Closing the Training Gap for Frontline Sales Managers
In partnership with the Revenue Enablement Society (RES), we surveyed 134 commercial leaders in public and private companies to understand the impact of sales manager training on seller productivity and what modern enablement teams are doing to address frontline manager skill development.
While commercial teams face unprecedented challenges, most companies are falling short on a critical lever for improving seller performance — training frontline managers.
Being a frontline sales manager has never been more challenging.
Managers are navigating more difficult procurement processes, with up to 12 customer stakeholders and 7 change events per cycle.
Managers must reach growth targets with the same or fewer AEs, while more senior leaders expect generative AI to further decrease seller headcount in the future.
Managers are now expected to expertly use a growing set of AI-enabled tools in the sales stack, with new workflows for reporting and performance management.
Sales managers need upskilling now, yet most companies are falling short.
Roughly 40% of teams have no dedicated sales manager training program.
Even with a sales manager training program in place, about two-thirds of companies still fail to consistently train all sales managers annually.
Sales manager training produces more effective frontline managers and more productive sellers.
Teams with sales manager training programs see higher rates of sellers achieving quota – as much as seven percentage points more.
The impact of upskilling is noticeable; about 60% of teams with manager training programs rate their sales managers as “effective”, compared to just 25% of teams without.
Take these four actions now to close the gap on frontline sales manager training:
Stop allowing short-term priorities to serve as obstacles to training.
Treat managing performance and coaching as distinct skills and address both in sales manager training.
Devote time to technology training, including leveraging generative AI, to ensure productivity gains from new technologies are fully captured.
Don't rely on coaching playbooks as the sole reinforcement mechanism.
