Visionary sales: sales managers must be able to lead their staffs toward fulfilling the company's vision. (Selling Insight).

To be successful, sales and marketing managers must be leaders and know in which direction the organization is going. In financial services, leaders must have a vision of what the organization will be in the future and a plan of how to get there. A cohesive sales strategy can help insurers find an advantage in the marketplace in the face of growing competitive pressures.

Unfortunately, most sales managers in our industry have not been prepared and do not know how to develop a vision for their organization or a plan to achieve that vision. In many cases, the organization itself lacks a corporate vision, which leaves the sales manager without a strategy to comply with or support. To remedy this situation, insurers must take steps to assure that their sales management teams are capable of and supported ha managing the sales function on the basis of a clear vision and plan for success.

Even in the case of companies that have a clearly articulated corporate vision and strategy, sales managers are typically not properly prepared or equipped to develop a sales strategy for the organization. Most sales force managers rise to the lead sales position because they were good at selling--not good at supervising other salespeople. The closest experience most sales managers have to developing a vision and strategy is developing a budget with sales projections focused on premium volume and pricing considerations.

Most sales force managers, even if they are inclined to do so, are distracted from strategic planning by several factors. First, because strategy issues are generally foreign to their experience, new sales force managers revert to concentrating on "working deals" instead of building a cohesive plan.

For example, a sales executive may be tempted to focus on leading the negotiations of the company's largest account to improve the value of that one deal by 10% to 20%, but the distraction from refining the entire company's sales strategy to its optimal state could reduce the value of all sales by 5% to 10%. Unless that one large account makes up more than half of the company's business, time tradeoff is not worth it. By getting lost on that one single deal, sales managers risk minimizing their value by applying their expert knowledge to just a few select transactions.

To be successful in today's environment, the manager of a company's sales three must search for ways of providing unique value to clients while increasing time value the sales force provides to the company. This requires taking a broad view of the market over a longer term than most managers have been called upon to do in the past. They must examine factors influencing the competitive capabilities of their organization beyond current competitors and products.

Often, sales managers lack the appropriate tools and authority to develop a strategic vision and plan. Few sales organization managers have any training in strategic planning and even those who do have little access to appropriate data and analysis to use in developing a vision and supporting plan. A successful vision and plan cannot be developed in a vacuum. To plan where the organization should go and how to get there, the manager must first know where the organization is currently and what strategic options are available.

To remedy this, the sales manager must be trained in competitive assessment and planning as well as provided with access to competitive information and analysis on a regular basis. The company must also make it clear that the manager's responsibility is to plan and facilitate the long-term results of the organization, not merely conduct current sales efforts. Authorizing the sales manager to delegate responsibility for current sales efforts and to develop a set of sales management processes focused on the longer-term strategic direction of the sales organization is key.

As managers of professionals, sales and marketing managers must do several things to maximize the distribution of their expertise:

* provide direction (a vision and a plan);

* furnish appropriate support (tools, training, budget, etc.); and

* give insightful feedback about performance and improvement.

This leveraging of knowledge is key because it distributes expert knowledge across many people; enhances existing knowledge with forward looking fact-based analysis; and improves organizational preparedness and flexibility by focusing on competition in the future.

Gregory J. Hoeg, a Best's Review columnist, is vice president, corporate strategic planning, American Reinsurance Co. He can be reached at [e-mail].