Managing people is frustrating and time consuming, yes?
Who wouldn’t want a sales team working brilliantly together, to delivery the business strategy, and customer plans,you have worked hard together to create.
In sales, the skill of adapting your style to connect with customers is one of the most crucial competences.
According to Insights Discovery, there are four management styles. Knowing your own preference and learning how to harness the others, is a gift all sales people should be given ( more of that later).
Have a look at the first Insights Discovery style:
What things are your Fiery Red sales managers driving for this week?
Are they driving your sales agenda, cutting through to the relevant jobs and making things happen with customers?
Or have they left a trail of destruction behind them by being too demanding and competitive?
Are people feeling motivated by strong clear direction, or stressed out because of the high challenge they are experiencing?
What is Fiery Red Energy?
Here are some adjectives to describe this style of manager:
Competitive
Demanding
Determined
Strong willed
Purposeful
This style of sales manager is active and moves in a positive and forward direction. They have a strong determination that influences those they interact with and are single-minded in their focus on results. They approach others in a straightforward manner and will value competence, efficiency and effectiveness. When dealing with this type of manager they would prefer you to be brief, be bright and be gone!
How they help the team
I’ve had a few sales managers like this and they can be extremely useful! They take no nonsense and keep their customers on track. They are unlikely to be distracted from the job in hand and won’t be the ones giving away the margin. They will defend the business to the hilt and sort out problems. Mistakes will only be made once with this style of sales manager.
When Fiery Red Energy gets in the way
Once we understand the gifts of a Fiery Red manager we will appreciate that when these strengths become overused this energy can get in the way of high performance. On a bad day they will get frustrated and angry when things go wrong. Their high impact wrath can leave people with a puzzled look on their face as if to say “What did I do?”
This manager under pressure will leak the following behaviours:
Aggressive
Controlling
Driving
Overbearing
Intolerant
The Fiery Red preference means that there will be a focus on high challenge rather than high support. This means that the support team can be run ragged. The challenge for the Fiery Red energy sales manager, is to adopt a more supportive role, and take on board the softer skills that are required to develop strong and long-lasting customer relationships.
How can you help your Fiery Red sales managers ( or yourself, if this is you) adapt behaviour to get better results?
Complete our contact form in the top right of this page now, and Lucy will arrange your free profile, as a gift from us.
Look out for the EARTH GREEN MANAGER next…