Over the last quarter century, we have had the unique opportunity to study and document what the most successful sales managers know and do to manage and lead their people. We have identified the specific leadership competencies, knowledge and skills that ensure sales management success and have distilled them into the principles we advocate in our Sales Management Development Program (SMDP) Series. The SMDP Series is designed to accelerate sales management performance and productivity by delivering highly relevant knowledge and skills that can be immediately applied on the job.

Description

The first segment of our SMDP Series prepares new and inexperienced managers to learn and practice the fundamentals of sales management. By the end of our blended learning approach, each of our participants is prepared apply the following:

  • Transition from a sales rep or new manager to the leader of a sales team
    -Techniques to successfully let go of old job responsibilities and confidently lead the team
  • Verbal and written communication skills that motivate and inspire teams to high levels of efficiency and effectiveness
    -Skills to establish trust and motivate the team to follow leadership vision
    -Establishing goals that teams rally around and collaborate to achieve
  • The fundamentals of selecting new people, training and coaching them
    -Guides and skills to use to get the right people on the team and onboard them to excel
  • Proven techniques to implement field visits that inspire significant productivity gains
    – Pre-field visit communications
    – Field visit goal setting, coaching, execution and feedback
    – Post field visit direction
  • Evaluating team members using consistent standards for all
    -Establishing performance standards and consistently measuring team progress to mastery of each competency in order to provide timely and meaningful feedback resulting in goal achievement
  • Preparing and communicating a business strategy to the team that clearly defines and supports business and personal development goals
    -Skills and tools to develop and communicate a clearly defined and focused buisness vision and personal vision
  • Recognizing specific areas on which to concentrate to improve the short and long-term performance of their sales teams
    -Development of personal action plans to be shared with their managers immediately following the training

Once the participants comprehend the rationale and approaches leaders of highly productive sales teams use, they are provided opportunities to practice what they’ve learned in workshops using common performance management issues that they will most likely encounter in the sales manager job.

Ideal Participant Profile

The most qualified candidate is a person with limited management experience. Typically the most engaging groups range in experience from those who are ready for promotion to a manager position, to those with less than two years experience as a manager.

Measurement

We have proven that the best way to determine improvement of new skills and knowledge is to measure progress toward objectives at routine intervals. We recommend measurement tools that serve to reinforce and track progress to mastery during training and post-training as well. The goal of routinely measuring progress is to recognize continuous improvement with positive feedback to the learner as well as provide opportunities for immediate corrective feedback as necessary