Managing B2B sales teams is one of the most challenging professional roles for leaders. The most successful sales managers aren’t just managers—they’re impactful, transformational leaders with the skills, experience and charisma to transform ordinary sales reps into highly effective, results-oriented, enthusiastic sales pros. From hiring the right team members to complement your existing team’s strengths and weaknesses to fostering a culture of enthusiasm and success, managing sales performance, and more, the job of a B2B sales leader is never done.
We’ve put together this comprehensive playbook jam-packed with useful tools, guides and resources to help you manage every aspect of B2B sales management and accelerate sales. From recruiting and hiring to training, motivation, gamification, sales metrics, choosing the right tools to foster sales acceleration, and facilitating better marketing-sales alignment to improve lead quality and results, we’ve covered it all to provide you with a complete resource to hone your leadership skills and cultivate winning teams.
Here’s what you’ll find in this guide:
- Enhancing Your Sales Leadership Skills
- Talent Management: How to Recruit and Hire the Best
- Quotas and Territory Management
- Sales Skills Training: Coaching, Mentoring and Continuing Education
- Sales Performance Management: Motivating Your Sales Team: Engagement, Gamification and Morale
- Sales Acceleration: Harnessing Sales Technology
- Improving Lead Generation through Better Marketing-Sales Alignment
- Sales Metrics that Matter
Enhancing Your Sales Leadership Skills
The world’s greatest sales leaders are committed to lifelong learning and continuous professional development. Continuing to improve on your sales and management skills will help you become a better leader, keep pace with the rapid changes in markets and consumer demands, and stay on top of your sales game so you can be a better coach and mentor to your reps.
What traits and characteristics are essential for today’s top sales leaders? From solid values and ethics to leading by example, these 10 resources break down the most important skills and characteristics for B2B sales management success:
- 20 “Must Have” Leadership Traits if You Want to Succeed
- The 7 Attributes of the Most Effective Sales Leaders
- Developing Top Leaders: 5 Crucial Skills
- These Five Leadership Qualities will Make you a Better Sales Manager
- 5 Essential Skills You Need To Be A Successful Sales Manager
- 8 Must-Have Qualities In A Great Sales Team Manager
- The Skills That Should Be in Every Sales Manager Job Description
- Transitioning from Sales Manager to Sales Leader
- The Seven Qualities of Top Sales Managers
- 10 Management Skills that Make the Best Sales Managers Stand Out
Check out these five resources for more insight on the importance of continued professional development for sales managers and how to hone your leadership skills:
- Your Guide to Developing Sales Managers: How to Effectively Maximize Neglected Talent
- How to Develop Sales Managers into Sales Leaders
- What Sales Managers Can Learn from The Military
- 3 Ways to Improve Your Empathic Sales Leadership Skills
- Sales Management Best Practices
If you’re ready to start honing your leadership skills, check out this selection of 8 sales management and leadership training resources for B2B sales managers:
- Sales Management
- Sales Management Training: High-Impact Sales Manager Program
- Criteria for Success: Training Resources
- The Brooks Group – Straightforward, No Nonsense Sales Management Training: An 8-Step Process to Coaching Excellence
- Rapid Learning Institute: Leadership & Management Training
- Dale Carnegie Leadership Training
- Carew International Sales Management and Leadership Development Programs
- Sales Development Expert: Sales Leadership Training
- Ryan Estis: Sales Leadership Training
Talent Management: How to Recruit and Hire the Best
Effective sales managers know that it’s not just about finding top talent, but finding the right talent to enhance your existing team and equipping your new hires with the skills and know-how to get results.
Check out these 13 resources for insights and information on how to improve your recruiting and hiring tactics to attract and retain today’s top sales talent:
- What it Takes to Really Attract Top Sales Talent
- 4 Tips to Help You Hire Top-performing Sales Talent
- 4 Reasons You’re Not Attracting Top Sales Talent (And How To Fix It)
- ABR: Why You Should Always be Recruiting for Your Sales Team (and How to Do It Right)
- Six Reasons You Should Include Simulations in Your Sales Hiring and Training Processes
- Why is it so Hard to Hire Sales Talent?
