Most sales reps will remember that one incredible sales leader they worked under.
They were inspiring, motivating, and perhaps tough to please — but you always wanted to make them proud.
But often, when great sales reps are promoted into leadership positions, they're expected to know how to lead a sales team with little training or direction.
Yet being a world-class seller and an exceptional leader requires two distinct skill sets.
And managing a sales team for the first time can be incredibly daunting.
Despite the lack of emphasis on development for sales leaders in many organisations, strong leadership is crucial in the industry.
It sets the tone for the team's motivation, direction, and performance and can be the difference between success and failure.
In this guide, we'll outline 20 actionable strategies for managing a sales team effectively.
Read on to discover how to become an exceptional sales leader capable of leading your team to success.
What Makes a Great Sales Leader?
A capable sales leader not only inspires and guides their team but also fosters a positive and supportive environment.
They clarify goals, offer valuable insights, and equip their team with the tools and skills needed to succeed.
Key traits and skills of outstanding sales leaders include:
- Communication
- Empathy
- Motivation
- Decision-making
- Strategic thinking
- Problem-solving
- Coaching and development
- Adaptability
- Analytical skills
- Resilience
Sales leaders are often so focused on developing their team that they forget how important it is for them to embrace continuous learning and development.
After all, the sales landscape evolves rapidly with new technologies, market trends, and customer preferences — and sales techniques and tools are constantly advancing in order to keep up.
Continuous learning and development is vital for sales leaders as it empowers them to get ahead of these changes, enhance their skills, and develop in problem-solving, leadership, and motivational techniques.
20 Methods to Lead a Sales Team Effectively
Ready to get proactive and elevate your sales leadership?
Here are 20 actionable strategies for how to lead a sales team effectively.
#1 Set Clear and Achievable Goals
Sales goals are the backbone of your strategy.
They give your team clear direction and purpose and help motivate them in the desired direction.
Goals also allow you to measure the performance of your sales team and establish accountability within your team.
And that feeling of achievement when a sales rep hits a goal is second to none.
However, if you don't give the required thought to setting goals for your team, you can actually demotivate your reps.
It's crucial, therefore, to set clear and achievable SMART goals.
Smart goals are:
- Specific: Clear, specific, and well-defined
- Measurable: Include criteria for measuring progress and success
- Achievable: Realistic and attainable within the resources and timeframe available
- Relevant: Align with broader objectives and be relevant to the team or individual's role
- Time-bound: Have a defined timeline or deadline for completion
Here's an example.
Suppose your organisation has just launched a new product — let's call it 'Product Y' — but initial sales haven't been great.
You now want to dedicate time and resources to actively selling this product and motivate your team to focus on it.
The following goal is not a SMART goal:
"Pitch product X to more customers"
Instead, set a SMART goal like the following:
"Sell [X units] of Product Y by [Z date]."
The second example is specific, relevant, measurable, and time-bound.
To ensure it's achievable, it's also vital to consider historic data and industry benchmarks before deciding on the 'X' and 'Z' figures.
#2 Foster a Positive Team Culture
Think back to the sales teams where you've enjoyed the most success.
It's likely that these were the teams that generally had a good vibe, with high levels of morale, motivation, and collaboration.
Sales teams with positive cultures are also more adaptable and resilient, with much lower employee turnover than teams with an unhappy vibe.
To foster a positive team culture, sales leaders must:
- Lead by example: Don't just tell your team how to behave at work; show them. Demonstrate clear respect, integrity, and positivity in all interactions and they will follow.
- Encourage open communication and active listening: Develop a supportive environment with 'no stupid questions' where ideas and concerns are freely shared without fear.
- Build trust and collaboration: Sales is a competitive industry, but for a positive team culture, your reps need to trust each other and collaborate. Cultivate a 'when one of us wins, we all win' mentality on the team and incentivise collaboration as well as healthy competition.
