What Is Sales Management?

Sales management is how sales managers organize, motivate, and lead their sales reps while tracking — and improving — team performance. This includes hiring top talent, training sales staff, coordinating operations across the sales department, and implementing a cohesive sales strategy that drives business revenues.

Think of it like a sports team. Have you ever heard of a top-ranked baseball team without a coach? Of course not. The coach provides the guidance, inspiration, strategy, and training that enable players to secure big wins. The best sales managers operate the same way, inspiring, educating, and guiding their teams to maximize revenue. The result? Consistent sales growth and a happy team — not to mention sizable commissions.

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

A manager should leverage the following techniques to ensure their sales team is productive:

The first step to ensuring successful sales is finding, hiring, and retaining the best sales staff. Recruitment is an expensive process, but managers will save money on recruitment and training if they spend the time upfront to secure the best people for the job. The best 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. Successful sales organizations have regular training and professional development, both to stay on top of industry trends and to help motivate staff. Sales reps need to be updated with new product knowledge, information about the competitive landscape, and new avenues for leads. They should also receive regular training on industry best practices and regulations.

There’s no denying it: The sales profession breeds independent, highly competitive workers and they’re not always the easiest to manage. The good news is, effective sales managers can take that competition and use it to motivate everyone on a sales team.

For example, a sales manager might encourage friendly competition by highlighting a top performer on internal communication channels, like Slack. This spurs the rest of the sales staff to increase their own sales and secure shoutouts.

Sales managers should also give positive feedback to the team as a whole. This emphasizes the value of teamwork and provides an incentive for leveling up.

Providing this kind of regular feedback is easier than ever with modern sales management systems (see section below), which enable real-time sales tracking and instantaneous feedback. Employees can get updates from sales managers wherever they are, respond in the moment, and compare their performance with key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure their own progress.

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. 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 program 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) is an increasingly common feature, too, allowing staff to generate sales predictions and lead recommendations within seconds.

Steve Jobs once said that “if you give [people] tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” He was talking broadly about technology, of course, but the same idea holds true in the world of sales. The best sales management software allows sales reps to connect to their team, customers, and leads remotely and in real time, typically via virtual sales tools like cloud-based software and mobile applications. This includes sales management systems, videoconferencing hardware/software, social media management platforms, intelligent automation tools, and presentation tools.

You may be wondering: What about in-person sales (also known as field sales or outside sales)? While there are some analog tools still used in field sales, many field reps are swapping clipboards and business cards for laptops and smartphones. A 2021 Sales Snapshot study conducted by Salesforce highlights this reality: Almost half of all reps interviewed said they would be selling virtually after the pandemic. No surprise, then, that cloud and mobile apps make up most of their toolkit.

Key sales management tools include:

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

• Pipeline tracking/management
• Built-in phone dialer
• Email integration
• Calendar
• Reminders
• Quote builder
• Invoicing functionality

With all of this centralized, 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 improve workflows for your team is by leveraging 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.

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.