- 7 Things You Should Know About Hiring Top Sales Performers
- Survey: Where to Find Top Sales Talent
- How to Hire and Retain Top Sales Talent
- How to hire rockstar sales talent
- A Seven Step Process for Hiring Top Salespeople
- How to Find and Hire Top Sales Talent
- Recruiting Top Sales Talent | How to Predict Success Before you Hire
Quotas and Territory Management
One important facet of sales performance management is configuring territories, assigning quotas, and even scheduling in some cases. Empowering your sales reps to manage their own schedules is one of the best ways to demonstrate trust in your reps and ease your management workload, but your sales reps’ efficiency hinges, at least in part, on strategic territory alignment. That said, there are several considerations for smart territory management, such as determining whether to divide territories strictly based on geography, by product line, or another variable, or opting to assign top-performing reps to high-value accounts even when it means inconvenient geographical alignment.
Check out these 15 resources for tips for managing quotas and utilizing strategic territory alignment:
- B2B Sales Management World Class Best Practices on Territory Management
- How to Use Sales Metrics to Set More Accurate Quotas
- Sales Operations and Quota Setting: Use the Right Data
- Tough Truth about Quotas
- Creating Sales Quotas
- Setting sales quotas
- Do You Manage Sales Quotas or Sales Performance?
- What to Do When a Sales Representative Misses Quota
- 7 Essential Territory Management Tips
- Three Territory Management Time Wasters to Avoid
- How to Strategically Divide Your Sales Territories
- 3 Keys to Maintaining Effective Sales Territories
- 7 quick-fire tips for efficient sales territory management
- 3 Tips to Win at Territory Management
- Creating Measurable Stretch Goals
Sales Skills Training: Coaching, Mentoring and Continuing Education
One of the many facets of sales management is being an effective sales coach. Arming your reps with the guidance they need to continue to improve their skills will benefit their performance, and your team’s overall effectiveness.
Check out these resources for more information on the importance of sales skills training and tips on effective sales coaching and mentorship:
- Behavioral Coaching Institute: What is Sales Coaching?
- EcSell Institute: Sales Coaching Webinars
- Why Offering Ongoing Training and Development Makes Good Business Sense
- 3 Easy Ways to Provide Ongoing Training Plans for Your Reps
- Sales Leadership: 2 Key Actions That Increase Sales Performance
- Key Leadership Behaviors That Improve Sales Force Performance
- Improving Sales Performance: New Rules for Leaders
- Observation Checklist for Sales Managers
- 5 Keys to Successful Sales Coaching
- 3 Tips for Tapping Into Managers’ Sales Coaching Abilities
- Coaching Development: The Key to Sales Growth
- Top Coaching Habits of Great Sales Managers
Not sure where to look for top-quality training resources? Here are 10 useful sales training resources, training portals and consultants, and courses to help your reps keep developing their sales skills:
- How to Manage Your Sales Territory
- Sales Fundamentals
- Sales Effectiveness Training
- Five Free Sales Training Games
- RAIN Group: Online Sales Training
- The Sales Resource Center
- 12 Amazing Sales Training & Coaching Sites
- Richardson: Sales Training Resources & Materials
- Sales Training International
- Miller Heiman Group: Sales Ready
Sales Performance Management: Motivating Your Sales Team with Engagement, Gamification and Morale
Effective sales management starts with exceptional leadership skills. Enthusiasm is contagious. Motivating your reps to hit their goals, fostering enthusiasm about your products and services, company goals, and your reps’ individual and team targets cultivate a positive company culture and boosts results. How do you go about keeping your sales team engaged and boosting morale?
