What Is Sales Management?

Think of sales management like a sports team. Have you ever heard of a top-ranked sports team without a coach? Of course not. The coach provides the guidance, inspiration, strategy and training that enable players to win. The best sales managers operate the same way: inspiring, educating and guiding their teams to maximise revenue.

The result? Consistent sales growth and a happy team — not to mention sisable commissions, a strong culture, greater employee recruitment and retention and of course, happier, more loyal customers. In this article, we’ll explore sales management best practices, critical skills and sales tools to help build your sales team.

What you’ll learn:

• What is sales management?
• What is the sales management process?
• What are the different types of sales management roles?
• What do various sales management roles have in common?
• What are the most important sales management skills?
• What are some typical sales management responsibilities?
• What are the best sales management techniques?
• What are the best sales management software & tools?

Sales management is how sales managers organise, motivate and lead their sales reps while tracking — and improving — team performance. This includes hiring and retaining top talent, training sales staff, building a healthy sales culture, co-ordinating operations across the sales department, creating sales management strategies and implementing a cohesive sales strategy that drives business revenues.

An effective sales management process includes hiring and training a skilled sales team, setting team-wide goals, developing a sales strategy, managing leads, forecasting, and reporting.

The sales management process revolves around four key elements: people, performance, process and planning.

At the core of sales management are the people who make up the sales team. When you’re building a high-performing team, it’s important to understand the individual strengths, motivations and development needs of the various team members. Also, it’s important to create a positive team culture with the right blend of personality types and specific sales skills, as this ensures a variety of approaches and perspectives, which can better meet diverse customer needs. Need someone to bring in new business? Hire a team member who’s done that, not somebody whose focus has always been upselling. Make sure the person fits the desired positive outcomes the position requires.

Setting up the right metrics and KPIs to track performance is critical. Effective sales management involves setting clear expectations and measuring against goals, providing timely feedback and coaching and recognising and rewarding achievements. It doesn’t just stop at expectations though. It’s equally about empowering your team to understand what it means to be accountable to themselves in relation to their job. It’s about continuously improving and ensuring that each team member is equipped to perform at their best. Tools such as Salesforce Trailhead are a big help with this, offering training in sales operations, proposals, contracts and negotiations and much more across a variety of industries and roles. And if your team hasn’t checked out Salesblazer, it’s also a great resource for advice from other sales pros.

A sales process is a defined series of steps designed to convert prospects into customers. This provides structure and guidance for how sales activities are conducted, from prospecting to closing deals. It should be very stage specific and should require the capture of specific “exit criteria” before moving to the next stage.  Early on, you collect baseline data to determine your initial process based on a specific hypothesis. As you scale, you use that data to dial in the process. An indicator of a strong process is that it actually helps your forecasting and determination of when revenue performance will become more predictable.

This is wrapped around all the other Ps. Successful sales management requires strategic planning to set objectives, define strategies, allocate resources and anticipate challenges and opportunities. It’s critical to develop actionable plans that align with broader business objectives and remain ready to adapt as circumstances evolve.

As part of the sales management process, a sales manager specifically does the following:

• Hires, trains and motivates top talent
• Sets goals for the sales team including forecasting
• Formulates a sales management strategy to achieve those goals
• Executes that strategy while managing and motivating staff
• Evaluates and reports on sales performance, adjusting as necessary.
• Works with the Sales Operations to get a sales CRM to track performance and manage customer data
• Works with sales and marketing ops to improve collateral and customer outreach

To ensure the sales management process is executed well, managers need specific sales management skills and strategies. These can be gained through on-the-job experience or via training modules like those available through Salesforce Trailhead.

Sales management is broadly defined as the sales leader who oversees a team of salespeople. That being said, there are more than a dozen types of sales management roles. From business development to sales manager or account manager, each role has its unique responsibilities. Here are some of the most common roles:

Involves selling products or services from one business to another. It typically entails longer sales cycles, higher-value transactions and a focus on building long-term relationships.

Example: A sales director at a cybersecurity software company who leads a team of sales professionals selling cybersecurity solutions to other businesses.

Solution selling is a technique that focuses on your customers’ needs and pain points and provides recommendations to solve them. This is often a collaborative process where you work closely with a customer to define a business problem and explore customised options to help.

These proposals might contain information about competitor products or solutions, why your solution is a better option and how your product or service will solve the customer’s business problems.

Targets large organisations as customers, requiring a strategic approach tailored to complex decision-making processes, multiple stakeholders and longer sales cycles. This role often involves selling high-value solutions customised to meet specific enterprise needs.

Example: A vice president of sales leading a team of sales professionals focused on selling complex software solutions to large organisations, like Fortune 500 companies or multinational corporations.

