Giving unsolicited advice, if the manager was an agent before which is at least common in my industry - they may just know things you don’t as they were in the role and able to get deals closed faster.
I don’t think agents hear it enough - sales managers bonus and job is based off of the agents performance. The more money you make, the more money they make. Killing deals for you wouldn’t help them.
This is the most common scenario, top performing salespeople get promoted to sales managers and get a piece of the pie. In many industries at least.
A not-so-emerging trend, however, is that sales managers are also responsible for more than just managing their reps and helping them close more deals (and better deals). They also have to know manage up, sideways, be involved in industry events, be a voice in cross-functional projects, be the go-to person for their market/region/etc and god knows what else.
The challenge is that most sales managers are still, at heart, the same top performing reps and were never trained to be these leaders of people. They want to be this person and want to succeed. Sometime just don’t know how to.
Call it ego, call it an unwillingness to ask for help, call it pressure to perform, call it “wanting to do the right thing and still failing” just fill in the blanks. Only a few that are able to navigate all of this are successful and continue to move and while still being “loved” by their people.
The real “success” metrics outside of the sales numbers are the new leaders a manager creates.
In my opinion, that’s the REAL job of a sales manager, or any manager for that matter. How do you TEACH what you know to someone else that’s still learning.
I’m a sales leader; I see my role as
- removing road blocks
- help them understand how to make deals that win for them and the company together
- show them where the guard rails are to work within
When they understand the boundaries and the way to win for themselves and the company, they can than go about their days and use me as a resource; to remove the road blocks
As a top preforming sales rep I would say their job is that they work for me, they take obstacles out of my way and make sure I have the run way to be successful. They advocate for me.
Be encouraging but never validate so that you always feel just the right amount of discomfort in your performance so that you’re always motivated and never content?
1) Knows literally everything about the product/ business
2) Knows how to push a sale forward at any given moment
3) Proper hunter mentality and knows everything there is to know about prospecting, closing and nurturing.
In short - He helps me achieve quota and makes me a better sales person.
I've had my share of shit managers but the one I work under right now is what a good manager should be like.
As a Headhunter, one thing that I’ve noticed, and I agree with everything you’ve just said, is that your best sales managers were never the number one sales rep. The number one sales reps usually don’t make good sales managers because they’re too competitive, they want to win, and they don’t want anyone to be better than them. The best sales managers I’ve recruited or seen promoted are usually number three, four or 5 in a team of say 20 or 30. they’re in the top 10-20% but they’re never number one.
That’s an interesting take, certainly something I’ve seen come true over and over. And something I’ve seen in myself and others I’ve hired/promoted myself. So clearly I’m also part of the problem because it’s easy and also because we hire by committee rather than what’s good for everyone involved.
But by doing this we also do a disservice to some potentially amazing future leaders because we don’t want to invest our time and efforts in DEVELOPING our top performing front line ICs.
As the highest titled sales person at my company my job is to know everything about our products, the sales process, and be able to put that all together for our team members and customers.
Sometimes I’m straight up paid for vibes and title. Someone needs to support our sales people and title matters with certain customers.
Someone that fights your battles for you internally so you can get on with selling.
Process getting in your way or internal resources exceeding SLA or falling behind expectations? Escalate to the sales manager to drive an outcome you need. Don’t have the enablement, tools, etc to do your job effectively? Let your sales manager bring that up to those that can execute on change.
Also, protects you from any shit flowing downhill from higher up. C-Suite wants to know where that important deal is at, or why it’s pushed out of the quarter, or what’s closing this week, or has questions about your performance? The sales manager can field those queries and shield you from micromanagement.
Had that plenty. Absolutely useless, you’d be better off not having them, because with them, they also take credit for the work you do to resolve the c-suite concerns/queries.
In a good work situation:
- inspire and teach
- keep you level headed
- keep team morale up when things are tough
In a bad work situation:
- make you feel bad
- tell you to update salesforce
- pedal an arbitrary target number made up by a exec board who doesn’t understand how to sell s***
If SFDC is up to date, I don't have to ask you what's going on... And all the leaders above me won't have to ask you to validate what I've told them.
When I was a rep, updating the crm was the easiest unlock...
