Developing the Front-line Manager

Course Overview:

Your front-line sales managers are critical for increasing sales and improving performance. They are the ones who must transform sales goals and budgets into productive activity and positive results. Their ability to lead, manage, inspire, motivate, and support their direct reports is critical to your sales success.

This unique, three-day program is designed specifically to help mid-level managers improve their ability to develop and strengthen the performance of first-line sales, customer service, and staff managers. It focuses on building the skills they need to manage and develop the performance of their direct reports - your front-line managers.

Target Audience

Mid-level Sales/Line managers who oversee front-line sales, customer service, and other functional managers

Course Length

3 Days

Course Outcomes

After this program, you will achieve superior sales results as participants add a critical element to your sales team's overall performance equation: the support of inspired leaders and managers who are focused and effective in their roles. More specifically, participants will:

• Recognize the factors that help and hinder high performance
• Assess the impact of their performance management practices on performance and motivation
• Develop ways to improve manager performance by using alternative developmental styles to fit the needs of individual sales managers and situations
• Assess the impact of their own expectations as well as climate, feedback, input, and output on managers' ability to create a high-performance work environment
• Recognize the importance of motivational needs and assess the impact of their current motivational tactics and strategies in order to identify better alternatives
• Develop improved practices in providing feedback, coaching and counseling, and conducting win-win performance reviews
• Identify actions needed to successfully implement performance improvement plans, and develop a plan for improving the effectiveness of their sales team

Course Activities

This program is structured around the five segments of the Performance Management Process:

• Influencing performance
• Creating a high-performance climate
• Managing motivation
• Improving performance
• Sustaining performance improvement

Every manager identifies their own improvement opportunities via the Intellective Solutions' Performance Management Questionnaire (PMQ), which offers confidential feedback on their current performance management practices. The course includes many different activities in conjunction with the PMQ:

• A video case study of a senior manager's efforts to improve a sales team's performance
• Group and class discussions on critical decision
• A personal values questionnaire that links motivational skills to personal values
• "The Pygmalion Effect" - a video to introduce the four factors which determine whether managers will become positive or negative "Pygmalions"
• A "Best-Boss/Worst-Boss" exercise for participants to isolate the practices that fostered their own high performance
• A personal ranking exercise which enables participants to recognize which of their actions motivate performance and which others limit or hinder it
• "Voices from the Office" - a video that introduces three distinctive motivational needs (for achievement, affiliation, and power), and helps participants begin developing different strategies and tactics to fit those needs
• A powerful "Feedback Model" for conducting win-win performance review discussions with direct reports
• "Identifying barriers to implementing change" - a team exercise to provide the groundwork for effective performance improvement planning