Each salesperson, at some point in her career, comes at a point where she has to make an important choice. Whether to continue as an individual contributor or take up a team role. The number of years it might take to reach this point depends on the industry, growth stage as well as individual capabilities.
Which choice one makes is entirely up to the individual. Those at this juncture often wonder what implication the choice has on their career trajectory. That’s the topic for another post, but rest assured that there are ample opportunities along both paths.
For those who do decide to go the team role though, the journey is more complex than most people think. Several top performers end up being average team leaders. Most organizations have limited appreciation for this complexity and provide little support in terms of training or learning. Broadly speaking the person is expected to go through a couple of organization wide generic sessions-team management, leadership development etc. While these are helpful in personal development, they do precious little in terms of preparing the person for the sales manager role.
Sales managers need to learn a few hard skills when moving from an individual role. At SDI, we’ve seen this issue across our client team repeatedly. Several promising sales people fail at this critical juncture because they lack training & support.
Saurabh Sengupta, our founder, is coming up with a targeted course on leading small teams. The course will focus on some of the hard skills that you’ll immediately need when you move to a sales manager role. The first course titled ‘Leading small sales teams’ covers the following topics
- Sales Funnel Basics
- Annual Revenue Projection
- Sales Targets and Incentives (2 sessions)
- Sales Reviews
- Sales Training
- Sales Rep Lifecycle Management
If you’re someone who is looking to move to a team role or have recently done so, we’d recommend to check out his courses at www.saurabhsengupta.com
Apart from the wealth of knowledge to be gained, this would be the most fun training you’d ever attend. If you have any doubts, you should check out this video.
At Sales Design Institute, we help you get a foot in the door of mid to large enterprises. If you feel we can help you with your sales development, please reach out to us here and we’d be happy to share our approach.
