What Percentage of Sales Managers Have the Necessary Coaching Skills?

I am often asked to explain what we look for when we evaluate Sales Managers.  At this point, most experts agree that a good Sales Manager will spend half of their time coaching up the salespeople.  Recently, I was asked to share some statistics about sales management coaching – the percentage of sales coaching skills that most Sales Managers have and the amount of time they spend.  So let’s stop talking about the article and start sharing the statistics!

In a recent mining of data on approximately 100,000 Sales Managers evaluated by Objective Management Group (OMG), they have on average 43% of the Sales Coaching Competency and only 39% of all Sales Managers have at least 50% of the Sales Coaching Competency.  Only 7% have more than 75% of the Sales Coaching Competency and only 3% spend at least 50% of their time coaching their salespeople.

And that’s just the sales coaching competency!

It gets better when we look at accountability, motivation and recruiting…

68% of Sales Managers have at least 50% of the attributes of the Accountability Competency and 16% have at least 75% of those skills.

90% of Sales Managers have at least 50% of the attributes of the Motivation Competency and 21% have at least 75% of those skills.

68% of Sales Managers have at least 50% of the attributes of the Recruiting Competency and 26% have at least 75% of those skills.

When you consider that Sales Managers with less than 75% of the attributes of any of these competencies are ineffective at the competency, that’s a lot of sales management ineffectiveness.

Overall, 18% of all sales managers should not be in the role and 34% can’t be trained up.

Sales Managers and sales leaders have an opportunity to get coached up themselves by attending enrolling in my online, self-directed, Sales Leadership Intensive where the training is on – you guessed it – these competencies, and we focus on the sales coaching competency.  It’s the best training on how to effectively coach salespeople that you can take, anywhere!  If you would like to enroll, you can do so here.