- Celebrate achievements: When your reps hit their goals - no matter how big or small - make a big deal of it. Acknowledge their achievements publicly and privately, and build attractive incentives into personal development plans.
- Provide ongoing training and development opportunities: Empower your team members, foster personal growth, and ensure your reps feel valued and invested in.
- Promote a healthy work-life balance: Offer support during challenging times, discourage working late, encourage reps to take all the annual leave and sick days they need, and set up schemes designed to improve work-life balance.
#3 Communicate Effectively
Open, honest, and frequent communication is instrumental to effective sales leadership.
The last thing you want is to appear unapproachable to sales reps or to cause them to fear asking questions or sharing concerns.
To avoid this eventuality, build a transparent communication infrastructure within your teams with clear rules and boundaries.
For example, you may use Slack for casual internal team communication but email for client matters.
You might ban using Slack after 6pm to ensure a good work-life balance, but make it clear that reps can WhatsApp you if they need to reach you after work in emergencies.
This online communication could be reinforced by weekly video one-to-ones with each sales rep and an in-person team meeting at the start of every week.
During your communication, ensure you are as open and honest as possible while still remaining professional and approaching any subject matter from an empathetic perspective.
#4 Provide Regular Training and Development
With the sales landscape constantly evolving, if you fail to provide regular training and development for your reps, you're doing them a disservice.
Not only will this prevent them from performing with your existing and prospective clients, but it could also set them back in their careers.
Indeed, regular training and development is crucial for sales reps to keep their skills sharp, help them adapt to market changes, and ultimately boost their performance.
Through such training programmes, you should aim to elevate their product knowledge, sales techniques, and customer engagement skills.
It will help your team stay competitive, motivated, and capable of effectively meeting evolving customer needs.
So what should your training programme look like?
The right training program for your team will depend on your industry, individual reps, and specific circumstances.
However, it will most likely comprise a combination of the following training and development methods:
- Group training provided by the sales leader
- Group training provided by an external expert
- One-on-one training provided by the sales leader
- Internal and external mentorship schemes
- Coaching schemes
- Peer-to-peer coaching
- Role-playing
- Desktop research, such as reading industry publications and blogs by thought leaders
- Conferences, seminars, and other networking events
- Courses and degrees to gain external qualifications
#5 Lead by Example
"Do as I say, not as I do" is not a leadership approach that works well in 2024.
It's essential to the success of the team that sales reps respect those in leadership positions — and failing to follow your own rules is a quick way to lose that respect.
If, for example, you — rightly — hammer home the importance of speaking politely to colleagues, and then they hear you shouting at someone, this may be a signal for them to also break your rules or ignore what you say.
While sales leaders have a different functionality to reps, you must work just as hard as they do, if not harder, and stick to your own rules.
Remember — you set the tone for your team.
Your reps will watch you closely to see how you act and follow in your footsteps.
You need to demonstrate the behaviour you want to see for a positive outcome.
#6 Use Data-Driven Decision Making
When it comes to how to lead a successful sales team, this is a big one.
In 2024, sales leaders are no longer operating off gut instinct alone.
In fact, if you're yet to embrace data-driven decision-making, your sales team is unlikely to be competitive.
It's crucial to your team's success that you leverage sales analytics for performance tracking.
But how to track sales performance?
By using the best sales productivity tools like OneUp, you can find out exactly how each member of your team is performing, as well as how your team is performing as a whole.
Set up custom dashboards that track your key performance metrics to delve into each rep's strengths and weaknesses.
For example, if you notice that one rep books a lot of meetings but is significantly behind on their revenue target, it's clear they could benefit from training on how to convert customers.
Meanwhile, another rep might convert almost every customer they meet with but struggle to get leads to commit to meetings in the first place.
Again, this shows you exactly where to focus on those reps' personal development plans.
In this circumstance, you could also take advantage of the two reps' clear strengths by teaming them up.
Rep one could focus on securing meetings, while rep two could lead those meetings — and they would likely learn something from each other during their collaboration.