"I have everything documented in crm.... MEDDICC, Next Step, Close Plan, forecast stage... Stage Weighted Forecast is X, Best Case is Y, Gut is Z. I'm headed to the bar."
Understand how to do the job by doing it, support the team with that understanding by demonstrating how and what to do. They don't always need to carry a target, but they should be capable of joining any call and adding value to the process. They should be able to align the work of the team so that reps are acting consistently, everyone understands their territories, what's expected of them, and that by performing at that level they will succeed more often than not. They can use aggregated data from the team to manage up in terms of feeding back customer insights into strategic decision making, and pushing back where needed to protect the team from undue micro management or interference that will otherwise harm or slow the sales process. They need to be able to spot talent and bring quality, well suited personalities into the team, rejecting assholes early. They need to be able to have honest and constructive conversations with their reps, and not afraid to act fast if someone isn't pulling their weight. It's hard enough finding someone who can sell the product, let along capable of doing all the rest, which is one of the reasons sales managers have a terrible rep.
My job is to stay out of my salespeople’s way and let them sell while supporting them and that process. It’s also my job to absolute roast anyone else on the senior leadership team that does anything that negatively impacts my team or customers. I will throw them in a metaphorical dumpster in a professional businessy manner.
Currently a sales manager (please put down your pitch forks).
I try to be whatever each individual sales rep needs from me at the time. New? Show them what good looks like. Veteran? Ask them what they need. Typically involves pulling data and helping strategize where they can make the most $$ by focusing their efforts.
It helps that I started at this company as a sales rep and then a sales trainer so I know our products and customers very well. When in the field I’ll typically tailor it to whatever the rep needs; shaking hands and making big customers feel special. Calming down the angry customers. Helping close the bigger deals etc.
In terms of individual coaching and mentorship; it’s based on the rep goals. If they want to be number 1 they’re getting a lot more feedback and being held to a higher standard. Someone brand new that just wants to learn the role and develop is going to get a lot more field time and coaching.
I also think a good manager builds a team with specific things in mind (I lost one of my best team culture folks when she had her second and became a stay at home so I hired another culture fit instead of the other “stronger” sales candidate and it was a lot better for the team overall).
To help you sell, even though if you look at their sales history with-in the company, they also had down months and multiple months they did not hit company goals… but they will tell you they were the best of the best in sales… most of them couldn’t close a sale themselves these days if they took on your pipeline.
My sales manager's job is to call me first thing in the morning every Monday to ask what I'm doing for the week, despite also requiring everything be entered into SalesForce in detail, then call me throughout the week to check in, and also have a meeting every Friday afternoon to ask how the week went. I truly don't know how I'd manage without him...
Hitting you up every Monday to see what you got cooking then again every Friday to remind you to update your forecast and must wins in SalesForce. Ignore your emails requesting assistance Tuesday through Thursday.
ITT the very clear divide of this subreddit - people good at sales and people bad at sales.
When you are good - it’s nearly impossible to have a bad manager. Anyone toting “give bad advice” or “stress me out about hitting quota” etc is probably someone who isn’t doing what they are supposed to.
Think to yourself - if you were killing it, why would they need to give you advice? Why would they be pressuring you to meet minimum expectations?
Because even if I've overperformed for the quarter, I'm asked to push deals forward that are tracking perfectly (putting them at unnecessary risk) to make the team number better. Yes there are bad managers looking out for themselves.
In my Company I'm a Sales manager, but I'm actually a Sales rep Who covers all the market a for our subsidiary Company. I don't have a staff to manage but I manage Sales projects together with production, customer service and eventually r&d, as our Sales cycle Is pretty long
A manager needs to be valuable to both their reports as a mentor and valuable to the organization as a accurate resource for pipelines and projections, issues, and strategy
Accountability, run reports for the higher ups, help coach the team, help get reps what they need to succeed.
Mike Weinberg has a great book Sales Management Simplified which explains the role really well.
I always thought it was a simple one. All the other aspects of the role aside. The primary role of a sales manager - keep the ball moving forward!
= Truly assist their team in progressing every opportunity through the sales funnel
Send a message every 4 minutes to the group chat about Talk time and taking more calls. And how they need to be on the phone more. And how its not the shitty leads, but the process and our mindset and to keep taking more calls. Saying how they arent a micro manager, but collectively being one in the group chat. Gaslighting us into thinking we are the problem, when in reality, its marketing and lead quality.
