In most cases management and sale management are previous salespeople who have been promoted up the corporate ladder to supervisory roles. Often these people might have been more productive, efficient and even happier – and perhaps earning more income had they been left in their previous position. Salespeople often make the “worst managers’ and “sales managers”. Hence it is not unexpected that sales managers make mistakes all the time. Because they once were “sales people” they often feel that their job is to manage sales rather than staff. Yet it can be said is to manage the selling skills of other through motivation, training and supervision.

It’s harder and find to find a salesperson in 2011 “on the road”. Standard Technological innovations fax machines , cheap long distance and toll free 800 numbers , email and the high cost of physical travel and lodgings have all but made salespeople hard to come by – if not close to extinction. Yet in some lucrative industries – or perhaps to overseas clients who “just want to be called on” reps and salespeople are still on play knocking on doors and shaking hands of clients and potential customers. What are the most common mistakes one should watch out for from you as a direct manager of supervisor for salesperson on the floor or covering a territory?

First avoid the temptation to use the sales force to collect data from the field. True they may be “at the front lines’ and technology with laptop computers and tablets , along with easy to use software makes it a breeze yet all in all your salespeople are one of the most expensive employees in your company and using them to do anything but sell is just plain foolish and foolhardy. In this day and age such low end task can be farmed out to less expensive staff or in many cases “outsourced”.

Next in line is the procedure and practiced of using call reports as a form of control rather than a communications tool.

You would be amazed that even in the pre-computerized systems era how prevalent it was with controlling management blurting out with the greatest of power and authority “we have post marks”, as if they had great control over their staff in absolute terms. First of all, it seldom increases productivity and efficiency. Secondly it breeds low morale and even contempt. Lastly , even as humor, you would amazed at how far most younger staff people are at using technology and have outsmarted the “old men at head office ” . Usually some of them have overcome your system or feed you exactly what you are expecting, long before you have implemented these careful systems. Leave productive employees alone to do their work – and earn the firm profits.

As a corollary of above try not to impose too many standards. Instead of standardizing sales efforts, managers should train sales-people to expect specific efforts to yield specific results.

At the end of the day or the firm’s year end it’s always a case of a small group of salespeople producing the lion’s share of sales revenue and especially profit for any company or indeed organization. Hence as a sales manager it’s often better to have a more hands off yet supportive role with staff – if you want good long term organizational growth, sales and profits.

Author Bio: Shaun Z. Stevens Fire Your Boss How to deal difficult Boss Delusional Behavior in Management