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How can these Jobs be
compared?
Although very different jobs, in the end both an Airline Pilot
and a Sales Manager have:
q
Company critical, highly skilled, revenue
generating jobs
q
Clear, time bounded goals.
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The Sales Manager
The Sales Manager's clear single goal is to plan and manage his/her
sales team to reach or exceed his sales $ Goal within a fixed
time frame (eg: annual, or in some companies this may be a quarterly
or monthly) allowing for the economy and any other conditions
that may arise.
As a final outcome, failure to meet Goal will result in curtailment
of employment of the Manager and some of his/her people, or the
demise of the company itself.
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Back to the Pilot
To help the Pilot accomplish his task, he or she:
1. Receives extensive training and/or conversion training on the
type of aircraft to be flown, its systems and the company's operating
procedures
2. Has a very clear understanding of his/her destination and published
time of arrival.
3. Completes and files a Flight Plan that details the routing to
destination, plus estimated times in view of forecast winds and
weather, etc.
4. Has a sophisticated Navigation Systems that tells the Pilot in
real time his exact position, distance and bearing to next waypoint
or destination, plus estimated time to that point based on ground
speed, etc.
5. Has sophisticated instruments that tell the Pilot what height
he is at, rate of climb or descent, compass heading, so that the
Pilot can take corrective actions if the plane is off course or
off its correct height etc.
Back to the Sales Manager
At the other end of the spectrum, based on working with 100+ companies
and some 5,000+ sales managers, most Sales Managers and Executives
that I have met:
1. RARELY receive Sales Management training and/or conversion
training onto their current company's systems tools and operating
processes
2. DO HAVE a very clear $ Goal assigned to them;
3. DO NOT HAVE any real Plan that details how they will achieve
or exceed their main $ Goal in view of the economy, customer base,
target markets, available resources etc
4. DO GET after the fact reports, which are typically ridden
with errors, to detail how much their team sold the previous month;
but have no accurate way of forecasting and predicting how close
they will be to making their main $ Goal by year end.
5. RARELY have a comprehesive set of instruments or any accurate
dashboard that tells them whether they are trending well towards
their short or long term $ Goals, so that they can take corrective
actions in time.
As a result, I see poorly trained Sales Managers struggling without
appropriate tools or processes, and hoping that they will make
their year end $ Goal, and as someone said, "Hope is not
a Strategy", so this is why so many companies invested
in For Sales Managers Only which gave them:
q
Improved Sales Results and Productivity
q
Training for the Sales Managers and often,
the whole Executive Team
q
A Sales Strategy with measurable Plans
q
A predictive System that told each Sales
Person, each Sales Manager, and the whole Company, whether they
would or could make their $ Sales Goals
q
If not, what they must do differently, or
better, or more often, to make their $ Goals!
Summary
Safe execution of flights is demanded, and so tools with the appropriate
training and check rides is the norm for pilots.
Sales Managers are normally promoted from sales and given little
of the above. No wonder that so many fail!
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