Experiencing the Experience

Q) What is the toughest task for a line Manager?

A) Line Managers mental model of experience faced by his sales personnel being a close approximate of the experience as actually felt by the sales person while going about the task of attaining goals.

For any line manager to intervene and suggest changes, be it at the individual or business level, he has to know the experience as faced by his team.

To clarify the above, let me explain with my area of operation.

I was managing a team in Mumbai for an online product, where the Mumbai market was divided in 4 zones. Each zone had a designated sales person handling a given set of relationships with our channel partners viz. Bank Branches Each sales person had roughly the same assigned relationships

It was observed that business in different regions varied widely. South Mumbai was at top and West mumbai ahead of andheri was last. There are a series of question that I went through

1) Do the varying figures be a reflection of Sales persons ability or the inherent nature of market, Hence South Mumbai being on top can or cannot be assigned to Sales person.
2) What is the potential of each relationship that the sales person is handling and should the targets be a reflection of this.
3) What are the right things that south Mumbai person is doing that has led to results.
4) How is individual personalities of sales personnel (including mine) enabling or affecting a “relationship based sales model”.
5) How is the existing business model an enabler or otherwise for sales numbers

I guess there are no easy answers to above question but only choice left for Line manager is to himself be a part of the action and develop appropriate models if he has to meaningfully intervene.

Guess the above para applies at all all levels in corporate hierarchy.