Are you really welcome?

Your salesperson just dropped you off at the airport following a few days of sales calls. A hand shake, a wish for your safe return home, and a polite invitation for a return visit wrap your departure conversation. You retrieve your roller bag from the trunk and head off to priority check-in. Another successful deployment into your salesperson’s world. You are really adding value to her life.

The car door closes. A mighty exhale fills the sealed interior of the vehicle. The low speed exit from the curbside release lane begins as a blur. There are other cars entering and exiting, but the scene is virtually soundproof and without sensation to her now. She is merely thinking about breathing. As the tires roll, the past few days are beginning to wash away, draining first from her face, down through her body and soul, until they leave her fingers and toes and feeling begins to return throughout her. She has survived. As she builds speed leaving the airport property, her natural world begins to reassemble in her mind. Kids. School. Soccer. Family. Dinner. Groceries. Exercise. She remembers that she is that full person she abandoned just a few days earlier. When you arrived in town.

As sales manager, you have a fiduciary obligation to step into the micro worlds of your people. You must know their customers, make sure deals are closing, and keep everyone on task and on strategy. You place precious value on side by side time spent to build rapport and impart your philosophies about how business is conducted. Your presence and your demeanor drive accountability and enable you to report to management with the confidence of having the pulse of your business. It is indisputable. No other responsibility in your role as sales leader trumps this one in terms of the opportunity to lead and win in the marketplace.

But many sales managers stand in this space with only these considerations in mind. They fail to consider the person who is driving you around for 3 days. The pressure inherent in your visit. The disruption to the flow of her work. Her life.

Are you helping or harming? Will you be welcome next time?

Watch for these 4 warning signs that you may be wearing out your welcome with your salespeople.

You only go on “milk runs.”

You know the milk run. That’s when every sales call you make is to a satisfied customer. All smiles and goodwill. The customer seems to go out of his way to tell you how much he loves your salesperson. A close colleague of mine used to say that if you’re not having a conflict of some sort in every meeting, you’re not talking about the right stuff. That doesn’t happen on the milk run.

Does your salesperson place genuine value on her relationship with you? Does she know that you’ll bring constructive input to any situation you encounter in your joint customer meetings, good or bad? Unless you are establishing a supportive rapport with your salesperson that invites healthy conflict and problem solving, you’ll probably never find yourself in meaningful, consequential customer meetings. Your presence won’t help close deals and raise the bar higher. You’ll just keep circulating on the same milk route.

You dominate customer meetings.

It’s a natural thing. When you insert yourself between your salesperson and his customer, you bring a certain celebrity element into the room. You are the heavy hitter from the corporate office. Suddenly there are a few more people in the customer meeting. Higher level counterparts from the customer’s organization join in. They look to you for insights, scoop, concessions.

It’s easy to let that attention go to your head. Be careful. Your success with the customer leading up to this moment has flowed through your salesperson. Once you leave the scene, that needs to continue. Don’t grab the stage. Remember, anything you commit to during the meeting because your ego is telling you to grab the reins, you will own. Do you really want to sign your name to the many follow up actions that will flow from your words? Stand behind your salesperson with your full support. He is the expert. Even though you may know the answer to the tough question, appreciate that he may be employing an overall strategy that calls for finesse. Don’t change the game for him because the spotlight is temporarily shining on you.

Your salesperson has a brief meeting after the meeting, without you.

You’ve seen it. The meeting wraps up. In between the handshakes and the parking lot, your salesperson slips away for a moment to reconvene with her primary contact. There is a brief summation of the meeting, and your salesperson tells her customer not to worry, that she’ll call him tomorrow to clarify things. You get in the car thinking you’ve saved the day for your salesperson. Not so fast.

If your idea of a good joint call with your salesperson is to introduce surprises at the meeting, something your employee and your customer are hearing about for the first time, you’re missing the point. Any unexpected information you bring to the meeting is a disruption to the relationship. It may be necessary information, but it isn’t up to you to decide to drop it spectacularly onto the conference table. Before your meeting, brief your salesperson on any information you want to introduce, or any provocative questions you want to pose. Be open to any objection to that material, based on her understanding of the players and the dynamics at the meeting. There is no fire. If there is any topic that is potentially sensitive, you can agree on a way to convey that following the meeting, or get a signal during the meeting from your team member to go for it.

Your customer’s main decision maker avoids meetings when you are there.

This one is a big one. It could signal serious trouble. Perhaps the last time you were there, you agreed to a customer request, then didn’t deliver or reversed your position. Or perhaps your salesperson hasn’t done his due diligence to arrange to get the proper people beyond the regular players into the meeting. But the next reason is the big watch out.

Your salesperson may be playing himself against corporate in his conversations with his customers. He is providing all the services and support he can, but corporate keeps undermining his efforts by raising prices and gutting programs. Consistently showing up at customer meetings without your comparable level counterpart in attendance is a good indicator that your salesperson isn’t advertising your presence. He doesn’t want you in conversations with the people he’s been manipulating to think you are the antagonist. Make sure your arrival is preceded by confirmed meetings, with written agendas, and a complete attendee list.

Back to the airport.

That invitation for your return is sincere, complete with tentative dates and targeted appointments. Your salesperson is genuinely grateful to you for the assistance you’ve provided, and feels her business moving ahead with more momentum. She solved most of the problems on her plate and can see her way through to tackling the rest.

The exhale in her vehicle is measured, not desperate. Her thoughts don’t race to her personal responsibilities, interests and loved ones. They don’t need to because she didn’t need to set them all to the side while she focused entirely on managing her high maintenance manager. You gave her the space to think clearly, and brought an empathetic and supportive approach to helping her succeed in the marketplace. She learned from you and you learned from her.

And here’s the secret. You don’t have to consume all the oxygen just because you’re the leader. Just breathe normally.

And let your salespeople breathe normally too.

You’ll be welcome on your next visit.

Lead well.

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