The document discusses seven virtues that are important for sales managers: wisdom, fortitude, hope, moderation, fairness, charity, and trust. It provides examples of how each virtue applies to the role of a sales manager, such as using wisdom when reviewing sales data from CRM instead of just chastising reps, having fortitude to confront both star and weak performers, maintaining hope combined with action to achieve quotas, moderating data collection and usage, ensuring fairness for teams, individuals and customers, showing charity when reps truly deserve another chance, and building trust with reps through predictability and dependability. Developing these virtues can help sales managers create value and growth.

1. For the Future,
Sales Management
Requires Virtues
Pain Points of Sales Management and How to Overcome Them

2. Nikolaus Kimla
Email: n.kimla@pipelinersales.com
Website: www.pipelinersales.com
CEO at Pipelinersales Inc.
Written by...

3. Perhaps more than other more average fields, you really
need virtues in sales management.
The bottom line: if you don’t clearly understand how a
sales manager needs to be poised for the future, you
reduce the chances of creating value and growth.

4. These virtues are not innate qualities of human
beings—they are qualities which, if put into practice,
bring about a better life for the person and those around
them. They are qualities of responsible behavior. Virtues
do require actively and consciously bringing them to
be—they will not just “show up” in a person’s character.

5. Technology
a Part of Everything
Today we are entering a new dimension—technology is
now bearing down on us, quite literally. Some examples
are biotechnology, which is causing us to question our
very understanding of what is human, and the financial
sector, where high tech has been the order of the day for
some years and will continue to be.
Are we handling technology correctly?
What standards guide our thinking and action?

6. Freedom Requires
Responsibility
As we’ve seen in countless examples through the
years—automobiles and aircraft being 2 obvious
examples—technology can bring incredible degrees of
freedom. But with all freedom, it must also be
accompanied by responsibility.

7. Freedom Requires Responsibility
In sales management terms, technology gives freedom
to look in on sales reps and monitor what they're doing,
in considerable detail. Responsibility enters in with what
the sales manager does with that data: it can be used
for heavy control—or it can be uses for actually enabling
salespeople
The vast freedom brought about by today’s technology
is what necessitates the virtues that I am laying out
here.

8. Virtue 1: Wisdom (Latin: Sapientia)
Contrary to what some might think,
wisdom is not the same as intelligence.
There are many extreme examples
throughout history of despots who were
highly intelligent but lacked any form of
wisdom and were cruel and destructive as
a result.
It could be said that wisdom is
intelligence used with judgment.

9. Virtue 1: Wisdom
An example of how wisdom comes into play in sales
management is in the way CRM is used. A sales
manager could say to a sales rep, “I see you only made
10 calls today, made 1 lead and created no new
opportunities.” But a whole other approach might be
more wise—coaching and mentoring might have far
better results than simply chastising the person.

10. Virtue 1: Wisdom
Another aspect of wisdom deals with when to be firm,
and when to be more relaxed. If you're constantly being
firm and pushing on your team, you can exhaust them.
On the other hand if you're constantly relaxed and are
actually too friendly, your team doesn't respect you.
Remember: you're not aiming to have your team fear
you, but to have them respect you.

11. Virtue 2: Fortitude (Latin: Fortitudo)
Our next virtue is fortitude, or courage.
The need for courage comes into play all
throughout a sales manager’s job. You
need to confront your team. At the same
time, you need to confront your boss, the
COO, the manager, the board, and the
directors.

12. Virtue 2: Fortitude
You must be able to confront both the strong and the
weak members of your team. Your “stars” can often be
the harder ones to confront, because you might fear that
they'll quit. It's always easier to go to the weak ones and
tell them what they have to do—but fortitude requires
being able to confront and handle both types.

13. Virtue 3: Hope (Latin: Spes)
Most people think of hope as something
done in the mind, with no action. But that
is not what I mean by this particular virtue.
In this instance, hope includes action. The
kind of hope I mean includes and is
connected to action.

14. Virtue 3: Hope
For example, you as a sales manager will be issuing
quotas, and working with each member of the team to
get them achieved. Hope is that ingredient of optimism
that communicates to the reps that you indeed believe
they will make those quotas.
Your hope for the future, combined with the actions that
you take to actually shape that future, are what, in the
end, will bring that future about.

15. Virtue 4: Moderation (Latin: Temperantia)
Moderation is a term the business world
does not generally like to see. And it’s
true—we certainly don’t want to
“moderate” our financial results.
So how does moderation apply to sales
management?

16. Virtue 4: Moderation
It very aptly applies to the oceans of data that come
into a sales organization. It applies especially to
businesses that have no plan, and that let too much
information be collected. That data, in turn, can no
longer be processed.

17. Virtue 4: Moderation
Moderation is required when obligating employees to
collect data. It is needed when using instruments and
processes to increase the value of information that is
collected, found and used. It extends from the
parameters set for data collection, through to the
specific technology utilized for the collection, storage
and analysis of that data.

18. Virtue 5: Fairness (Latin: Iustitia)
Fairness is a broad subject that relates
back to the age-old subject of justice.
Justice, as we have seen in today's world,
can go quite astray. So fairness and
justice are very important subjects.

19. Virtue 5: Fairness
In sales there are different kinds of fairness in all
different areas. There fairness to your team, the
individual, in compensation, in commissions, to the
customer, and to the other parts of the company.
Fairness, like wisdom and other virtues, requires
responsibility. You must take the responsibility to be
able to see what fairness is, and how it would be
applied in any given situation.

20. Virtue 6: Charity (Latin: Caritas)
What is Charity?
Is it when you don't fire the person that is
constantly underperforming?
No. Charity stops before laziness.

21. Virtue 6: Charity
But if you see someone who is really trying, it could be
you might give him or her another chance. Charity
certainly does mean giving people chances, giving
people options—but only when they deserve it.

22. Virtue 7: Trust (Latin: Fides)
Then we get to Trust, which is the most
important virtue of all.
An example: Once a salesperson has
gained some understanding of a buyer,
the next thing they must build is trust.
When you build trust with the prospect,
the prospect is telling you their fears, their
problems, what goes into the selection
process, and why they are evaluating
solutions.

23. Virtue 7: Trust
In sales management, the most important thing is to
build trust with your reps.
If they don't trust you and you don't trust them, how can
you be a team?

24. Virtue 7: Trust
As a final word on trust, I will quote renowned
management expert and economist Fredmund Malik:
“What is meant by integrity of character? What is a
personality with integrity? Books could be written on this
subject, and indeed many have been. Much of what is
written is terribly obscure, impenetrable and metaphysical,
and very complicated. All the philosophical discussion of
this topic boils down to something very simple: People
must mean what they say, and act accordingly.”

25. Virtue 7: Trust
“Consistency is just as important as predictability. Most
people understand trust as a general, somewhat unclear
emotion or feeling. Through trust may be accompanied by
emotions, this does not necessarily have to be the case,
and emotions are, above all, not particularly dependable.
Trust is built on the foundation of predictability and
dependability.”

26. I hope these virtues can assist you
in better performing your role
as a sales manager!

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