Whether your manager is getting promoted or fired you one day you will have new leadership.  This new leader will need to get to know you.  You need to show this individual the ‘y0u’  that you want them to get acquainted with.  Here’s how!

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When you started your day in the office yesterday, one of your fellow sales professionals steps to your desk and says “We are supposed to meet in the conference room in 10 minutes.  Something is up!”

While sitting in the conference room, you are informed that your current manager is taking a different position, and a new individual will manage your unit.  The new manager will be meeting with each of you individually within the next two weeks to get to know you, and to stimulate sales in the unit.

There certainly is nothing unusual here.  If you are fortunate enough to be in a sales position for any length of time, you are likely to get a new sales manager.  A new manager might come as a result of a promotion on the part of your current manager, or possibly a termination.  Regardless of how it happens, it moves you into a special mode that will force you to prove up!

The new manager who might be from the outside, or might be a peer, yet they would be “new to you” in terms of managing you and your team’s performance.

What does this mean?  For many of you, this is the chance you need in order to start over.  For some of the others, it is time to prove yourself all over again.  Getting the opportunity to show your worth, and your ability to “make rain” is important when you remember that it is your career and your near-term future at risk.

Politics or Good Business?

Job moves come as a result of a number of factors, including office politics, lack of results, promotions, transfers out, or even death.  When they happen, the ripple effect that they cause can be either a shock, or a benefit to sales professionals as it signals not only change, but a new order as well.

This type of change can have a positive effect on the careers of some, or a negative jolt to those who thrived under a particular manager, or type of management.  If the management change is a good one you may even have an equal amount of positives and negatives to the new order.

Overall, it is good to have change, and you as a sales professional can benefit from the “new order” if you take a few measures of preparation.

Always be Prepared

You know that this is going to happen, so let’s plan how we benefit from this inevitability.  Your new manager could come from your own sales unit, a neighboring sales unit, or from the outside of the organization.  The tenets of what I am proposing will work regardless of the origin of the new manager.

• Treat the discussion like an interview. Be prepared to discuss your sales process (Black Sales Journal 9/12/11, An Interviewing Essential – Communicate Why You are Successful).
• Discuss your short and long term plan.
• Admit your shortcomings, if any. Be prepared to admit your shortcomings and how you are remedying them.
• Discuss key prospects and customers in depth. Remember, that is the job of a sales manager, and they will have to answer questions from their superiors on these important issues
• Set-up your follow-up meetings. As you know open communications with your manager are important.

Make the New Management Work for You

Arrange as early as possible to do the following items:

1.) Tap the knowledge

Here is your opportunity to get something you might of value.  Seize upon the knowledge and skill base of the new manager for any benefit you can get.  Learn anything and everything that you can from the new manager – this includes product specialties, sales skills, and prospecting tips.

2.) Involve the new manager

As early as possible invite the new manager to go on some good sales calls with you.  You choose the calls and clients, and thus the situation.  Show them that you are the sales professional in front of the client.

3.) Ask for advice

As difficult as it may be to do it, ask for advice.  A new manager that formerly was a peer might be the last person you want to ask this question, yet it serves to show what they are going to suggest in the future.  Swallow some pride and ask questions.

There is something to learn from any sales professional, and it is your job to pull from those areas that can give you benefit.

Keep In Mind

You are powerless to do anything about a change in management, but you’re not without the ability to make the change a positive.

Spend some time and effort in establishing the communications, and realize that anything that you can take from the new manager that will increase your effectiveness is a dividend.

This gives even more credence to the fact that you must always be the professional, as you have no idea who your next manager will be.  He or she could be sitting next to you.

We welcome your comments.