Read more: How to fix sales performance
As well as empowering you to drill down into key performance metrics, OneUp will also drive accountability and motivation in your reps.
Intuitive, easy-to-use dashboards with beautiful visualisations mean there's no hiding from that cold, hard performance data.
And a suite of gamified motivational tools — including competition leaderboards, missions, and challenges — means reps see their performance side-by-side with their colleagues as they work towards an incentive.
Furthermore, OneUp is a time-saver.
Its automation capabilities mean you only need to set up a report once, and then you can simply automate it to land in your inbox as often as needed.
Read more: What is sales performance management?
#7 Empower Your Team
Empowered sales teams feel valued and motivated to take ownership of their work, driving team performance and morale.
Empowering your team starts with really getting to know each team member.
Where do their strengths and weaknesses lie?
What are their career ambitions?
What areas are they interested in developing?
Once you have this information, slowly start delegating responsibility and encouraging autonomy in your team.
For example, if an experienced rep is interested in developing into a leadership role, pair them with a new hire and task them with mentoring.
If another is super interested in learning more about consultative selling, send them to a conference and ask them to conduct a training session with the rest of the team when they return to pass on their knowledge.
Data analytics tools are key to encouraging autonomy.
After all, if your reps can see how they are performing against the rest of the team at any point, they don't have to wait for you to review their performance.
Instead, they should spot where they are underperforming and take action to course correct immediately.
This is key to leading a sales team to success.
#8 Provide Constructive Feedback
However, that's not to say that feedback from sales leaders is no longer critical.
In fact, constructive feedback is vital for personal development, not to mention a powerful motivational tool.
Set up regular performance reviews and feedback sessions and put data analytics at the heart of these meetings.
Within your one-to-ones, focus on reviewing progress towards existing goals, setting new goals, and sharing constructive insights and advice.
Approach these meetings with empathy and support, ensuring team members feel comfortable discussing their challenges and successes openly.
#9 Recognise and Reward Success
Nothing gets you fired up for that next win like a monetary bonus accompanied by a public pat on the back from your sales leader.
Great sales leaders always make a big deal of celebrating wins and achievements.
A big part of this is incentives, from monetary bonuses and entertainment tickets to work socials and fine dining vouchers.
However, it's also important to publicly acknowledge a sales rep's achievement in group meetings and privately congratulate them in one-to-one meetings.
OneUp makes recognising and rewarding sales success easier than ever.
Its gamification tools make it clear when a sales rep is about to hit their target and receive their incentive.
What's more, you can set up celebration announcements and personal messages that automatically play across all the screens in your office when a team member hits their target.
#10 Create a Consistent Sales Process
With budgets frequently being slashed in a tough selling landscape, efficiency is now the name of the game in sales.
As a sales leader, it's your job to get more for your money.
And a consistent sales process helps to significantly enhance the efficiency of your sales process.
Of course, you don't want to just let your team loose on any old sales process.
Instead, your process must be built upon historic data.
It should include tactics that have worked well for you in the past and exclude time-wasting steps that don't typically reap results.
Once you've landed on the perfect sales process, standardise it in order to provide clarity for sales reps, streamline your workflows, and improve the customer experience.
And continue to hone your sales process as you gather more data on its performance.
This consistency means it's much easier to monitor the effectiveness of your sales strategies and adjust them with data-driven decisions where necessary.
In short, having a consistent sales process leads to better performance, more reliable outcomes, and efficiency gains.
#11 Leverage Technology and Tools
If you ask your team where they feel like they shine, they'll likely cite times they finally booked a high-stakes meeting, pitched to clients or closed huge deals at meetings.
They're unlikely to feel that their data entry skills or ability to schedule meetings in the calendar are the best things they bring to the team.
Fortunately, in 2024, we can delegate tedious, repetitive tasks that consume precious time to cutting edge tech-tools.
The top customer relationship management (CRM) systems store all customer data in one centralised location, reducing the time reps spend digging through sources.
