My engineering-brained president is pushing salespeople toward the ‘I said it once, don’t make me babysit you’ communication style that forces the salespeople to put their cowboy hats on their laps. My style is more carrot than stick, but I guess I should make the carrot as big as possible.

My engineering-brained president is pushing salespeople toward the ‘I said it once, don’t make me babysit you’ communication style that forces the salespeople to put their cowboy hats on their laps. My style is more carrot than stick, but I guess I should make the carrot as big as possible.

In my experience, a good sales rep will look for every edge and consider any piece of information that will give him or her a leg up on a competitor. A rep for my former company once proudly announced in a very public venue that he never bothered reading e-mails from Marketing. That unfortunate soul was crucified in a very public way so that there would be no misunderstanding about the company’s expectations or this rep’s future.

To say “leaders surely need to do not more listening but more ignoring” is, frankly not useful either to you or to anybody in a leadership position. A good leader is not just open to information, but actively seeks it. The wisdom comes in deciding what to do with that information.

I would, therefore, suggest you consider Ms. Kellaway’s comments as anecdotally interesting but not strategically helpful.

I have been in your position, as have my staff, in the past and do have a number of suggestions.

- Matt Heinz has it absolutely right. There must be alignment between Marketing and Sales in terms of strategy, priority and the management and measurement of expectations. There should not be an “us” and “them”. This alignment should be cultivated over time and reinforced by senior management fiat.

- The launch of a new product or program should be done formally, most advantageously at a regularly scheduled sales meeting to which the key marketing folk are invited. The whys, whats, hows and whens would all be carefully laid out to ensure full understanding and buy-in. Subsequent communications should be minimal, important and useful and accompanied by a note from Sales Management.

- Rogue activity should not be tolerated. You have a team with a common play book and a singular goal to achieve. Anyone who does not get that belongs on the sidelines.

- A final note. Phone calls are indeed the weapon of choice for sales reps. They take care of the urgent and important in a way e-mails cannot. But beware, reps can ‘manage’ the phone even better than they can manage e-mails. In the end, it all comes down to what the rep is committed to.

Nothing new there.

In my experience, a good sales rep will look for every edge and consider any piece of information that will give him or her a leg up on a competitor. A rep for my former company once proudly announced in a very public venue that he never bothered reading e-mails from Marketing. That unfortunate soul was crucified in a very public way so that there would be no misunderstanding about the company’s expectations or this rep’s future.

To say “leaders surely need to do not more listening but more ignoring” is, frankly not useful either to you or to anybody in a leadership position. A good leader is not just open to information, but actively seeks it. The wisdom comes in deciding what to do with that information.

I would, therefore, suggest you consider Ms. Kellaway’s comments as anecdotally interesting but not strategically helpful.

I have been in your position, as have my staff, in the past and do have a number of suggestions.

- Matt Heinz has it absolutely right. There must be alignment between Marketing and Sales in terms of strategy, priority and the management and measurement of expectations. There should not be an “us” and “them”. This alignment should be cultivated over time and reinforced by senior management fiat.

- The launch of a new product or program should be done formally, most advantageously at a regularly scheduled sales meeting to which the key marketing folk are invited. The whys, whats, hows and whens would all be carefully laid out to ensure full understanding and buy-in. Subsequent communications should be minimal, important and useful and accompanied by a note from Sales Management.

- Rogue activity should not be tolerated. You have a team with a common play book and a singular goal to achieve. Anyone who does not get that belongs on the sidelines.

- A final note. Phone calls are indeed the weapon of choice for sales reps. They take care of the urgent and important in a way e-mails cannot. But beware, reps can ‘manage’ the phone even better than they can manage e-mails. In the end, it all comes down to what the rep is committed to.

Nothing new there.

Part of the problem is that informational emails aren’t time sensitive. It’s info that they need or is beneficial at some abstract point in the future–salespeople don’t think that way.

Part of the problem is that informational emails aren’t time sensitive. It’s info that they need or is beneficial at some abstract point in the future–salespeople don’t think that way.