How To Be a First-time Sales Manager with Katie Bodell

Mark McGraw talks to Katie Bodell, the Senior Customer Success Manager at Numerator. Katie opens up about her journey into sales management–sharing her successes, missteps, and the strategies that truly work.

To find our handout for this episode, click here.

You’ll learn how to navigate the pitfalls of bad leadership, coach your team to success, and create an environment where everyone thrives.

• Katie Bodell starts the conversation by sharing the lessons she learned in her first year of sales management.
• She also talks about her journey into sales and why she decided to pursue sales management.
• Katie believes all leaders have to lead by example. When you lead by example, people will naturally be drawn to your actions and want to emulate your behavior.
• Mark and Katie talk about the negative stereotype around sales and selling–and how sellers can learn to engage with skeptical customers.
• According to Mark, sales is not about shoving products down people’s throats. It’s about identifying problems and helping people solve those problems.
• Katie’s advice to people going into sales management–understand that the skills that made you a good individual contributor are not the same skills that will make you a good manager.
• Unfortunately, many people get into sales management for the wrong reasons. They want to be the boss because it sounds cool, or they’re excited about a pay and title bump.
• For Katie, it's cool to want to be a boss, but it's not cool when you're a bad boss.
• According to Katie, the litmus test that you should go into management is whether you’re genuinely motivated to help other people.
• Although Mark believes there are a lot of bad managers out there, he believes good management is a skill and anyone can learn to become a good leader.
• Love and enjoy what you do. Because if you don't like what you're doing, you are just wasting time.
• As a first-time manager, you might feel like you have to have all the answers. The truth is, you don’t.
• Mark explains why you don’t have to have all the answers and why sales leadership is more about fostering a culture of inquiry, curiosity, and thoughtfulness.
• Mark and Katie agree that the best way to coach someone is to let them coach themselves. Guide them to answer their own questions and figure out stuff on their own.
• Your goal as a leader is to be the person who coaches people, not the person with all the answers.
• Mark covers the biggest mistake most new managers make--they go in and do the work instead of letting their people do the work.
• When you do the work for them, you’re taking the opportunity away from your team to become self-sufficient.
• Mark and Katie break down the dilemma of managing your friends after being promoted–so you can keep the friendships and still get work done.
• The benefits of keeping notes of each individual on your team because everyone’s different and you need to understand what drives every individual on your team.
• Katie reveals how she became successful at reinforcing and changing people’s behavior.
• The key lies in making it fun and engaging, so that people want to show up to work and want to implement the things that they’re learning.

Mentioned in This Episode:

BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/follow

Sandler.com

BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/sandler

Katie Bodell on LinkedIn

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg

BuildingYourSalesEngine.com/2