Article • 6 min read
Getting started with sales management: Everything you need to know
A comprehensive guide for new sales managers
By Patrick Grieve
Last updated June 9, 2023
When it comes to growing your business, your salesforce represents the tip of the spear. And sales managers—well, they’re the ones making sure the spears are all sharp and pointing in the same direction.
If you’re new to sales management, you will probably feel more comfortable pointing your team in the right direction once you understand everything the role entails, how it fits into an organisation, and what you can do to make it all feel a bit less challenging.
What is sales management?
Sales management is the art of supervising sales representatives and guiding sales processes designed to close more deals.
The term “sales management” actually does not do justice to the job. Most sales managers are in charge of managing at least three separate components…
People
Hiring, training, coaching, and regularly monitoring and helping your sales reps.
Processes
Building and maintaining a standardised sales process with clear steps and objectives your reps can follow.
Sales
Overseeing opportunities and shepherding them from prospecting to closing; analysing wins and losses to gain insights and conduct forecasting.
Of course, all three aspects are connected. Setting standardised sales processes helps you manage a unified and productive team able to close more sales. It’s critical that you stay invested in each component of sales management without losing sight of the overarching goal.
Why is sales management important?
Sales managers are instrumental in getting all their reps aligned on a common sales process. Managers can implement specific sales methodologies, such as MEDDIC and MEDDPIC, which give reps a shared framework for understanding and gauging opportunities. They can also spearhead certain sales management strategies, such as agile methodology, to make their team more efficient at converting sales.
Besides revenue growth, sales managers serve a critical role in the hierarchy of an organisation. Most act as a bridge between their reps and the company’s management team, such as directors and executives.
It’s a messenger role that goes both ways. Sales managers can rally reps behind leadership’s objectives and initiatives, from new revenue goals to product launches. They can also take all of the customer feedback that reps receive and pass that perspective on to leadership.
Sales managers also help create more sales managers. Most start out as reps, receive mentorship from a sales manager, and eventually rise through the ranks. Once a rep becomes a manager, they can offer the same guidance to their team members.
Learn more: What to look for when hiring sales reps
What are the core responsibilities of sales team management?
Sales managers are expected to empower their reps in a variety of ways. Keeping a team focused and on task is a big part of day-to-day operations. At the same time, managers need to nurture reps at each stage of their development, from new hires to those aspiring sales managers themselves.
Training
Getting new reps familiar with their roles and responsibilities is a huge part of sales management. The onboarding process should include information about your products and customers, the sales process your team follows, and the technologies they use.
Coaching
It’s not just newcomers who can benefit from your experience and advice. You should be able to help all sales reps improve their performance. Provide regular feedback, mentoring and tutorials on new processes and technology.
Monitoring
Make sure everyone’s doing their job—and doing it well. Track the performance of your reps by looking at key metrics that indicate success and show they are adhering to your sales process.
Motivating
As you probably know, sales can be a dispiriting line of work. Rejection is a common experience. Encourage your reps to be focused, productive and able to bounce back after disappointments.
Salespeople are often competitive by nature, so friendly sales contests can often keep reps engaged. Just be sure to keep them fun and not stressful.
Goal setting
Part of managing is getting everyone pulling on the same side of the rope. Hammer home your team’s common objectives, and regularly check to see how reps are making progress towards them. Make sure your team is targeting broader company-wide goals, as well.
The more you manage, the better idea you get of your team’s capabilities. Work with leadership to establish or adjust realistic sales goals for your reps.
Communicating
As a sales manager, you are a critical source of information for many people in your organisation. You need to keep reps aware of what’s happening in the company. You also need to keep leadership informed about your team’s status, concerns and ideas.
Facilitate an open and collaborative work environment by keeping your reps in conversation with one another. Solicit input from everyone during sales meetings and lead productive, engaging avenues of discussion.
Learn more: Running successful sales meetings
What sales management tools do you need?
After learning everything involved in sales management, you may be even more intimidated than before! How are you expected to keep track of all your sales reps and the countless opportunities they are targeting?
The good news is you don’t have to do it empty-handed. You can use a client relationship management (CRM) system to track all your company’s leads and customers and your sales reps’ interactions with them.
A CRM like Zendesk Sell makes it easier to see how your reps are doing. The Rep Performance Dashboard shows their total sales, average deal size, number of deals won, quota attainment, pipeline conversion rates, and loss reasons.
Sell lets you build sales pipelines and allows managers to prompt their team to complete tasks at any stage of the pipeline. And if you see that a key piece of information about a prospect is missing, you can nudge the rep in Sell and remind them to get that info on their next sales call.
On a more macro level, Sell documents your deal success rate, helping you gauge the effectiveness of your chosen sales methods. Sales managers may wish to experiment with different sales processes and use their CRM to measure the results to determine which works best.
Your CRM can also serve as a platform for other tools that make life easier for you and your reps.
Sell integrates with many additional sales software tools to make work faster and more efficient. The Google Calendar integration, for example, lets you connect Google Calendar, Google Contacts and Google Tasks to Sell. The two-way sync of all meetings, contact info, and to-do lists with your CRM makes it easier to keep track of important events and information.
Similarly, the Zapier integration allows you to automate tasks with “Zaps” that trigger specific actions whenever certain events occur.
For example, you can automate Slack notifications whenever a deal is won or lost, updating you on what’s happening.
Zapier also enables you to connect over 2,000 other apps to Sell, from Slack to Shopify. Almost any software you and your team rely on can be grafted onto your shared CRM workspace.
Getting a grip on sales management
Sales managers have much to focus on—a lot more than just the bottom line. A lot of training, strategising and collaborating goes into closing deals–and sales managers oversee all of it.
No one said sales management was easy, but don’t make it any harder than it has to be. See how you can simplify the art of sales management with a free trial of Zendesk Sell.
