Managers aren’t coaching

Because upper-management can now see every deal in CRM/PRM, frontline managers spend a lot of time cleaning, analyzing & glorifying the data and learning all the intimate details of every partner deal (in case someone asks). As a result, front-line managers are spending more time as data jockeys and less time with their team and partners in the field.

Front-line managers aren’t afforded the time needed to coach and help their Partner Management team adopt, practice and perfect best-practice partnering behaviors, so they’re not driving for incremental performance improvements. As a consequence, new Partner Managers end up learning by inefficient and costly trial-and-error, while experienced Partner Managers just continue doing “what they’ve always done”.

This results in poor partner sales performance overall and stunted Partner Management growth, development & improvement, leading to more poor partner sales performance. It’s a never-ending cycle!

Front-line managers already spend time with their Partner Managers collecting deal information, clarifying deal details, providing suggestions for next steps and obstacle removal, and visiting partners and customers together. By reframing the situation, front-line managers can repurpose that time into coaching partnering skills. Any conversation with a Partner Manager can be turned into a coaching opportunity if the front-line manager is paying attention and is disciplined in the way they execute that conversation.

Cultures are created from the top down through language, repetition and action. Reestablishing your front-line managers as partnering coaches will improve their understanding of the partner deals their teams are working, lessen the need to massage the way deals are recorded in CRM/PRM, increase the accuracy of their forecasting and incrementally improve the overall partner sales performance of their team.