Bullshit to upper management about why it’s not their fault they aren’t hitting numbers so they PIP their people to death which buys them another year or so before bouncing to another company or job internally. On the flip side they also bullshit to IC’s about how they are here to remove blockers and help and are their buddy/pal/friend. That is until the PIP happens. Then they treat their buddy like the scum of the earth and are the biggest idiot ever. Or…they are the best people ever stuck between an ahole VP and great ICs and do what they actually can do to help.
It varies role to role. A lot of it is behind the scenes stuff like forecasting, progress communication, debriefs, training and development, assisting with big closes, performance management, handling escalated customer issues, internal leadership meetings that have various purposes.
Depending on the company, its can be lot more than you think. I was in management for 2.5 years and I went back to an individual contributor role.
lets be honest, in some cases it is just a title given to a sales rep(I've seen companies that have a VP of sales and a director of sales and then a sales manager...all while having fewer then a dozen sales reps. Often times a sales manager is just a sales rep that has a little extra responsibility but still makes their money primarily as a producer
So I had a job as 'sales manager' for a fortune 500 company and the sales team had 8-11 reps(in the cellular industry, outside sales/b2b). In my role, we did have to build the team. This was a division that was kind of eliminated and they decided to bring back. I had to help with the hiring and do a lot of training with new reps
As things started moving, I looked at my job as being a coach. I had some experience in sales management...i had owned my own business(in the wireless communications industry and had 2 reps but they had a fair amount of autonomy)..and then I worked for a retailer(same industry) who had 11 stores and let me tell you, that stunk
but when I had my own business, I had one 'acting dealer manger'(he wasn't my boss but he sometimes acted like it)..he was also the GM for the carrier(Nextel). He was a real go getter and I had known him because he was the market manager for a paging carrier before this gig. This guy would call you on Friday at 3 and ask how many more calls you were going to make before the end of the day. He had a lot of success.
So I tried to take some of the good things he did(while not being quite as aggressive or as big of a jerk as he could be). Sales is a numbers game and I saw my job as being to give positive reinforcement and have constructive conversations with people who were struggling(sometimes a pep talk sometimes me calling them out a little bit)..and one thing I enjoyed doing was 'riding along'. I learned a lot because a lot of the people we hired...they had experience in sales and this was really my first opportunity to see how other people approachedd it. I just kind of winged it when I first got into sales(i was the only rep)..and then I started my own business and just kinda played it by ear.
and by doing this I learned about thigns I could do on the backend to help them close deals. I felt comfortable dealing with customers who might be upset about this or that(usually a billing issue but sometimes it could be a coverage issue or equipment issue). I had no problem taking some of these things off the sales reps plate so they could focus on selling. There is nothing that brings down a sales rep more than having to deal with customers who are unhappy(often times at things beyond their control)
I'm using a lot of words to say that I wanted to motivate them and make it as easy as I could for them to focus on selling.
A good sales manager brings knowledge and experience to help you win, not guessing. There job is to hold the team accountable so we can make a lot of money for our VC/PE overlords and then be the bad guy when they have to let us go
I have worked in insurance and SaaS, in my experience the sales leaders job is to (1) ensure a baseline level of training amongst the reps they’re leading and (2) partner with organizational resources to develop sales - marketing - product initiatives to unlock the maximal profitable revenue of their territory.
(1) in my experience is why most sales leaders fail. They’ll spend too much time trying to fix low performers or overly focused on their top performers in good and bad ways instead of trying to raise the level of competency amongst the group.
Supporting their reps while building team camaraderie. Coaching their reps to be successful and recognizing the ones who are successful and learning from them to help others on the team grow
I’ve typically had the best sales managers at every company I have worked at until recently. All my prior managers were lead from the frontlines and had a do anything to win mentality whether it was helping clean or close tough sales. Currently I would be elated to not have a lazy piece of 💩 who thinks “management” is a retirement package and essentially does nothing.
