12 Essential Sales Manager Skills for Success

Sales managers are critical to an organization’s success, as they have a direct impact on attracting new customers and driving revenue. A sales manager oversees and motivates an organization’s sales team members and contributes to developing sales strategy, setting goals, and tracking outcomes.

If you’re interested in a job or career as a sales manager, understanding key skills that drive success in the role is important. Whether you’re looking for a full-time role or new opportunities as an independent sales manager, learn about twelve of the top sales manager skills to focus on developing. 

12 essential sales manager skills

While sales manager skills can vary and evolve over time depending on business needs and in-demand skills, the most successful individuals possess many core competencies and characteristics.

Essential skills include:

1. Active listening
2. Leadership
3. Communication skills
4. Sales planning
5. Time management
6. Trust and flexibility
7. Rational problem-solving
8. Analytical skills
9. Knowledge of CRM systems
10. Sales metrics and performance management
11. Training and coaching 
12. Hiring and recruiting

1. Active listening 

As a sales manager, active listening is one of the most important skills to display any time you interact with team members, leadership stakeholders, prospects, or customers. 

Active listening requires clearly articulating that you’re genuinely interested in what others have to say and asking relevant follow-up questions to overcome challenges or meet an individual’s specific needs. For example, actively listening to a customer or prospect’s pain points can help show you empathize with challenges they’re looking to address and position the product or service you’re selling in a way that addresses these issues.

By actively listening to team members in meetings and during one-on-one conversations, you can also better identify ways to help workers improve in their roles. And, in some cases, simply listening to team members can help individuals reach solutions on their own—and learn in the process.

2. Leadership

Top sales managers display strong leadership skills to manage, motivate, and empower team members. As a leader, taking initiative and putting the people on your team first can help every individual succeed. This includes pushing workers to improve and providing team members with the resources needed to reach their goals. Effective leadership also involves recognizing your own shortcomings, skills gaps, and areas for improvement.

As a sales manager, making an effort to continually develop your leadership skills can equip you to guide your team through challenges and celebrate successes together.

3. Communication skills

As more organizations adopt remote and hybrid work policies, some team members may work remotely while others are in the office, which can make communication a little tricky.

When sales team members aren’t in the office, you can’t simply walk over to an individual’s desk to discuss an issue or share an update about a prospect. Effective communication is one of the most critical sales manager skills needed to overcome this hurdle.

Whether interacting via email, messaging platform, shared document, phone, or video meeting, as a sales manager, showcasing effective communication skills is always important. You can display these skills through clear and concise writing, articulate speaking, and active listening.

To support smooth communication and drive productivity, set expectations with teams about how and when to communicate so everyone is on the same page. For example, you may request that workers share status updates on their sales prospects via email or a tracking document once a week, in addition to any regular updates they make to the customer relationship management (CRM) system. And as the manager on the team, you may share both verbal and written recaps and action items following meetings. 

4. Sales planning

A sales manager is responsible for developing, implementing, and evolving a team’s sales plan, often in partnership with other leaders in sales and across the organization. To successfully map out a sales plan, take both long-term and short-term goals into consideration. Also keep in mind strategies or tactics that have worked in the past as well as areas for improvement to reach future sales goals.

Elements of an effective sales plan may include:

• Product or service overview and key differentiators
• Goals and objectives
• Sales forecasting
• Budget
• Target market
• Competitive overview
• Team structure and responsibilities
• Sales strategies and tactics
• Required software and technology
• Key metrics

Understanding the target market is one of the most important aspects of sales planning. This involves identifying your target market, including both potential prospects and existing customers, and knowing the best areas for revenue opportunities. The process also requires recognizing individual customer needs, as not all customers have the same goals or challenges. 

5. Time management

Between planning sales strategy, presenting to prospects, setting milestones for team members, and addressing other priorities, sales managers have a wide range of responsibilities. Time management and having a bias toward action are keys to success.

Some time management tips for sales managers—which team members can also adopt—include:

• Blocking time on the calendar for priority tasks
• Maintaining set working hours (with room for flexibility, as needed)
• Checking email only at specific times
• Keeping team meetings to a minimum so the team can focus on work
• Delegating tasks to team members based on their skill sets and strengths

6. Trust and flexibility

As a sales manager, leading with a trusting and flexible mindset is also important to a productive, engaging work environment. Rather than requiring individuals to work at specific times or attend all meetings, trust team members to complete work and reach their goals without micromanaging their time.

Creating a one-size-fits-all schedule or environment can be demotivating to workers. Some team members work better in the morning, while others schedule calls late at night, depending on their schedules and prospects’ availability. Showing empathy and understanding that everybody has different priorities can help you be a more effective sales manager. 