Focuses on selling software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, characterised by subscription-based models and ongoing customer relationships. It requires a deep understanding of technology, recurring revenue models and a focus on customer success and retention.

Example: A sales leader at a cloud-based project management software company who oversees a team responsible for selling subscription-based software solutions to businesses of various sizes.

Across the B2B, B2BC, enterprise and SaaS sales management spectrum, the fundamental goal remains consistent: driving revenue through effective sales strategies. Each role involves leading a sales team, setting targets and implementing strategies to achieve business objectives. Another important similarity is that all of these roles need to ask questions such as:

• How do we hold everyone accountable to the 4Ps?
• How do we do things professionally and politely?

While the overarching principles of sales management apply across all these roles, the nuance lies in understanding the unique characteristics of each market segment, tailoring sales approaches accordingly and navigating the specific challenges and opportunities they present.

]To ensure effective sales management, sales managers should focus on mastering the following skills:

These are the skills all leaders need to have to ensure strong performance. They include sales training, sales coaching, conflict resolution, change management. Additionally, it’s understanding the difference between leading a team and managing the individual. Without this, everything else will fall apart.

Set targets, create forecasts, assign areas of coverage and design lead-generation tactics.

Lead day-to-day operations and offer feedback and guidance. Hold meetings with your team virtually or in person on a regular cadence. Don’t forget to check in often to see if salespeople are having difficulties or need help.

Address concerns and issues as they arise and find solutions quickly. This includes interpersonal problem solving, especially as people have shifted to remote or hybrid work arrangements.

Analyse and compare the overall business strategy in conjunction with strategy success and team performance. Sometimes the business strategy may need to shift. Other times performance discussions will need to take place. Tools such as artificial intelligence, analytics, CRM and sales performance management systems can help.

Keep staff motivated and working hard with the right incentives and realistic and ambitious targets. Offer mentorship and upskilling opportunities and provide detailed, actionable feedback regularly — not just when yearly reviews come round.

When all these elements are in place, sales managers can help their team achieve their targets and have a positive impact on the bottom line.

The best sales leaders understand that most people on their sales team actually want to get out of their job through promotion.  When you understand this and work to encourage your team members to reach beyond their own limiting belief systems, this will have the greatest impact on your career as well as theirs.

Some sales management duties, broken down by role, include:

Chief Revenue Officer: This role oversees the full go-to-market strategy by managing both sales and marketing departments. They help align these departments with a single strategic vision and reduce the friction and silos that often exist between sales and marketing.

VP of Sales: Their job is setting the strategy and taking the pulse of everyone else in the sales org. They help a team avoid making old mistakes. A healthy culture at this level involves execs regularly sharing their experiences with those at other levels.

Sales director: They reconcile the strategy created by the VP executives or C-suite with what’s happening on the ground. Their job is not to dictate, but rather to facilitate communication up and down the chain of command to ensure  the support the sales managers need. They figure out what’s getting in the way of the sales teams hitting their performance targets and eliminate those obstacles.

Sales manager: This is the frontline manager and their job is coaching, training and facilitating regular communication with the sales team to ensure everyone is staying on track.

Everyone: It’s the responsibility of everybody on the sales team to find any gaps and keep an eye out for what their direct reports might be missing. Everyone watching each other’s backs is the hallmark of a high-performing sales team.

According to our State of Sales Report, 82% of sales reps say “they’ve had to adapt quickly to new ways of selling” while still being held to their targets. Effective sales management needs to focus on helping their teams succeed in challenging conditions by providing training, feedback and accurate and realistic forecasting.

Let’s take a deeper dive on what techniques a successful manager should leverage to ensure their sales team is productive:

The first step to ensuring successful sales is finding, hiring and retaining the best sales staff. Managers must invest the time up front to secure the best people for the job. The top candidates are both a good cultural addition to a business and are aligned with team goals.

Once the right people are on board, managers should invest in their growth. According to our State of Sales Report, sales professionals largely say they value coaching from their manager, but only 26% get 1:1 coaching at least weekly.

Specifically sales skills improvements. Teaching reps how to earn the right to ask questions, which questions to ask and when to ask them is the most important thing to help your team succeed. Additional training topics like new products and value propositions, understanding the competitive landscape, industry knowledge and lead generation are also critical. Sales training and coaching is never one and done. It must be consistent and customised not only to the team but also to the individual based on their specific skills gap.

The third key technique used in successful sales management is a combination of forecasting and tracking. Sales managers need to forecast revenue for deals that are “in the bag” as well as likely sales from future leads along with the company’s revenue targets. This determines what sales goals should be set for future quarters. Also, forecasting should pinpoint holdups in the sale pipeline so the sales team knows whether to focus on lead sourcing, relationship building or closing deals in the months ahead.

