5 Signs Your New Sales Manager is Undertrained

Top performing salesperson. You’ve done such a great job selling for us that we are promoting you to sales manager. Congrats! Good luck! And please don’t get us sued. Now off you go. See you at the quarterly meeting where I expect to see a 10% increase in margin and a 35% increase in sales volume.”

Sound ludicrous? Maybe. Maybe not. I see pretty close variations of this happen all the time. We take high producing salespeople, promote them to sales managers and give them little to no training or support. And the repercussions are oftentimes costly.

Here are the main issues that occur with under trained sales managers.

1. Lack of Leadership Skills 

Just because someone can sell doesn’t mean they know how to lead a team of salespeople. These are different skills sets and don’t necessarily transfer. Lack of leadership skills can cause frustration for both the new manager and their sales team.

2. Lack of Foresight

Perhaps your new manager is capable of dealing with the day-to-day “fires” in your sales environment. But is that really all we want in a sales leader?

Business leadership should have experienced managers spend time working with new managers to equip them with successful management skills.  How can they manage effectively if they haven’t had any guidance or training?

3. Lack of Confidence 

New managers often doubt themselves. They doubt their abilities, their skill set, their decisions, etc. etc. etc. This lack of confidence is paralyzing for a new sales manager and can create trust issues with the sales team.

4. Lack of Direction

New managers know upper-management expectations, but they typically lack the experience or knowledge required to reach these expectations. They usually don’t even know where to start. So, they blindly begin to do things without any sense of strategy or purpose.

5. Lack of Organizational Skills

A large part of being a manager is organizing people, tasks, other departments, priorities, paperwork, etc. Just the burden of getting reports prepared correctly and delivered on-time is potentially crushing.

New sales leaders need assistance to help them prioritize their energy and efforts to do what they’ve been hired to do – lead their sales team to maximized sales performance!

You get one shot at getting new sales managers off to a strong start; to give them the training, tools and support they need achieve success both for themselves and the company.

Once they’ve given 150% of themselves running in the wrong direction and they’ve started to flame out under the stress and pressure of the job, you’ve moved past the support mode to the rescue mode.

The solution? Help them start strong with an understanding of sound management strategy. Equip them with the resources they need to succeed in their new job. It’s in everyone’s best interest.

Jeff Shore’s Sales Leadership Academy is where the real estate industry’s next great sales managers are born. This is NOT like any other sales management training course available today.

The Sales Leadership Academy is a 12-week immersive learning experience that accelerates the performance curve for new sales managers so that they deliver profitable results faster while making an immediate and lasting organizational impact. For more information click here.

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About the Author: Amy O'Connor

As one of the most in-demand sales training consultants in North America today, Amy O’Connor brings a decade’s worth of industry experience and knowledge, along with a fresh female perspective on leadership, to her impactful and enlightening seminars.