To ensure all team members hear about the latest update, schedule meetings at times when most workers are available and also record meetings so those who can’t join can watch the recording. In a more trusting and flexible environment, workers are more likely to be motivated to collectively achieve goals. 

7. Rational problem-solving

Sales managers frequently face challenges or problems that need to be quickly addressed, such as a stalled deal, dissatisfied customer or prospect, frustrated team member, or individual who isn’t driving business outcomes. Rational problem-solving skills can help you anticipate potential issues and map out proactive steps to resolve them, while maintaining control over emotions.

Effective rational problem-solving can enable you to stay calm under pressure and maintain objectivity in decision-making. This sets the right example for team members to do the same when they face stressful situations in their day-to-day work.

By efficiently solving problems, you can also remove obstacles, motivate the team to reach revenue goals, and empower individuals to do their best work. 

8. Analytical skills

Sales managers tap into analytical skills to review data and make actionable decisions to achieve sales objectives. Analytical skills come into play when researching market opportunities, prospective customers, and competitors. Tools like sales forecasting software can help you anticipate future trends and adjust strategies accordingly.

If you have strong analytical skills, you can also effectively leverage data to forecast the revenue your team will generate in a given period. Once you have a revenue forecast or target, you can use this data to set goals for individual team members, such as the total number of calls or meetings needed to contribute to overall revenue goals.

Data can also be used to identify what isn’t working and make corrections when goals aren’t met, or to continue with similar actions when the team exceeds sales goals.

9. Knowledge of CRM systems

CRM software helps an organization manage relationships with customers and prospects. CRM systems centralize information like a customer’s demographic information, past purchases, and any contact with your business.

Many sales manager roles will likely require you to be skilled at navigating CRM systems and using analytical skills to identify new sales opportunities, engage prospects, identify customer advocates for references and success stories, and understand key trends impacting sales, among other activities.

A CRM system can also help track sales activity, metrics, and trends. This streamlines the process of preparing weekly, monthly, or quarterly reports for visibility across the organization. CRM software also plays a crucial role in enhancing lead generation efforts by identifying and nurturing potential clients.

10. Sales metrics and performance management

Based on how you prefer to monitor sales, you can leverage key metrics to guide performance management discussions on your sales team. Sales managers with effective performance management skills align individual goals to overall sales goals. 

You can motivate and hold team members accountable by leveraging SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals) during the performance management process. As an example, you may set a goal for a sales representative to schedule 20 demo calls with qualified prospects each month to contribute to your broader team goal of 100 demo calls during the quarter.

While many organizations likely conduct formal performance reviews on a quarterly or annual basis, as a sales manager, scheduling more frequent one-on-ones with team members can help you take an ongoing approach to performance management and help ensure goals stay on track. 

11. Training and coaching

In addition to performance management, training and coaching skills can help you motivate workers to drive results for the business. As a sales manager, you may have been a sales representative in the past and by sharing your experiences in the role, you can empathize with team members and help them improve.

One of the ways training and coaching comes into play between a sales manager and sales representatives is through role playing or conducting mock product or service demonstrations. In these scenarios, as the sales manager, you may play the role of the customer or prospect and ask a sales representative to share an overview of the company’s key features and benefits. 

After the demonstration is complete, you can act as a coach and share constructive feedback before the next conversation with a potential or existing customer. 

12. Hiring and recruiting

Sales managers are often involved in recruiting and hiring sales representatives and other workers for their teams. As a sales manager, finding and engaging workers who will collaborate well with the rest of your team and contribute to shared goals is essential to success. 

While a talent acquisition manager or other member of the human resources team may be responsible for initial candidate sourcing, possessing hiring and recruiting skills can help you effectively evaluate and engage qualified workers for your open roles.  

Ways you may be involved in the recruitment process as a sales manager include:

• Defining job requirements or writing job descriptions
• Reviewing resumes or professional profiles
• Writing interview questions
• Conducting interviews
• Sharing feedback about candidates with other decision makers 
• Identifying which candidates stand out from others
• Developing a test assignment, such as a mock demo presentation
• Evaluating candidates based on test assignments or answers to behavioral interview questions
• Planning onboarding tasks

Work as a sales manager

As a sales manager, you can help organizations achieve and exceed sales and growth goals. By building and showcasing the right skills, you can stand out from other candidates when looking for sales manager career opportunities. 

If you’re exploring options for sales manager roles, consider searching for sales manager jobs on Upwork. Leading companies from around the world engage skilled independent professionals for sales manager opportunities and other jobs across a range of specialties. Get started—create an Upwork account today.  

Are you looking for a skilled sales manager to join your team? You don’t have to approach the search alone. Upwork is here to help. Leading organizations engage independent talent through our human and AI-powered work marketplace to build more agile workforces, fill skills gaps, and reduce operational costs.

Get started now—search for talented independent sales managers who can motivate sales team members and help your organization reach revenue goals.