This is always a funny question to me. I’ve been six months in a “Sales Engineer” role and it’s completely different than what most people in here do. I work for an Industrial Automation Hardware distributor. Because I sell to engineers, they expect their sales reps to be engineers. Therefore I am both the outside sales rep and the person in charge of my demos. Our AEs are there for technical support
Sales managers job is to say no to anything that will help salespeople make sales. Then tell the salespeople what they learned from chatgpt. Then say “why aren’t we making money”?
I have a sales manager who has never been in sales and also never been a manager.
If you wonder how is this possible? You should meet my managers boss, it will click.
I was a former top rep for a year straight before promoting. There’s high turnover where I am and there’s pressure involved in same day closing. That said, my job would be to take the sales reps, most of which have very little sales experience, and teach them how to sell. I feel like I get paid to experience anger every single time a rep tells me “they said they want to check their finances” after we did 800 hours of training that buyers are liars in the last week.
It has already been mentioned in this thread but the best sales managers are usually not your best sales person. A common mistake is promoting the best sales person into the sales manager role.
When you think about it, it makes sense. They were very good at working autonomously and succeeding. Now they're in a role that they most likely can't comprehend.
As a former sales manager (now director, but I'm not a representative), it's as simple as hitting quota. We have our quota, and we need you guys to hit yours so we can hit ours.
90% of the time, that means looking for performance gaps that make it less likely for you to hit, and then coaching those. The other 10% is special projects for our boss. If you're strategic, it might be closer to 50/50.
For me personally, I would look at conversion rates through the pipeline and ID low conversion rates. Then present the AE with that finding. 90% of the time the AE would know why that was the case and fix it independently.
Force you to commit deals that you're not ready to in the quarter and then grill you for it not closing in the quarter.
Joking, joking.
This
Giving unsolicited advice, if the manager was an agent before which is at least common in my industry - they may just know things you don’t as they were in the role and able to get deals closed faster.
I don’t think agents hear it enough - sales managers bonus and job is based off of the agents performance. The more money you make, the more money they make. Killing deals for you wouldn’t help them.
This is the most common scenario, top performing salespeople get promoted to sales managers and get a piece of the pie. In many industries at least.
A not-so-emerging trend, however, is that sales managers are also responsible for more than just managing their reps and helping them close more deals (and better deals). They also have to know manage up, sideways, be involved in industry events, be a voice in cross-functional projects, be the go-to person for their market/region/etc and god knows what else.
The challenge is that most sales managers are still, at heart, the same top performing reps and were never trained to be these leaders of people. They want to be this person and want to succeed. Sometime just don’t know how to.
Call it ego, call it an unwillingness to ask for help, call it pressure to perform, call it “wanting to do the right thing and still failing” just fill in the blanks. Only a few that are able to navigate all of this are successful and continue to move and while still being “loved” by their people.
The real “success” metrics outside of the sales numbers are the new leaders a manager creates.
In my opinion, that’s the REAL job of a sales manager, or any manager for that matter. How do you TEACH what you know to someone else that’s still learning.
Hope this helps.
I like it.
This
Make the sales reps life easier so they can focus on doing more deals
Yes. And they have to keep their ego in check. As a SM you have to be ok making less than a top performing salesperson.
lol that's ture
This is true. My goal is to get my reps to pass me in income.
I’m a sales leader; I see my role as - removing road blocks - help them understand how to make deals that win for them and the company together - show them where the guard rails are to work within
When they understand the boundaries and the way to win for themselves and the company, they can than go about their days and use me as a resource; to remove the road blocks
Many manager do not know this, however.
As a top preforming sales rep I would say their job is that they work for me, they take obstacles out of my way and make sure I have the run way to be successful. They advocate for me.
That’s what the position is supposed to entail. Unfortunately, 99% of sales managers don’t understand this aspect of the position.
90% of reps are not top performing…
Generally, because of poor managers
You nailed it.
To email you constantly for reports and updates on the work you would be doing if you didn’t have to constantly provide updates and reports.
In short, a good sales manager blends leadership, strategy, coaching, and adaptability to drive team success and business growth
Best ones I've had jumped on calls with prospects and were good demoing the product
From the perspective of a sales rep:
Give pointless advice?
Be encouraging but never validate so that you always feel just the right amount of discomfort in your performance so that you’re always motivated and never content?
