Gartner Identifies the Top Three Priorities for Sales Leaders in 2020

According to Gartner, Inc., three critical areas — sales manager effectiveness, prospecting and early pipeline activities, and account growth — are top priorities for sales leaders and their organizations’ success going into 2020. Gartner polled CSOs and other sales leaders about their critical priorities, as well as the underlying initiatives they believe will drive successful execution of those priorities, and these three areas clearly emerged on top.

Speaking to an audience of more than 1,000 sales leaders at the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference 2019 in Las Vegas, Matt Dudek, vice president in Gartner’s sales practice, shared how CSOs should develop and communicate their sales strategy to the C-suite and the broader sales force to execute on these 2020 priorities.

Priority 1: Promote sales manager effectiveness

According to the Gartner Global Labor Market Survey, 38% of sellers quit because of a bad direct manager, but that is just the beginning.

“Sellers aren’t just leaving because of the occasional ‘bad apple’ manager, they’re leaving because there is a whole orchard of bad managers,” said Mr. Dudek. “However, good managers — and a culture that supports dedicated and effective managers — can help retain high-quality talent by up to 15% to 30% and help sellers onboard faster.”

Vital attributes of good managers include integrity, reliability, the availability to listen, demonstrated leadership and a firm understanding of sales today. However, these are just the start. Gartner recommends that sales leaders ensure effective managers take three key actions:

• Facilitate seller judgment to promote business ownership and encourage a network of collective team support.
• Increase team innovation to dig into deal-level challenges and insights, and allow for ideation for novel approaches to deals.
• Provide meaningful, actionable coaching that creates ongoing dialogue and can be tailored for personalized development.

Priority 2: Improve prospecting and early pipeline activities

Although most marketing teams are responsible for the top end of the funnel, Gartner research reveals that most sales teams lack confidence in marketing, rejecting 55% of marketing-qualified leads.

“Part of the problem lies in the difference in perception of what makes a high-quality lead,” said Mr. Dudek. “CSOs need to implement the use of progressive qualification filters, such as fit-based, threshold-based, and buying journey-based filters, to identify high-quality leads. This qualification enables sales to focus on those most likely to convert and convert at higher margins.”