I recently watched a sneaky little 4 year old girl cuddle and pat her baby brother. As you can imagine, when her mom was watching she was extremely gentle and sweet, but when her mom turned away, even for just an instant, her pats became increasingly more rough and the look on her face changed form adoration to one of disgust.
Recognize the behavior?
Yep, sure you do. It happens in offices all the time.
Sales teams can almost always play well together when mom (aka the sales manager) is watching. But watch out when management turns away for the bonhomie can turn ugly real fast.
So what’s a sales manager to do because just like mom you often need to “look away”.
- Lead by example and treat everyone on your sales team with respect and courtesy. If you display poor behavior your sales reps will also and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.
- Provide timely hands-on coaching and feedback when team members are not “behaving” as expected. Don’t allow a lack of teamwork to become patterned behavior.
- Even though sales reps are intrinsically competitive, help them to focus on team accomplishments as well as individual. Provide individual as well as group incentives and motivate accordingly.
It’s easy for the “kids” to play nicely in the sandbox when you are standing guard. It’s more difficult and truly the job of the sales manager to make certain that this nice behavior is carried forward even when “parental eyes” are elsewhere.
