Salespeople are essential – they make contacts, build relationships, and close deals, effectively keeping the revenue coming in.
No sales team can work effectively and efficiently, though, without great sales leadership.
Every company knows that it’s important to train their consultants, but sales management training is often undervalued or not given sufficient attention.
To build the most effective selling team, everyone from the sales manager to the new recruit should be expertly trained.
The Difference Between Sales Training and Sales Management Training
Sales reps are trained to sell. Their skill set includes finding prospects, setting up meetings, and closing the deal.
Sales managers’ duties are far more vast than reps’. They’re responsible for building, managing, and leading the team of consultants to success.
Their duties include:
- Analyzing business & selling trends
- Setting sales goals and targets
- Developing & implementing a sales strategy
- Monitoring progress by analyzing relevant data
- Overseeing or facilitating team training
- Coaching consultants individually
- I/R, TA, & DISC
Here’s a quick illustration of the difference between a salesperson’s duties and those of a manager or director. These are job postings for each position.
Why Is Sales Management Training Important?
There are skills that are unique to the sales manager’s job.
Team leaders not only manage a group of people, hire new recruits, and delegate, but they’re also expected to coach or mentor their team to become a higher-performing selling group.
So why do new sales managers need more training?
The Problem
If a salesperson has been promoted to manager, they will have a working knowledge of closing techniques, cold calling, and dealing with prospects.
What they lack is the knowledge of how to manage a team, assess others’ performance, and coach those under them to improve their performance.
Without expert training for your sales leadership personnel, it’s very difficult to find well-rounded team directors who are able to manage and coach their team successfully.
As the Miller Heiman researchers so aptly put it, sales managers tend to be “overwhelmed and underdeveloped”.
The Solution
Great training for sales managers can give team leaders a head start on becoming extremely competent, high-performing leaders who get consistent results.
It’s essential to choose training that will help your team leadership to round-out their skill set, developing their skills in management and enhancing their selling skills.
Although managers and directors often attend training with their group, they need to go through a skills-based program that focuses on leadership as opposed to selling.
The Goal of Sales Management Training Courses
This management training should equip your new manager with skills and tools to do the job effectively. The results should be noticeable – he or she will begin to implement what they’ve learnt and start coordinating their group in a more efficient manner.
Some skills that need to be covered by a leadership and management program include:
- Effective Coaching
- Performance Management
- Sales Leadership
- Recruitment & Hiring
- Reporting
Effective Coaching
This is the biggest adjustment for new managers. Not only are you responsible for managing and coordinating your team, you’ll also be expected to guide them to become better at selling.
The training you choose for your new sales manager should cover coaching aspects like:
- Learning team members’ personality types & selling style
- Understand each team member’s strengths & weaknesses
- How to provide appropriate incentives (and why it’s different for each team member)
- How to gain your team’s trust
- How to get the best out of each member
There is no one-size-fit-all approach to coaching, so this part of training for new directors should provide skills that can be utilized on individual sales consultants to get the best out of each and every person on your team.
The best training should advocate a personal approach to coaching as opposed to a generic one.
Performance Management
Another aspect of being a team leader that is vastly different from being a sales consultant is that you will be expected to review and provide feedback on your consultants’ performance.
The most effective new managers’ program will cover these three topics:
Analysis & Evaluation
Every business is different, and each will have their set of criteria that need to be met in order to qualify a rep’s performance.
As a director or manager, you’ll need to measure your reps’ performance against certain markers.
Providing Constructive Feedback
Different sales consultants will take feedback in different ways.
It’s important to be able to provide useful, actionable feedback specific to the rep, and to do so in such a way that they don’t feel threatened, picked on, or like they’ve done something terribly wrong.
Accountability
It’s imperative that your team understands the expectations and the consequences of not meeting performance standards.
Holding your sales force accountable for their performance can be a tough part of transitioning from team member to team director.
