Characteristics of Great Sales Managers and Their Impact
Companies that invest heavily in improving the skills of their sales reps while neglecting targeted sales management training for sales leaders miss one of the most powerful levers for improving sales performance. Frontline sales managers shape:
- How consistently sales strategy gets executed.
- How effectively reps develop.
- How rigorously teams pursue the right opportunities.
Simply put, better sales managers build better sales teams.
Data from our sales leadership simulation assessments and external research reinforce the connection:
- Wilson Learning found that highly skilled sales managers drove 29% higher revenue performance and 16% higher customer satisfaction than low-skilled managers — regardless of the business sales skills of their salespeople.
- Vantage Point Performance found a 39% difference in revenue performance between the top and bottom quartiles of 518 sales managers at Fortune 500 companies.
The takeaway: if you want to improve sales performance, start by strengthening the people responsible for leading it.
Characteristics of Great Sales Managers: 5 Research-Backed Traits That Drive Performance
Based on more than three decades of experience helping organizations improve sales strategy, sales culture, and sales talent, we have identified five characteristics of great sales managers that consistently influence revenue growth, profitability, win rates, sales cycle time, customer satisfaction, and sales team engagement.
- Great Sales Managers Create Strategic Clarity and Cultural Alignment
Great sales managers ensure their teams understand, believe in, and commit to the go-to-market strategy. But clarity alone is not enough. They recognize that sales strategy must align with the day-to-day sales culture to be successfully executed.
Our organizational alignment research found that sales strategy and sales culture alignment accounts for 71% of the performance difference between high- and low-performing sales teams.
Great sales managers continually remove the cultural friction that gets in the way of executing what matters most.
- Great Sales Managers Own Team Success — and Failure
Great sales managers hold themselves accountable for their team’s performance. They understand that once they become a manager, their success is largely measured through the success of others.
That means setting clear and fair expectations, rewarding the right behaviors and results, hiring salespeople who fit the strategy and culture, providing meaningful coaching, and addressing persistent sales underperformance quickly, compassionately, and fairly.
They do not blame the team when results fall short. They ask what they need to do differently as a leader.
- Great Sales Managers Ruthlessly Prioritize the Right Accounts
Not every customer, prospect, or sales opportunity deserves equal attention. Great sales managers know the difference between being busy and pursuing the opportunities most likely to create profitable growth.
Using a clearly defined ideal target client profile and compelling unique value proposition, they help sellers focus their limited time and resources where they can have the greatest impact.
They identify the highest-potential strategic sales accounts, ensure that consultative sellers disproportionately invest in them, and establish appropriate approaches for lower-priority accounts.
- Great Sales Managers Continually Optimize Sales Territories
Markets change. Customers change. Sellers develop. Yet too many organizations treat sales territories and quotas as if they were permanent.
Top sales managers regularly reassess sales territories, quotas, account assignments, and resource allocation. They consider emerging opportunities, shifting market conditions, account potential, workload, and the specific capabilities required to win.
Just as importantly, they are transparent about why changes are being made. The goal is not perfect equality — it is a fair playing field that maximizes profitable growth and sales team engagement.
- Great Sales Managers Are Exceptional Sales Coaches
Great sales managers do more than inspect pipelines, review forecasts, and track numbers. They operate as sales performance coaches who help solution sellers continually improve.
They observe sellers in action, ask insightful questions, provide timely feedback, reinforce strengths, address sales rep skill gaps, and create opportunities to practice where the stakes are lower.
Research supports the payoff. McKinsey found that top sales teams devote substantially more time to coaching their salespeople. Our own sales research found that sales reps who are consistently coached outperform their peers 4-to-1 in quota attainment.
Great sales managers understand a fundamental leadership truth: their job is not to make the sale — their job is to build sellers who can.
The Bottom Line
High-performing sales organizations do not leave sales management effectiveness to chance. They deliberately select, develop, and support frontline sales managers who can translate strategy into action, focus sellers on the highest-value opportunities, create accountability, optimize resources, and coach people to higher performance. Do your frontline sales managers have the confidence and competence required to consistently get the best from their teams?
Want your sales coaching to actually improve performance? Discover what top sales reps say their managers get wrong — and what the best sales coaches do differently. Download The Biggest Sales Coaching Mistakes — What Top Sales Reps Wish Their Managers Knew
Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.
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