A sales manager plays a vital role in leading and motivating a sales team to achieve goals and objectives. The core duties and responsibilities of a sales manager include recruiting, training, coaching, and managing sales representatives, setting sales targets, developing sales strategies, analyzing sales performance data, assigning sales territories, resolving customer issues, forecasting sales, preparing budgets, reporting on progress, and ensuring compliance with laws and regulations. A sales manager acts as a liaison between the sales team and upper management.
Recruiting and Hiring Sales Representatives
One of the most important duties of a sales manager is recruiting, hiring, and onboarding sales reps. This involves developing a recruitment strategy to attract top sales talent, interviewing candidates, assessing their skills and experience, extending job offers, conducting background checks, and onboarding new hires. The sales manager needs to hire reps who have the right skills, motivation, and personality to succeed in the role. They ensure new hires go through proper training on products, services, sales processes, CRM systems, and company policies.
Setting Sales Goals and Quotas
The sales manager is responsible for working with upper management to develop realistic yet challenging sales goals and quotas. Goals need to align with the overall business objectives. The sales manager sets targets for the overall sales team as well as individual reps. Goals may be monthly, quarterly or annual. Setting clear goals and targets enables the sales team to focus their efforts on agreed objectives and metrics. Goals provide motivation and a sense of direction.
Coaching and Training Sales Representatives
One of the most important responsibilities of a sales manager is continually training and coaching sales reps. This involves:
- Conducting regular one-on-one meetings with reps to provide feedback, identify weaknesses, and develop improvement plans
- Organizing sales training on product knowledge, selling techniques, objection handling, presentations, CRM systems, and more
- Role playing to practice and improve sales skills
- Accompanying reps on sales calls to observe techniques and provide real-time coaching
- Motivating reps and keeping morale high
Effective coaching helps reps continuously enhance their skills. The sales manager identifies training needs through observations, feedback, and metrics analysis.
Managing Sales Team Performance
Sales managers need to closely monitor the performance of each rep. This involves:
- Tracking sales activity metrics such as calls made, leads generated, presentations delivered, and deals closed
- Analyzing metrics to identify high and low performers
- Reviewing reports in the CRM system
- Calculating commission payments based on sales performance
- Conducting regular one-on-one meetings with reps to review progress and address issues
- Providing feedback and setting expectations for improvement as needed
The sales manager collaborates with reps to understand challenges and obstacles to achieving quotas. They offer motivation, training, resources, coaching and mentoring to help struggling reps. For consistent underperformance, the sales manager may need to terminate employment.
Developing Sales Strategies and Initiatives
The sales manager plays a key role in developing sales strategies, campaigns and initiatives aimed at driving sales growth and capturing market share. This involves:
- Analyzing performance data, market trends, buyer personas and the competitive landscape
- Identifying opportunities to improve lead generation, expand customer base, increase deal sizes, improve conversion rates etc
- Developing targeted campaigns focused on different customer profiles or segments
- Creating incentives, contests, promotions, and spiffs to boost sales
- Maximizing cross-selling and upselling opportunities
- Leveraging sales technology and tools to gain efficiencies
- Defining pricing strategies
The sales manager gets input from the sales team in formulating sales strategies and engages them in implementation.
Preparing Sales Forecasts
Sales forecasting is a vital aspect of the sales manager role. Accurate forecasts help guide business decisions on targets, budgets, production, inventory, human resources, and more. Sales managers forecast expected sales based on:
- Historical sales data and seasonality
- Current sales pipeline analysis
- Market conditions and economic environment
- New product launches
- Sales initiatives and marketing campaigns
- Input from sales team
The sales manager reviews forecasts regularly and adjusts as needed based on changing business conditions. Forecasting tools and CRM analytics enable data-driven predictions.
Resolving Customer Issues
Sales managers need to play an active role in resolving customer complaints, disputes and issues. This builds trust, improves customer retention and protects the company’s reputation. Sales managers:
- Have a thorough understanding of company policies on returns, refunds, warranties, etc.
- Empower sales reps to promptly address minor customer issues
- Personally contact customers regarding unresolved complaints
- Engage other internal teams to diagnose problems and develop solutions
- Take responsibility for errors and miscommunications
- Offer concessions such as discounts, refunds, or free services as warranted
- Track customer issues to identify process improvements
Quick and satisfactory resolution of issues enhances customer loyalty.