They also facilitate collaboration by allowing team members to share information easily, and give you clear pipeline visibility so you can see, at a glance, where to focus your resources.
Perhaps the biggest time saver, however, is their automation tools.
Modern CRMs automate repetitive tasks like data entry, scheduling follow-ups, and sending emails — freeing up your reps for more strategic activities.
You should also look for data analytics tools with built-in automation.
OneUp integrates with a wide range of Sales CRMs, VoiP tools, sales enablement platforms, and timesheet software, automatically pulling data from all these sources onto one centralised platform.
You can then trigger events when any data point reaches a specific value or increases by a chosen percentage.
With OneUp, you can also send any report you've configured directly to your inbox and control who receives it, when it is sent, and how often it is sent.
Another handy OneUp function is the ability to view a complete audit trail of all the automations that have been triggered for the past 90 days.
#12 Encourage Collaboration with Other Departments
It's easy for sales teams to become siloed within their organisations.
After all, you've typically got very different goals from colleagues in other departments.
However, encouraging collaboration with other departments can significantly boost your sales.
For example, working closely with marketing and customer support enables you to share important feedback and present a unified brand externally.
Spending time collaborating with product teams, meanwhile, should give your reps a deeper insight into what they are selling, making them better able to answer potential customers' questions.
#13 Focus on Customer Needs
In most industries, the days of the hard sell are long gone.
Now, prospects respond better to customer-centric selling that focuses on understanding and fulfilling their needs and preferences while addressing their challenges and pain points.
Instead of a one-size-fits-all product or service, prioritise the customer's interests to deliver tailored solutions.
In doing so, you add value to your service and build trust and loyalty, which leads to higher customer satisfaction, loyalty and referrals.
The main components of consultative selling are:
- Spend time asking questions to truly understand the customer's needs, goals, challenges, and pain points
- Practise active listening by genuinely paying attention to their responses
- Educate and advise customers by providing advice and expertise relevant to their situation
- Customise your solutions and recommendations to address their needs, challenges, and pain points
- Handle objections proactively, demonstrating empathy and professionalism
- Close with confidence by proposing tailored solutions that align with the customer's needs and providing clear next steps
#14 Manage Time Effectively
Time management is an extremely useful skill for sales leaders, especially those with a high workload and a small team.
For effective time management:
- Prioritise high-impact tasks that align with your strategic goals
- Delegate to team members by assigning tasks according to their strengths and capabilities
- Set clear daily and weekly goals in terms of what you need to get done during that time period, and measure your progress
- Harness the power of technology such as CRMs and automation to take tedious, repetitive tasks off your to-do list
- Schedule out blocks of time for meetings, coaching sessions, and personal development to ensure these critical tasks don't slip through the net
- Limit distractions during times of focus by setting communication boundaries or closing your emails for an hour or two
#15 Adapt to Change
Sure, there's a lot of change going on in sales in 2024 — but this has been a dynamic profession since day one.
The ability to adapt to change, and to build an agile team capable of doing so, is a key skill for any sales leader.
To stay competitive, you must be able to react swiftly and effectively to market shifts, changing customer preferences, and internal challenges.
Build an agile team by prioritising open communication, training and development and fostering a proactive culture on your team.
Embed flexibility into processes, encouraging team members to experiment and adjust tactics as necessary.
It's also vital to establish a feedback loop to gather customer feedback regarding what's working, what's not, and what they would like your products and/or services to do that they currently don't.
#16 Build a Supportive Environment
We've already discussed the importance of fostering a positive team culture — but building a supportive environment for your sales reps is slightly different.
This is all about providing the resources, support, and opportunities that team members need to thrive.
To build a supportive environment, sales managers should:
- Offer regular training and development opportunities
- Set clear goals and expectations
- Ensures sales professionals have access to effective tools and technology
- Assign mentors and provide coaching sessions
- Recognise achievements both publicly and privately and deliver promised incentives
- Foster a culture of open communication
- Identify career development opportunities for team members
As well as helping your sales reps to upskill and achieve their ambitions, this supportive culture should make them feel valued and invested in, decreasing employee turnover.
