This is outstanding! Sadly, it's not new news. Back in the mid-2000s Dave Stein and others published a lot of research comparing spending on front line manager training with all other training. It was a small percentage of spending--on one of the highest impact jobs in selling.
And there has been continued research on this, yet it doesn't get the attention it needs.
Now with AI, we see much reporting about dramatically increasing spans of control for front line managers. Which further exacerbates the challenge.
Separately, just as we know it's important to provide ongoing coaching to our front line sellers, it is equally important to provide coaching to management. It's not just training and tools.
Thanks Dave. Not a new problem for sure. I avoided actually talking about AI in the post but I think the impact means an increasing span of control for people (pushing the rep:manager ratio closer to that 1:10 number) and a lot more technical responsibility. It's entirely possible a future front-line manager role will mean equal parts people and tech management responsibility.
This is outstanding! Sadly, it's not new news. Back in the mid-2000s Dave Stein and others published a lot of research comparing spending on front line manager training with all other training. It was a small percentage of spending--on one of the highest impact jobs in selling.
And there has been continued research on this, yet it doesn't get the attention it needs.
Now with AI, we see much reporting about dramatically increasing spans of control for front line managers. Which further exacerbates the challenge.
Separately, just as we know it's important to provide ongoing coaching to our front line sellers, it is equally important to provide coaching to management. It's not just training and tools.
Thanks Dave. Not a new problem for sure. I avoided actually talking about AI in the post but I think the impact means an increasing span of control for people (pushing the rep:manager ratio closer to that 1:10 number) and a lot more technical responsibility. It's entirely possible a future front-line manager role will mean equal parts people and tech management responsibility.