Training in this area should cover things like setting expectations, assessing the level of misconduct or lack of performance, and taking disciplinary action.
Factors That Affect Performance
It’s also important that the training helps the new manager understand that a team member’s performance can be affected by things like:
- Company culture
- Workplace conflict
- Personal problems
The leader needs to take these factors into consideration when analyzing a rep’s performance, and this should be covered by their specialized training too.
Sales Leadership
Moving into a leadership position brings new responsibilities, many of which a consultant has never had to do before.
A great skills-based managing program should cover:
- Establishing goals & understanding their implications
- Delegating & time management
- Trends analysis
- Sales forecasting, budgeting, & pricing strategies
- Conflict resolution
- Leading meetings
Recruitment & Hiring
As a sales director you’ll also be heavily involved in the recruitment and hiring process, as well as possibly having to fire employees.
Your training should include:
- Developing criteria for the selection process
- Internal vs external recruiting
- Using specific platforms for recruitment
- Relevant laws in your country or area
- The art of interviewing
- Checking references
- Making an offer
- Firing an employee
Reporting
A person in a management position is expected to deliver regular reports to the Head of Sales or company director.
Although a rep may have experience compiling reports, your management course should cover how to report back on your team’s performance in an effective way.
Other Training
Depending on the business, there may be some things that aren’t covered in a management course but are still essential for your new leader to be trained in.
These could include:
- Software systems
- Mentoring (which is different to coaching)
- Communication training
- Team building & fostering team spirit
You may need to send your new leader on a separate course to get them up to speed in these areas.
Sales Management Training Courses
If you’re looking for the best sales management training courses, we’ve reviewed a few that we believe are great quality and would start your manager-in-need-of-training off on the right footing.
Sales Management – Sandler Training
With an astounding 20 different sections, this course is extremely comprehensive. Each module is well-thought out and covers an essential aspect of being a manager that gets results.
- Recruiting & Inventorying
- Assessments & Interviewing (Hiring)
- Assessments & Decision Making (Hiring)
- Devine & DISC
- I/R, TA, & DISC (Understanding Your People)
- Communication (Understanding Your People)
- Overview of Leadership Roles
- Supervising
- Coaching
- Training
- Mentoring
- Conflict Management
- Goal Setting
- Managing Organizational Change
- Staging Effective Meetings
- Growth Strategies (Facilitating Account Management)
- The Proposal Process
- Territory Management
- Providing Field Support
- Time Management & Delegation
There’s an emphasis on active skills training and application, while also relaying the importance of attitude, behavior, and strategy. As their website states, their programs are rooted in psychology.
Their program runs in four stages – assessment of your organization, providing a personalized training plan, program delivery, and reinforcement training.
- Emphasize active skills training and application
- Extremely comprehensive
- Reinforcement training
- Rooted in the psychology of management
- Train some incredibly high-profile clients
Sales Management Training – The Brooks Group
The Brooks Group structures their course around an 8-step process. It’s designed to be straightforward and no-fluff, getting to the point and explaining concepts in the simplest way possible.
The steps they follow are:
- Recruit
- Hire
- Establish Expectations
- Train
- Coach
- Course Correct
- Measure Accountability
- Sustain
Their results-oriented action steps aim to get new directors up to speed in the shortest time possible, with no time wasted on unnecessary content.
The program can be customized according to how big your management group is, with their Custom Training Program being made for organizations with more than 5 sales managers, and their Public Training catering to companies with fewer than 5.
- 2 options to choose from depending on the size of your team
- To-the-point and straightforward
- Easy to follow 8-step process
- Integrates with a sales hiring assessment that links coaching & development
- Some high-profile clients, indicating the quality of their training
The High-Impact Sales Manager by Sales Readiness Group
As the Sales Readiness Group so aptly puts it, “Building an elite sales team starts with training effective sales managers”.
Their program is skills-based and offers a framework of essential skills and tools to help new team managers build a strategic team, coach their consultants, and lead them to become a high-performing group.