#17 Monitor and Adjust Strategies
The perfect sales strategy for your organisation in 2024 will be sub-par in 2025.
By 2026, it will be entirely out of date.
With the rapid evolution of the sales landscape, it's essential to treat your sales strategies as living, breathing entities that need to be constantly monitored and adjusted.
Set up custom OneUp dashboards with metrics designed to review the performance of your sales strategies and then block out time to review these metrics every month.
Is every component of your strategy working how you want and need it to?
Does anything need to be adjusted?
Make the necessary changes, alert your team, and then build your adjustments into your standardised sales processes.
#18 Mentor and Coach Team Members
As a sales leader, it's your job to put every member of your team on the path to success.
Take the time to mentor and coach your sales reps, providing them with the guidance and development opportunities that will help them achieve their dreams.
This is a mutually beneficial tactic.
Sure, it will take up a bit of your time, but it will ensure your sales team members feel valued and motivated while also giving them the skills and knowledge to generate more revenue.
#19 Encourage Innovation
In a busy sales office, creativity can often fall by the wayside.
This is understandable — when we're busy trying to close deals, there's little time for creative solutions and new ideas.
But innovation should be encouraged.
After all, it's these ideas that will differentiate you from the competition, allowing your organisation to stand out even in a saturated market.
Taking a creative approach can also boost problem-solving, leading to increased client satisfaction, and boost that all-important adaptability.
If your team needs a creativity boost, try blocking out ideation sessions in the team calendar dedicated to developing innovations and creative problem-solving.
#20 Maintain Work-Life Balance
Work-life balance is something that is talked about a lot in corporate spaces these days.
But in the fast-paced, high-pressure world of sales, we can sometimes feel that this principle doesn't apply to us.
But this mentality will only slow down our performance.
Encouraging a good work-life balance on your team will increase productivity, health and wellbeing, morale, retention, creativity, customer relationships, and enjoyment of work.
And this should all lead to a boosted bottom line.
So, how can sales leaders encourage a good work-life balance?
- Keep a close eye on resources and workload to ensure your team is not overworked
- Lead the sales team by example by demonstrating healthy work-life balance practises yourself
- Set expectations such as clearly defined working hours and boundaries surrounding communication out-of-hours
- Promote flexible and remote working where possible to accommodate personal circumstances
- Provide training and resources on effective time management
- Implement wellbeing initiatives such as mental health resources and lunchtime fitness classes
How OneUp Can Elevate Your Sales Leadership
To recap, if you're looking for strategies around how to lead a sales team to success, elevate your leadership by:
- Setting clear and achievable goals
- Fostering a positive team culture
- Communicating effectively
- Providing regular training and development
- Leading the sales team by example
- Using data-driven decision-making
- Empowering your team
- Providing constructive feedback
- Recognising and rewarding success
- Creating a consistent sales process
- Leveraging technology and tools
- Encouraging collaboration with other departments
- Focusing on customer needs
- Managing time effectively
- Adapting to change
- Building a supportive environment
- Monitoring and adjusting strategies
- Mentoring and coaching team members
- Encouraging innovation
- Maintaining work-life balance
Remember — effective leadership of sales teams is key to boosting morale, sales productivity, and success.
Anyone who has worked under a sales leader understands that their approach can mean the difference between success and failure.
A strong sales leader motivates and inspires, ensuring team members feel valued and encouraged — reps enjoy working for them.
They help their team navigate challenges, stay focused on targets, and adapt to market changes, ensuring they smash their goals and bag their commission.
And ultimately, well-led sales teams drive growth and profitability for the organisation.
Ready to elevate your leadership and boost your team's performance?
Discover the power of OneUp's cutting-edge tools with a free demo and see firsthand how this software can transform your team's productivity and success.
