI tools, and make large parts of their decision before they ever contact a salesperson.
A rep armed only with a pitch is like a soldier with a vintage carbine: they will miss by a mile. And the heat isn't only on the sales team. The whole company is competing against organizations that constantly find faster ways to win.
As a sales manager, it is your job to make sure your troops are well-trained and well-armed to withstand the heat of today's business warfare.
— Nikolaus Kimla, Leading from the War Room, 2014
Bringing your reps into the present
Who makes it possible for reps to keep up? The sales manager. You know the terrain and what it takes to win — and it's your job to bring your team to the same level of understanding. That understanding has five parts:
- Their industry. How it works, its patterns, flows, market and economics — and the latest news, innovations and shifts.
- Their product or service — in depth. Reps once learned just enough to make a solid pitch. Today they must grasp every nuance, or they can't connect benefits to a specific prospect's situation.
- The competition. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Your prospect has almost certainly researched your competitors already. Your rep must know the whole story to respond credibly.
- The typical buyer profile. Prospects expect reps to understand their issues. Failing to do so is one of the fastest ways to lose a deal.
- Prospects' buying patterns. Knowing how customers buy lets you predict when deals will land and what effort and resources they will require.
Coaching and mentoring: the most neglected part of the job
Research on sales management repeatedly finds that managers coach far less than they should — not because they doubt its value, but mostly for lack of hours and, often, of skill. Yet without coaching, you are stuck with your talent as it is. The only other way to raise results is to hire more reps, which raises your cost of sales.
Five proven ways to coach:
- Share best practices. Continuously capture what your top performers do and make it easy to access — ideally right inside your CRM, where reps already work.
- Listen in. Monitor calls and meetings, correct where needed — and point out what reps are doing right, so good behavior is reinforced.
- Ride along — and teach. When you join a deal, don't just become the closer. Afterwards, walk the rep through what you did and why, so next time they can do it themselves.
- Shadowing. Let newer reps observe your veterans, then ask what they learned so it becomes applied knowledge, not an empty exercise.
- Off-site seminars. Bring in outstanding trainers. It builds skill and team spirit at the same time.
The right tools
Modern troops need modern equipment. That doesn't mean traditional CRM that buries reps in admin. The more time a rep spends on data entry and reporting, the less they sell — and when the CRM doesn't help them, they build their own spreadsheets. Then critical information sits offline, invisible to the team and to management.
The right CRM is one reps want to use to manage their own deals — and which, as a result, shares the data the whole team needs. This is exactly why we built Coevera to empower the seller, not to police them.
Empowering your reps as "salespreneurs"
Salespeople share many qualities with entrepreneurs: they see opportunities others miss, have the capacity to act on them, and innovate on their feet. We call them entrepreneurs within the enterprise — "salespreneurs."
Here, sales and warfare part ways. A soldier must follow orders. For decades, some companies ran sales forces the same way, locking reps into rigid processes. A sales process is necessary — but used as a straitjacket, it suppresses the very instincts that make great sellers great.
Your reps are face to face with the customer. Give them latitude to use their judgment — even when it occasionally departs from the process — and they will close more business. That, after all, is the point.
Next in the series: The Sales Process — your tactical procedure.
Adapted from the Coevera e-book Leading from the War Room: Building a Battle-Ready Sales Force by Nikolaus Kimla. Download the full e-book at coevera.com.