Exactly. That's what my manager did to me.🤐
Lol
I feel this
1) Knows literally everything about the product/ business 2) Knows how to push a sale forward at any given moment 3) Proper hunter mentality and knows everything there is to know about prospecting, closing and nurturing.
In short - He helps me achieve quota and makes me a better sales person.
I've had my share of shit managers but the one I work under right now is what a good manager should be like.
As a Headhunter, one thing that I’ve noticed, and I agree with everything you’ve just said, is that your best sales managers were never the number one sales rep. The number one sales reps usually don’t make good sales managers because they’re too competitive, they want to win, and they don’t want anyone to be better than them. The best sales managers I’ve recruited or seen promoted are usually number three, four or 5 in a team of say 20 or 30. they’re in the top 10-20% but they’re never number one.
That’s an interesting take, certainly something I’ve seen come true over and over. And something I’ve seen in myself and others I’ve hired/promoted myself. So clearly I’m also part of the problem because it’s easy and also because we hire by committee rather than what’s good for everyone involved.
But by doing this we also do a disservice to some potentially amazing future leaders because we don’t want to invest our time and efforts in DEVELOPING our top performing front line ICs.
It is equally true about teachers: the best ones do not go into administration.
Can you give some examples for 2 & 3?
In regards to #3:
As the highest titled sales person at my company my job is to know everything about our products, the sales process, and be able to put that all together for our team members and customers.
Sometimes I’m straight up paid for vibes and title. Someone needs to support our sales people and title matters with certain customers.
Someone that fights your battles for you internally so you can get on with selling.
Process getting in your way or internal resources exceeding SLA or falling behind expectations? Escalate to the sales manager to drive an outcome you need. Don’t have the enablement, tools, etc to do your job effectively? Let your sales manager bring that up to those that can execute on change.
Also, protects you from any shit flowing downhill from higher up. C-Suite wants to know where that important deal is at, or why it’s pushed out of the quarter, or what’s closing this week, or has questions about your performance? The sales manager can field those queries and shield you from micromanagement.
Sales manager at my last job was a sewer pipe hooked up directly to the C suite, sadly.
Had that plenty. Absolutely useless, you’d be better off not having them, because with them, they also take credit for the work you do to resolve the c-suite concerns/queries.
Guy was quite useless as a boss.
I'm no longer with that company.
In a good work situation: - inspire and teach - keep you level headed - keep team morale up when things are tough
In a bad work situation: - make you feel bad - tell you to update salesforce - pedal an arbitrary target number made up by a exec board who doesn’t understand how to sell s***
Yea, this is the norm...and quite often the bad work situation is what is more common. "If its not in salesforce it didn't happen!" Go f off. haha
Why are people so against updating SFDC?
If SFDC is up to date, I don't have to ask you what's going on... And all the leaders above me won't have to ask you to validate what I've told them.
When I was a rep, updating the crm was the easiest unlock...
"I have everything documented in crm.... MEDDICC, Next Step, Close Plan, forecast stage... Stage Weighted Forecast is X, Best Case is Y, Gut is Z. I'm headed to the bar."
Understand how to do the job by doing it, support the team with that understanding by demonstrating how and what to do. They don't always need to carry a target, but they should be capable of joining any call and adding value to the process. They should be able to align the work of the team so that reps are acting consistently, everyone understands their territories, what's expected of them, and that by performing at that level they will succeed more often than not. They can use aggregated data from the team to manage up in terms of feeding back customer insights into strategic decision making, and pushing back where needed to protect the team from undue micro management or interference that will otherwise harm or slow the sales process. They need to be able to spot talent and bring quality, well suited personalities into the team, rejecting assholes early. They need to be able to have honest and constructive conversations with their reps, and not afraid to act fast if someone isn't pulling their weight. It's hard enough finding someone who can sell the product, let along capable of doing all the rest, which is one of the reasons sales managers have a terrible rep.
that's a perfect boss. Unfortunately they're really rare
My job is to stay out of my salespeople’s way and let them sell while supporting them and that process. It’s also my job to absolute roast anyone else on the senior leadership team that does anything that negatively impacts my team or customers. I will throw them in a metaphorical dumpster in a professional businessy manner.
THIS is what we all desire but rarely get. The buffer from upper management and the backing of your team.