To ensure there is no confusion, the sales manager should track the same metrics each quarter and make their forecasting transparent. Everyone should know how the team is performing, preferably in real time. This allows both sales reps and sales managers to understand the team’s progress compared to quarterly goals while also allowing them to pivot when priorities change.

A sales management system (also referred to as sales management software or sales CRM) is a programme that’s designed to make the sales management process simpler and sales data more accessible. Salespeople can use the system to manage contacts, track deals, generate reports, forecast future leads and revenue and easily complete administrative tasks so they can focus on sales calls.

Today’s sales management systems are sophisticated, often incorporating a wide range of customer and prospect information, including social profiles, online activity, connections within online networks and other details. Artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics are common features, too, allowing staff to generate sales predictions and lead recommendations within seconds.

It’s been said that if you give people tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them. The best sales management software allows sales reps to connect to their team, customers and leads remotely and in real time. This includes sales management systems, video conferencing hardware/software, social media management platforms, intelligent automation tools, conversational intelligence and presentation tools.

You may be wondering: What about in-person sales (also known as field sales or outside sales)? While there are some analogue tools still used in field sales, many field reps are swapping clipboards and business cards for laptops, tablets and smartphones. Our State of Sales Report highlights this reality: Nearly 6 out of 10 of all reps interviewed said that buyers prefer to engage with companies via digital channels. Another crucial fact: Nearly one-third of deals are closed completely virtually It’s no surprise that cloud and mobile apps make up most of their toolkit.

The best sales management systems combine functionality once spread across different tools or apps. Look for platforms (typically CRMs) that include the following:

• AI-powered coaching and feedback capabilities
• Quota tracking
• Sales team productivity tools
• Automatic data capture

With all of this centralised, sales staff can complete tasks like customer follow-up, team check-ins, workflow updates and contract approvals both in and out of the office — as long as they have Internet access.

Perhaps the best way to expedite all of this is to leverage intelligent automation. Ideally, this technology will be folded into your sales management system so you don’t have to fuss with call logging, voicemail drops and follow-up email sends. Just set up a “macro” - or trigger - for the system to take a desired action and you easily eliminate manual tasks. The best software also lets you automate tasks and manage all of your sales processes and information in one place, so you have a single source of truth.

Oh and any sales management system worth its salt should have an intuitive mobile app, too. Key mobile features include geolocation that supports navigation in the field, push notifications for in-the-moment updates on accounts and, of course, AI-driven bots that can complete basic tasks with simple vocal or written commands.

With virtual selling the name of the game, reps must be equipped with quality cameras, audio equipment and videoconferencing software so they can conduct professional sales calls. In some cases, built-in laptop cameras, speakers and microphones will suffice, but it’s always a good idea to test your equipment to make sure it delivers a high-quality experience for prospects. If not, consider upgrading to high-definition, high-fidelity equipment.

Also, make sure that you set up reliable, intuitive video conferencing software for your team. Ideally, pick something that doesn’t require prospects to download new software just for a sales call. If that’s not possible, pick software that’s highly rated and widely used.

You can also use AI to help unblock deals and identify next steps in video calls. With Einstein Conversation Insights, conversation intelligence is built into your CRM, automatically transcribing recorded video calls and flagging key moments so you can see what customers like and dislike about competitors — without listening to the entire call.

A 2023 study by Global Web Index found that 78% of Internet users turn to social media when looking for information about brands. And where customers are, sales reps should be, too.

A variety of social sales tools help reps track customer activity on social media. These are often called “social listening tools.” Reps can simply plug in keywords or topics they want to follow and track a regularly updated feed of customer comments and questions about the topics they’ve selected.

Other apps can help sales staff generate and curate applicable content to post online, either in company feeds or in response to clients’ posts. In fact, Salesforce has its own cutting-edge tool in this space that’s part of our Marketing 360 platform.

Sales call scheduled? Now it’s time for your team to polish their presentation. However, this often ends up being tedious and cumbersome. To make life easy on your reps, roll out a drag-and-drop presentation tool so they can create decks in minutes. Make sure that you pick one with a large image library and lots of easy customisation options so each deck can be tailored to the prospect.

Now that you know the core skills, techniques and tools of sales management, it’s time to put it all together. The key to managerial success is consistency and commitment — take the classes you need to skill up, test techniques to see what works best for your team and experiment with the tools that fit your unique needs. Management isn’t a “one-and-done” project, so be sure you revisit your goals, strategies and strengths/weaknesses every quarter to find ways to improve. Onward!