The program covers 5 important management skill categories:
- Sales Coaching
- Managing Sales Performance
- Managing The Sales Pipeline
- Sales Leadership
- Recruiting & Selecting Sales Stars
The reviews are glowing, with some calling it the best training they’ve come across in 2 decades of sales.
A huge bonus of this program is that you can choose between on-site or online training, or mix the two together at your convenience.
- Rich, comprehensive content
- Highly accessible
- Practical and actionable
- Interactive, with situational roleplays
- Includes post-training reinforcement & tools
- Superb reviews
It’s recommended to get the book to supplement the course content, and it’s important to know that while the book is packed with actionable information, it’s not nearly as comprehensive and effective as the full program.
RAIN Sales Management Training – RAIN Group
The RAIN Sales Management course covers the most important aspects a new leader needs to know to keep their team motivated, hold them accountable, and exceed targets.
You can get this training on-site, or using a blended learning approach with a mix of in-person and online lessons.
- Succeeding as a Sales Manager
- Creating Goals & Action Plans
- Coaching & Developing High-Performing Sellers
- Motivating Your Team
- Leading Great Sales & Coaching Meetings
- Maximizing Sales WIns With Opportunity Coaching
- Holding Sellers Accountable
The program is comprehensive and makes use of assessments to identify strengths and weaknesses so that challenging situations can be addressed to the best of the new manager’s ability.
Action role playing and practical tools make the strategies learned easy to implement. Course members will also have access to RAIN Group’s Sales Success Portal, where they’ll find online training resources to share with their team.
- Comprehensive course material
- Two delivery options
- Program can be customized with add-ons
- Provides e-learning resources
- Reinforcement training
- Opportunity to become a certified RAIN Sales Coach
RAIN Group also offers other sales-related courses to supplement what’s been learnt in this one.
Extra Training Programs For Sales Managers – Richardson
Richardson is focussed on developing new leaders’ skills so they can be the best at what they do.
We recommend these programs for sales directors who have already received comprehensive training but would like to develop specific skills that they may feel need improvement.
Their courses include:
- Developmental Sales Coaching
- Pipeline Management
- Behavioral Interviewing
They also offer supplemental training modules that can be added to customize your program.
- Leading Effective Meetings
- Remote Coaching
- Leading Virtual Teams
- Coaching Problem Performers
- Motivating High Performers
This group of training courses covers some very specific aspects of the sales leader’s job that may need extra development.
The fact that these courses are broken up into specific sections means they can focus in tightly on the subject matter and provide extensive information.
The courses can be delivered in one of four ways:
- Blended learning that includes a one-day workshop and online training
- Online training only, on the Richardson Accelerate digital learning platform
- In-person, instructor-led workshop
- Virtual instructor-led training
Sales Management Training – HubSpot Academy
This is a free certification course offered for new team leaders to get them up to speed with the managing side of the job.
While it’s not as comprehensive as some, it is a fantastic introduction to what sort of things one can expect to encounter in the position.
It covers:
- Using Jobs To Be Done In Sales
- How To Map A Sales Process
- Sales Training Techniques & Ideas
- Sales Coaching Training For Managers
- How To Hire Sales Reps
- Secrets Of Sales Onboarding Success
Each section consists of video content and a quiz, and should take a couple of hours to go through.
We can recommend this quick and easy free course as an introductory program before more specific management training.
- No cost
- Great introduction to sales management
- Helps managers to build their own team training
Conclusion
The most important ingredient of a successful, effective sales team is a highly competent management team.
Sales management training is essential. No sales consultant moves into a management role with all the necessary skills.
A great management course or program will develop your new leader’s skills and equip them to manage a sales force, coach their team effectively, assess and provide feedback on performance, resolve conflict, and hire the best new staff.
It will also provide high-quality information to help the director become proficient in the more technical aspects such as sales forecasting, pricing strategies, and trend analysis.