And stay out of the way.
Well said.
I wish you were my sales manager.
Don't be a cunt
My sales manager wants to make quick close before NYE without even having a draft contract ready for me to use. Don't be like this.
Needs more upvotes. Source: am director
At my company? Nag us to do all the stupid shit leadership wants done at the worst times. Forecasting all day every day. It’s a crap job IMO.
Turning coffee into quota and excuses into coaching opportunities. Standard stuff.
Ask you what you got cooking every morning is most of my experience lol
https://preview.redd.it/6wmonsmj2s6g1.jpeg?width=553&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a9614ac6e2557a1539a83f61186b48f43bf0b67
Micromanage and play golf.
I’m starting to think I have a better manager than most lol
Or reps on this sub aren’t all top 5-10% who just need internal roadblocks removed.
Let the peacocks fly
A bullshit filter from the top, giving reps time to close deals
A good sales manager is a buffer between corporate bullshit and allowing you do do your job.
They provide any support needed to close a deal. Trust their salesperson and understand what is needed.
Deal with issues that involve different departments.
Perfectly said. Often non-existent.
Currently a sales manager (please put down your pitch forks).
I try to be whatever each individual sales rep needs from me at the time. New? Show them what good looks like. Veteran? Ask them what they need. Typically involves pulling data and helping strategize where they can make the most $$ by focusing their efforts.
It helps that I started at this company as a sales rep and then a sales trainer so I know our products and customers very well. When in the field I’ll typically tailor it to whatever the rep needs; shaking hands and making big customers feel special. Calming down the angry customers. Helping close the bigger deals etc.
In terms of individual coaching and mentorship; it’s based on the rep goals. If they want to be number 1 they’re getting a lot more feedback and being held to a higher standard. Someone brand new that just wants to learn the role and develop is going to get a lot more field time and coaching.
I also think a good manager builds a team with specific things in mind (I lost one of my best team culture folks when she had her second and became a stay at home so I hired another culture fit instead of the other “stronger” sales candidate and it was a lot better for the team overall).
On paper: provide upper management with a visibility summary into the team’s progress and roadblocks.
In reality: insert whatever management joke you heard last here.
To help you sell, even though if you look at their sales history with-in the company, they also had down months and multiple months they did not hit company goals… but they will tell you they were the best of the best in sales… most of them couldn’t close a sale themselves these days if they took on your pipeline.
My sales manager's job is to call me first thing in the morning every Monday to ask what I'm doing for the week, despite also requiring everything be entered into SalesForce in detail, then call me throughout the week to check in, and also have a meeting every Friday afternoon to ask how the week went. I truly don't know how I'd manage without him...
Hitting you up every Monday to see what you got cooking then again every Friday to remind you to update your forecast and must wins in SalesForce. Ignore your emails requesting assistance Tuesday through Thursday.
ITT the very clear divide of this subreddit - people good at sales and people bad at sales.
When you are good - it’s nearly impossible to have a bad manager. Anyone toting “give bad advice” or “stress me out about hitting quota” etc is probably someone who isn’t doing what they are supposed to.
Think to yourself - if you were killing it, why would they need to give you advice? Why would they be pressuring you to meet minimum expectations?
There’s a tad of nuance at the end of this - sometimes the minimum expectations (hitting 100% I assume) are so high that most are not there.
If you truly believe it’s purely a skill issue - I vehemently disagree.
And I’m a sales manager, whose team has unreasonably high goals.
Because even if I've overperformed for the quarter, I'm asked to push deals forward that are tracking perfectly (putting them at unnecessary risk) to make the team number better. Yes there are bad managers looking out for themselves.
"Think to yourself - if you were killing it, why would they need to give you advice? Why would they be pressuring you to meet minimum expectations?"
Gosh, if it were only this simple.
In my Company I'm a Sales manager, but I'm actually a Sales rep Who covers all the market a for our subsidiary Company. I don't have a staff to manage but I manage Sales projects together with production, customer service and eventually r&d, as our Sales cycle Is pretty long
So, I think It's a kind of a mixed bag
To lead the sales team, hit store goals, and keep the sales process running smoothly.
