Simply put, a sales manager is the person who is responsible for leading an organization’s sales team.
In a large organization, they may report to the sales director or head of sales, while in smaller companies, they will likely report directly to the CEO or managing director.
The role can vary depending on the size and type of the organization – and the product or service it sells – but generally sales managers are the professionals setting sales goals and quotas, and pushing their team to hit them.
As leaders, sales managers are generally responsible for hiring and firing, identifying where training is needed and providing it, mentoring sales reps, and assigning sales territories.
Their role also includes creating sales plans and analyzing data in order to make informed decisions. They will regularly report back to directors on progress – and may even have a hand in steering the future of the business.
Everything they do contributes to their goal of hitting sales targets and generating profit for their company.
A sales manager’s role consists of many duties – here are some of the most important:
Setting sales goals is one of the main aspects of a sales manager’s job description. Of course, it’s not as simple as plucking an ambitious figure out of thin air and overworking your team in order to hit it.
Sales goals need to be exciting, but they also need to be realistic – consistently failing to hit targets will not be well-received by the board and will quickly de-motivate your team. But if you set them too low, you may be holding back the business’s bottom line.
As a result, much of a sales manager’s role involves analyzing both historic and real-time data to deduce:
What the sales goals and targets should be
How close their team is to hitting them
What needs to change in order to get their team on track to hit their sales goals
Another important part of a sales manager’s role is building a comprehensive sales plan that maps out a clear route to hitting these goals and targets. This task is pretty involved, as it should incorporate different sales techniques and strategies and play to the strengths of their team and value proposition.
In order to develop a workable sales plan, they will also need to proactively experiment with different techniques and perform A/B testing to see which plan gets optimal results.
Once the plan has been implemented, the sales manager will assign quotas to each individual and team, considering their experience and strengths. They will then monitor their team’s progress and may increase or decrease the quotas accordingly.
It’s likely that training will be required in order for sales teams to hit their quotas.
Sales is a fast-moving industry – particularly since the advent of social and online selling. It’s important to keep up with the latest, most effective techniques, and to provide the necessary training for sales teams to be able to make the most of them.
The sales manager should be able to identify gaps in knowledge and provide the relevant sales training. If individual sales reps are struggling – or are new to the business – they should also provide one-to-one mentoring.
Motivating the sales team is a huge part of being a sales manager. Many sales managers cultivate energetic work personalities, designed to encourage their team and get them to close more deals.
Work perks – such as social events, dress down days, and office beers – are common tactics worth considering. However, in a money-driven industry like sales, financial incentive programs are huge. The sales manager is typically in charge of administering incentive programs, which involves finding a delicate balance between motivating sales reps and protecting profit.
Every company has a bunch of key accounts that are too important or too valuable to leave to a newbie. This is why sales managers will typically keep an active watch over these accounts – and step in to help where required. At smaller organizations, they may even take on these accounts themselves.
The sales manager is in the best position to identify the people they need on their sales team in order to hit their targets. At some businesses, they will be in charge of hiring and firing, whereas at others they will still be highly involved in the process. Once new hires are made, they will also be tasked with onboarding them.
Working environments in sales vary wildly depending on the size of the organization and the services or products they sell. However, sales teams generally foster their own working environment that feels slightly different to that of the rest of the company.
While there will be exceptions to the rule, sales environments tend to be fast-paced, high-pressure, and money-driven. And this is especially true for sales managers. Professionals in this role must therefore be extremely resilient and able to thrive under a large amount of pressure.
In most businesses, sales managers will operate both in their internal company headquarters, and also in the meeting rooms of the leads and clients they visit for pitches and meetings. In many cases, they may also be required to visit their company’s international, national, regional and local offices or branches, and in some cases, the offices or branches of their dealers and distributors.
Nowadays, much of a sales manager’s job may also be performed remotely. Some companies have strong home working policies, which means that some – or even all – of their time could be spent working from their house. Since their job often requires a lot of travel for in-person meetings, sales managers will also need to be able to work remotely from planes, trains, and cars – and everywhere in between.
Given the diversity of sales manager job descriptions, people who aspire to this job will need a wide variety of skills.
Here are the essential skills that sales managers need to have:
General sales skills
Recruitment skills
People skills
Training and mentoring skills
Communication skills
Forecasting skills
Financial, and general numeracy, skills
Public speaking skills
Leadership skills
Technology skills
Organizational skills
While sales qualifications no doubt help, most of these skills will need to have been earned on the job.
Furthermore, as the sales manager role is a senior position in the hierarchy of a sales team, employers will value experience in creating and implementing sales plans, as well as a proven track record of performing well in a sales rol