Motivating and Leading Sales Teams
Motivating sales teams is essential for achieving sales targets. Sales managers:
- Set clear objectives and communicate the sales vision
- Recognize top performers and celebrate wins
- Empower reps by providing training and resources
- Lead by example with passion, positivity, and high ethical standards
- Provide coaching and constructive feedback
- Develop trust and rapport through open communication
- Communicate belief in team’s abilities
- Foster healthy competition and teamwork
- Offer incentives, rewards, and contests
An energized, motivated team consistently outperforms. Sales managers need exemplary leadership skills to inspire peak performance.
Monitoring Customer & Market Trends
Sales managers should have a strong understanding of customers, markets, and trends impacting the business. This involves:
- Interacting with customers to gain first-hand insights into needs, challenges, and preferences
- Gathering competitive intelligence on product offerings, pricing, promotions etc.
- Identifying changes in buyer behaviors and sales cycles
- Monitoring economic factors, industry news, and market developments
- Tracking changes in technology, regulations, and compliance issues
- Analyzing sales metrics and CRM data to detect shifts
- Conducting win/loss analysis on closed deals
The sales manager shares findings with executives to aid strategy development and product innovation.
Assigning Sales Territories
The sales manager is responsible for dividing up geographic sales territories and accounts between team members. This involves:
- Defining territories based on factors like location, industry, customer size, and revenue potential
- Ensuring territories have comparable sales potential
- Assigning accounts to reps best suited to the opportunity
- Balancing workloads between team members
- Monitoring territory performance and making adjustments as needed
Optimal sales territory design enables reps to maximize results.
Preparing and Managing Budgets
Sales managers create and manage budgets for their sales department. This includes:
- Determining budget needs for compensation, travel, training, trade shows, events, marketing initiatives, and tools
- Submitting budget proposals to upper management for review and approval
- Allocating approved budgets appropriately
- Tracking expenses throughout the year
- Adjusting budgets as business conditions change
- Providing spending guidance to the sales team
- Identifying opportunities to control expenses
The sales budget enables managers to fund revenue generating activities.
Reporting on Sales Performance
Sales managers are responsible for preparing and presenting regular sales reports to executive leadership. Reporting involves:
- Consolidating sales data from CRM system, spreadsheets, and other sources
- Analyzing sales metrics versus goals and prior periods
- Highlighting key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Creating visualizations like charts, graphs, and tables
- Summarizing period results, trends, and insights
- Presenting findings to company leaders
- Making recommendations on improving processes
Data-driven reporting provides visibility into sales outcomes and guides business planning.
Ensuring Legal and Ethical Compliance
Sales managers must ensure their team members adhere to all applicable laws, regulations, and ethical standards. This includes:
- Educating reps on important laws and policies like the FTC Act, CAN-SPAM Act, do-not-call regulations etc.
- Implementing processes to comply with legal and industry requirements
- Monitoring activities to identify violations or red flags
- Enforcing codes of conduct and ethical norms
- Investigating complaints or issues and taking corrective action
- Releasing employees where necessary
- Taking responsibility for team actions
Non-compliance can jeopardize the company legally and financially. Sales managers set the tone for operating ethically.
Evaluating and Improving Processes
An important, yet often overlooked, responsibility of sales managers is continually evaluating and enhancing sales processes and workflows. This entails:
- Analyzing processes, identifying inefficiencies and bottlenecks
- Simplifying processes using technology automation
- Standardizing proven best practices across the team
- Eliminating duplicative efforts
- Optimizing handoffs between sales, service and support
- Streamlining CRM data entry and reporting
- Providing process training to team members
- Measuring impact of process improvements
Improved processes boost productivity and customer experience.
Conclusion
Sales managers have a complex, multi-faceted role that directly impacts business success. Key duties include recruiting and training sales reps, setting objectives, coaching & motivation, sales territory planning, quota and forecast management, strategizing, reporting, and ensuring legal compliance. Sales managers collaborate with marketing on lead generation, promotions and positioning. They work cross-functionally to enable sales team success. Outstanding sales managers are strong leaders who inspire teams to peak performance.