Basically a middle man? lol
ABC. A- Always. B- be C- closing
A manager needs to be valuable to both their reports as a mentor and valuable to the organization as a accurate resource for pipelines and projections, issues, and strategy
Accountability, run reports for the higher ups, help coach the team, help get reps what they need to succeed. Mike Weinberg has a great book Sales Management Simplified which explains the role really well.
I always thought it was a simple one. All the other aspects of the role aside. The primary role of a sales manager - keep the ball moving forward! = Truly assist their team in progressing every opportunity through the sales funnel
To be accountable for your fuckups
Send a message every 4 minutes to the group chat about Talk time and taking more calls. And how they need to be on the phone more. And how its not the shitty leads, but the process and our mindset and to keep taking more calls. Saying how they arent a micro manager, but collectively being one in the group chat. Gaslighting us into thinking we are the problem, when in reality, its marketing and lead quality.
Removing roadblocks for your team so they can sell.
A good sales manager - somebody to blame when shit goes south and actively works to fix it
A bad sales manager - blames the sales people behind the closed door meetings
Tell you to update the CRM. Wait, good one? I’d say chill at the beach and leave you alone to do your job 🤣
To delivery coaching & support to the team, give accurate forecasts, and deliver the number (assuming the number is based of logic and reality).
Bullshit to upper management about why it’s not their fault they aren’t hitting numbers so they PIP their people to death which buys them another year or so before bouncing to another company or job internally. On the flip side they also bullshit to IC’s about how they are here to remove blockers and help and are their buddy/pal/friend. That is until the PIP happens. Then they treat their buddy like the scum of the earth and are the biggest idiot ever. Or…they are the best people ever stuck between an ahole VP and great ICs and do what they actually can do to help.
It varies role to role. A lot of it is behind the scenes stuff like forecasting, progress communication, debriefs, training and development, assisting with big closes, performance management, handling escalated customer issues, internal leadership meetings that have various purposes.
Depending on the company, its can be lot more than you think. I was in management for 2.5 years and I went back to an individual contributor role.
Sales support (when needed.. not micro-managing every opp)… remove internal obstacles / time drains to help maximise selling time
lets be honest, in some cases it is just a title given to a sales rep(I've seen companies that have a VP of sales and a director of sales and then a sales manager...all while having fewer then a dozen sales reps. Often times a sales manager is just a sales rep that has a little extra responsibility but still makes their money primarily as a producer
So I had a job as 'sales manager' for a fortune 500 company and the sales team had 8-11 reps(in the cellular industry, outside sales/b2b). In my role, we did have to build the team. This was a division that was kind of eliminated and they decided to bring back. I had to help with the hiring and do a lot of training with new reps
As things started moving, I looked at my job as being a coach. I had some experience in sales management...i had owned my own business(in the wireless communications industry and had 2 reps but they had a fair amount of autonomy)..and then I worked for a retailer(same industry) who had 11 stores and let me tell you, that stunk
but when I had my own business, I had one 'acting dealer manger'(he wasn't my boss but he sometimes acted like it)..he was also the GM for the carrier(Nextel). He was a real go getter and I had known him because he was the market manager for a paging carrier before this gig. This guy would call you on Friday at 3 and ask how many more calls you were going to make before the end of the day. He had a lot of success.
So I tried to take some of the good things he did(while not being quite as aggressive or as big of a jerk as he could be). Sales is a numbers game and I saw my job as being to give positive reinforcement and have constructive conversations with people who were struggling(sometimes a pep talk sometimes me calling them out a little bit)..and one thing I enjoyed doing was 'riding along'. I learned a lot because a lot of the people we hired...they had experience in sales and this was really my first opportunity to see how other people approachedd it. I just kind of winged it when I first got into sales(i was the only rep)..and then I started my own business and just kinda played it by ear.
and by doing this I learned about thigns I could do on the backend to help them close deals. I felt comfortable dealing with customers who might be upset about this or that(usually a billing issue but sometimes it could be a coverage issue or equipment issue). I had no problem taking some of these things off the sales reps plate so they could focus on selling. There is nothing that brings down a sales rep more than having to deal with customers who are unhappy(often times at things beyond their control)
I'm using a lot of words to say that I wanted to motivate them and make it as easy as I could for them to focus on selling.
