How to Effectively Manage a Sales Team: 4 Key Areas

1. Sales Leadership

A sales leader's task is to guide the team toward top results while also cultivating a healthy team culture. When a sales manager is a strong leader, the sales team consistently performs well, feels motivated, satisfied, and loyal.

The most important trait of a great sales leader is mutual trust between them and their sales reps.

In terms of leadership, a sales manager handles the following activities:

• organizing regular team meetings and setting their agenda,
• fairly structuring the commission system,
• tracking individual sales reps' performance,
• planning contests, rituals, and other team-building activities,
• offering support and consulting reps on their challenges.

2. Recruitment

A sales manager's responsibility is to build a team of excellent salespeople who quickly adapt to the company and embrace its values.

That’s why they play an active role in the recruitment process and handle the following tasks:

• headhunting, identifying, and reaching out to suitable candidates,
• conducting interviews and preparing assessment assignments,
• creating an onboarding plan—from day one through the first-year anniversary.
  
  

In some companies, this agenda is handed over to the HR department—but that’s a mistake. Only the sales manager truly understands what type of salesperson the team currently needs. Moreover, experienced sales candidates are far more impressed when they’re approached by their potential future leader rather than a junior HR employee.

3. Sales Process Management

The sales manager is responsible for setting up and continuously updating the sales process—a series of steps that sales reps and their potential clients must take to successfully close a deal.

Every company is different, so a sales manager should avoid copying templates from other businesses or internet articles. Instead, analyze the best deals your company has ever closed and break down all the successful actions on both sides that led to the close. These milestones will form the foundation of your sales process.

Don't confuse the sales process with a sales handbook. A handbook educates salespeople on their daily tasks (such as conducting meetings, making cold calls, or creating call scripts), whereas the sales process illustrates the shared journey of the sales interaction.

4. Education and Mentoring

To ensure ongoing improvement, a sales manager must establish an effective training system for the team. Only when salespeople grow and succeed can the customer base and the entire company grow with them.

You should train your team in at least four fundamental areas:

• Market and customers – understanding the specifics of your industry,
• Product and competition – getting to know the product they’re selling and how it differs from competitors,
• Sales – learning methods and techniques to sharpen their sales skills,
• Technology and tools – effectively using tools that simplify their work, such as CRM systems.
  
  

Sales training needs to be systematic. If you only send your team to a training session once per quarter, they likely won’t improve as much as you'd like. A proper training system includes everything from a comprehensive onboarding program lasting several months to regular cycles of sales and other training sessions.