Check out these 8 informative resources for insights on motivational leadership to help your sales team hit its goals:
- 5 Ways Sales Managers Can Help Their Team Exceed Quota
- 5 Things Proactive Sales Managers Do Differently
- 3 Proven Ways to Motivate Your Sales Team
- Motivating Salespeople: What Really Works
- Motivate Your Sales Team: The 20 Point Checklist
- Inspiring Your Sales Force
- 7 Tips for Communicating with Sales Teams
- Feedback: The Key to Growth, Motivation, and Company Strength
What about incentive programs? These eight resources will help you get your sales incentive programs right:
- Motivating Your Sales Team: It’s (Not) All About the Money
- 6 Sales Incentive Strategies that Will Delight Your Finance Team
- Sales Incentive Strategy Done the Right Way
- How to Create Sales Incentive Programs That Work
- The Future of Sales Incentives
- Activity-Based Sales Incentives That Make Sense
- An Exploratory Study of Sales Incentive Programs
Here are six informative resources on how to use gamification to ramp up enthusiasm and boost results:
- Motivate Sales Teams with Gamification
- 4 Benefits of Sales Gamification
- 7 Sales Gamification Secrets to Drive Productivity
- Game On! Motivate Your Sales Team With Gamification
- 20 Examples of Games or Gamification for Sales Training
- Best Sales Gamification Software
Sales Acceleration: Harnessing Sales Technology
Managing today’s fast-paced sales environments requires savvy use of technology. Fortunately, there are an abundance of tools at your disposal to help you manage and oversee virtually every aspect of the sales process. From sales enablement tools to pipeline management, forecasting, sales analytics, and more, the myriad tools on the market mean configuring your sales technology stack is nothing short of overwhelming. Do it right, though, and you’ll amplify your team’s results by harnessing powerful analytics and automation for sales acceleration.
Check out the following eight resources for insights on how to configure your sales technology stack, how to choose the right technology tools to accelerate sales, and more:
- The Four Pillars of the Sales Technology Stack
- There’s a New Sales Tech Stack on the Block
- How to Build a Sales Technology Stack for Better Productivity
- Defining the B2B Sales Tech Stack
- Why Your Sales Development Team Needs a Clearly Defined Technology Stack
- A Day in the Life: Sales Rep Technology Stack
- Why Your Sales and Marketing Stack Needs a Solid Foundation
- How to Build an Enterprise-Level Sales Stack
Improving Lead Generation through Better Marketing-Sales Alignment
Is your team selling to leads that just don’t seem to convert? Identifying the root cause of a growing number of non-converting leads is crucial for boosting your sales conversion rate. Maybe you need to realign your sales territories. Perhaps your sales reps need some additional training. Maybe you’re targeting the wrong markets. Or, perhaps the quality of your leads is declining. It’s not about assigning blame but improving the process. If you’re discovering that sales leads aren’t ready to buy, there are several tactics you can employ to boost lead generation and increase the number of sales-ready leads, but it all starts with great marketing-sales alignment.
Check out these 9 resources for valuable insights you can put to use to enhance marketing-sales alignment and improve the quantity and quality of your sales leads:
- Four Best Practices to Ensure Sales/Marketing Alignment
- 6 steps towards improved marketing-sales alignment and business growth
- How to Improve Marketing and Sales Alignment
- Improving Sales and Marketing Alignment
- Study: Marketing Automation Platforms Improve Marketing and Sales Alignment
- 4 Steps to Effective Marketing and Sales Communication
- 5 Ways to Align Marketing With Sales to Close More Deals
- How the right technology can improve sales and marketing alignment
Sales Metrics that Matter
Most sales management and leadership efforts will fall short without clear goals that are aligned with strategic business objectives, clearly defined KPIs, and ongoing measurement to monitor results. But what metrics matter most to you, as a sales leader, and to your sales reps to help them track and measure their own success and adjust their behaviors in order to meet goals?
Check out these 10 resources for insights on the sales metrics that matter:
- How Salesforce Measures Its Most Important Sales Metrics
- How to Visualize Your Sales Metrics: 6 Example Sales Dashboards
- Sales Metrics and KPIs
- What Sales Metrics Should You Track? – The Essential List
- The 4 Most Important Key Performance Indicators for Sales Managers
- Four Smart KPIs to Accurately Measure Sales Performance
- How to choose sales metrics that matter
- Select Your Sales Metrics: Which Ones Are Most Important for Your Team?
- 4 of the Most Important Metrics Sales Managers Can Track
- How to Choose, Track and Improve Key Sales Development Metrics for Predictable Growth
Put these strategies, tactics, and resources to use to become an effective, collaborative and inspiring leader, improve sales performance management, and accelerate sales to catapult your team to success.