Lofty semi-retired goal for mid level producers. It's like sales tenure
coaching sales talent on their, finding new reps, driving revenue, and forecasting the business is really slept on.
Can I send this thread to my manager. Would that get me fired? 🤣
Para mi un director de ventas debe:
1º Analizar la de situación de partida.
2º Fijar objetivos realistas.
3º Establecer las estrategias para cumplir esos objetivo. Por supuesto, contar con las herramientas y saber usarlas para cumplir esos objetivo.
4º Reforzar y sumar dentro del equipo que dirige.
Por resumir, sin profundizar, pues abría mucho para debatir y matizar.
A good sales manager brings knowledge and experience to help you win, not guessing. There job is to hold the team accountable so we can make a lot of money for our VC/PE overlords and then be the bad guy when they have to let us go
Cat herder. Keeping a group of unmanageable people on task.
I have worked in insurance and SaaS, in my experience the sales leaders job is to (1) ensure a baseline level of training amongst the reps they’re leading and (2) partner with organizational resources to develop sales - marketing - product initiatives to unlock the maximal profitable revenue of their territory.
(1) in my experience is why most sales leaders fail. They’ll spend too much time trying to fix low performers or overly focused on their top performers in good and bad ways instead of trying to raise the level of competency amongst the group.
Better question, what is a GOOD sales manager job? There are tons of bad ones out there
Automotive sales manager here, obviously different than B2B. I wear a million hats but my first priority is: Hire, train, motivate.
Primary-Enablement and training of sales team
Secondary- protection from higher ups
Tertiary- setting achievable quotas and good territory
I could go on but that's the main responsibilities
Supporting their reps while building team camaraderie. Coaching their reps to be successful and recognizing the ones who are successful and learning from them to help others on the team grow
I'm a sales manager. My role is to eat the shit management feeds me give my team space to win.
If I give them an initiative from leadership they work on it because I've filtered out the garbage.
I’ve typically had the best sales managers at every company I have worked at until recently. All my prior managers were lead from the frontlines and had a do anything to win mentality whether it was helping clean or close tough sales. Currently I would be elated to not have a lazy piece of 💩 who thinks “management” is a retirement package and essentially does nothing.
To manage
Getting the team to success through support.
Be the other half of my good cop bad cop act :-)
Remind the team 2x a week: The only thing that matters is revenue and metrics.
This is always a funny question to me. I’ve been six months in a “Sales Engineer” role and it’s completely different than what most people in here do. I work for an Industrial Automation Hardware distributor. Because I sell to engineers, they expect their sales reps to be engineers. Therefore I am both the outside sales rep and the person in charge of my demos. Our AEs are there for technical support
Sales managers job is to say no to anything that will help salespeople make sales. Then tell the salespeople what they learned from chatgpt. Then say “why aren’t we making money”?
I have a sales manager who has never been in sales and also never been a manager.
If you wonder how is this possible? You should meet my managers boss, it will click.
To realistically meet and/or exceed the company OKRs.
To recruit
I was a former top rep for a year straight before promoting. There’s high turnover where I am and there’s pressure involved in same day closing. That said, my job would be to take the sales reps, most of which have very little sales experience, and teach them how to sell. I feel like I get paid to experience anger every single time a rep tells me “they said they want to check their finances” after we did 800 hours of training that buyers are liars in the last week.
Enabling their sales team to close more than they would if they weren’t there
It has already been mentioned in this thread but the best sales managers are usually not your best sales person. A common mistake is promoting the best sales person into the sales manager role.
When you think about it, it makes sense. They were very good at working autonomously and succeeding. Now they're in a role that they most likely can't comprehend.
This is how MICROMANAGERS are created.
Not a single shred of context to work with. Ask AI.
As a former sales manager (now director, but I'm not a representative), it's as simple as hitting quota. We have our quota, and we need you guys to hit yours so we can hit ours.
90% of the time, that means looking for performance gaps that make it less likely for you to hit, and then coaching those. The other 10% is special projects for our boss. If you're strategic, it might be closer to 50/50.
For me personally, I would look at conversion rates through the pipeline and ID low conversion rates. Then present the AE with that finding. 90% of the time the AE would know why that was the case and fix it independently.
Ok