Who it is for
Recognise the problem before choosing a solution.
Three situations we work with most often. You may recognise more than one.
You know how to sell. But nobody really taught you how to manage sales.
Many people responsible for managing sales teams and sales organisations got there because they were successful salespeople.
They know their customers. They understand their market. They can negotiate and close.
Then the job changes.
Suddenly, success is no longer only about their own performance. They are expected to build a team, develop people, manage performance, create a reliable pipeline and forecast revenue.
And many have never been taught how to do it.
Does this sound familiar?
- You used to be responsible for your own sales number. Now you are accountable for numbers produced by other people.
- You spend too much time stepping into your team’s deals because you are not always confident they will move forward without you.
- Your salespeople are busy, but it is not always clear whether they are focusing on the opportunities and activities that really matter.
- Some people perform. Others do not. And managing the gap is harder than expected.
- Recruiting the right salespeople is difficult — and getting them productive takes longer than you would like.
- The pipeline looks reassuring until you start asking which opportunities will actually close, when, and why.
- You want people to take more ownership, but you do not want accountability to turn into constant control and micromanagement.
- You spend so much time solving immediate problems that it is difficult to step back and actually manage the sales organisation.
The challenge is making the transition from doing sales to managing sales.
The best time to learn Sales Management is before you have to figure it out on the job.
Perhaps your Sales Director is preparing to retire and you have been identified as a possible successor.
Maybe you have been offered responsibility for the sales team.
Or Sales Management is simply the next step you want to take in your career.
Whatever the trigger, becoming responsible for other people’s sales performance is a significant change.
The skills that made you a successful salesperson are important but they are no longer enough.
You may be thinking:
- “I know how to sell, but I am not sure I know how to manage other people’s sales performance.”
- “I may soon be responsible for the team. What will actually be expected of me?”
- “How do I manage people who were my peers yesterday?”
- “How do I set expectations, hold people accountable and deal with underperformance without becoming a micromanager?”
- “How do I know whether the pipeline and forecast I am being given are actually reliable?”
- “I want to step into the position with a clear understanding of what good Sales Management actually looks like.”
Have you become the bottleneck of your own sales?
This often happens almost naturally.
As CEO, founder or business leader, you know the product, the market and the customers better than anyone.
You built many of the early customer relationships yourself. You know how to position the offer, handle objections, negotiate and get difficult deals over the line.
Does this sound familiar?
- The biggest or most strategic opportunities still end up on your desk.
- Customers often want to speak to you before they are ready to commit.
- Your salespeople regularly need your input on pricing, proposals, negotiation or how to move an opportunity forward.
- When an important deal slows down, you are the person expected to step in and rescue it.
- You have hired salespeople, but your own involvement in sales has not reduced as much as you expected.
- You are not always confident what would happen to the pipeline if you stopped being involved in the most important opportunities.
- Growth seems to create more sales work for you personally instead of making the organisation more independent.
- You know you need to step back, but stepping back feels risky because too much revenue still depends on your involvement.
In fact, your personal involvement may be one of the reasons the company has been successful. But eventually it starts limiting the company’s ability to grow.
The question changes from
“How can I sell more?”
to
“How do I build a sales organisation that can perform without constantly depending on me?”
That may mean developing the people already in the organisation, strengthening Sales Management, recruiting differently, introducing clearer processes or building more discipline around pipeline, forecasting and performance.
The objective is not to remove the CEO from sales.
It is to make sure the company can grow without the CEO having to carry sales personally.
From challenge to action
You do not have to know what you need before talking to us.
You may already know what is not working.
- The pipeline is unreliable.
- The team is underperforming.
- Forecasting is weak.
- You are still too involved in every important deal.
- A new Sales Manager is struggling to take control.
- Or growth is simply becoming harder to manage.
You do not need to decide in advance whether the answer is training, organisational change, hands-on support, or a combination of all three.
That is where we start.
We look at the situation with you, identify what is really holding sales performance back, and determine what needs to change.
Build the management capability
Develop the people who are responsible for managing sales.
Build the skills, methods and management discipline required to lead a sales organisation effectively — from people management and recruitment to pipeline, forecasting, targets, compensation and performance.
Apply it to the real business
Work directly on the challenges inside your own sales organisation.
Together with an experienced Sales Angel, address the real decisions, processes, people and performance issues that are getting in the way — and turn the required changes into action.
What is your Sales Management challenge?
Tell us what is not working, what needs to change, or what you are preparing for. We will start there.