The challenges of the salles manager in the current business environment

When it comes to thinking about sales leadership these days, most executives just don't get it. Chief sales officers - and even chief executive officers, who recognize that the sales organization drives top-line growth - often have an incomplete notion of the CSO's job. Sure, they understand that leading the modern sales organization takes much mote than motivating and managing salespeople. In recent years, the sales manager have had to devote considerable time and energy to establishing and maintaining disciplined sales processes, including everything from customer segmentation to sales staff compensation. Given the complexity of those processes, even well-run sales departments have to work hard to get them all operating smoothly. The heightened expectations of customers, peer executives in other functions, and the sales force itself require the head of sales to shoulder mew responsibilities, ones that have changed the job almost beyond recognition from what it was 20 years ago. In this article are presented the ways in which the business environment has changed the sales chief's job. Then the article describes the new roles that sales leaders increasingly must play.