Here’s How Sales Managers Can Succeed Via an L&D Strategy

If you’re a sales manager, you were likely chosen for the job because you had great success as a salesperson. Management is confident you know how to sell and figures you’ll share your secrets with your reps. And you do your best, but end up frustrated when most don’t meet their quotas.

Sound familiar?

Here’s the hard truth: being a star salesperson differs from teaching others to be star salespeople. In fact, they’re totally different jobs. 

Success as a sales manager hinges on helping others become great at their jobs. That means you have to figure out how your employees can learn the skills you already know. It also requires working with people whose personalities and learning styles may be very different from your own. 

Unfortunately, when you look at the turnover stats for salespeople—a staggering 35 percent—it’s clear that no one’s winning. Not the sales reps, not the sales managers, and not the businesses.

An L&D strategy certainly helps. Without one, you cannot guarantee that what sales reps learn supports the company’s overall goals. Even those with natural curiosity and an aptitude for learning may not be focusing on what benefits them the most.

But just having an L&D function in place isn’t enough. It must be targeted to align with and support your company’s business objectives. Here’s why that makes the crucial difference!

How a Targeted L&D Strategy Helps Sales Managers Meet Their Goals

When a company successfully aligns L&D with corporate strategy, it has a number of benefits:

• Identifying existing skills gaps that prevent sales reps from meeting their quotas

It can take a while to master sales fundamentals and—as the saying goes—many salespeople don’t know exactly what they don’t know. That means if they try to figure it out on their own, they’re likely to focus on the wrong areas or pursue a learning path that doesn’t really give them the skills they need. 

Your job as a sales manager is  to help your employees figure out how to close those gaps (we gave you some questions to ask here). That often means helping to identify weak areas they don’t even realize they have. 

A great example of an often-overlooked skill is business acumen. Here’s why it matters:

• • If sales reps want to meet their objectives, they need to understand your company’s business objectives and the rationale behind them. Unfortunately, stats show that only 15 percent of employees actually understand their company’s strategy. That’s a huge strike against your department’s success right off the bat.
  • Business acumen empowers salespeople to have effective, meaningful conversations that close more sales. They’ll be able to grasp the performance drivers for their prospect’s business—and can clearly explain how your product or service will drive results. 

That means reps can help problem-solve earlier in the sales cycle. Often, sales organizations are so solutions-focused that they forget that they’re really in the business of eliminating problems. A strong “teaching” point-of-view reframes how customers view their current situation—and closes more sales, faster.

Yet many salespeople would never independently realize that they lack business acumen—and those who do may just feel overwhelmed by everything they need to learn. A strong L&D strategy identifies these gaps and creates a manageable pathway to acquiring those skills.

• Creating a culture of continuous improvement

L&D's job isn’t done once a sales rep meets their quota. While sales fundamentals are pretty consistent, technology is always changing. So is the sales cycle, which is becoming increasingly complex and involves an ever-growing number of people on the buyer’s side.

If you want to succeed as a sales manager, your L&D strategy must focus on continuous improvement. With upskilling, they’ll be learning new skills to stay ahead of the game and do well in their career. That benefits them and you. It’s a win-win!

• Increasing adoption and utilization of technology

Companies get veeeeerry anxious when sales reps aren’t adopting and utilizing their tech. Obviously, management doesn’t want the money they invested to go to waste—but more importantly, they realize they won’t get high-quality data unless salespeople consistently use the tech stack. 

A lack of good data has cascading effects: less accurate forecasting, longer sales cycles, and decreased revenue. Without quality data, sales reps cannot make good decisions that help them close more deals. 

That means they’ll miss their quotas and you’ll miss your goals.

But don’t despair! An L&D strategy can significantly improve the use of your tech stack, particularly when training is followed by ongoing coaching that helps reinforce the new learnings. (If they still won’t use it, chances are your tech isn’t truly supporting your business objectives.)

• Improving employee morale and increasing retention

Remember that 35 percent turnover for salespeople mentioned earlier? We’re betting you have better things to do with your time than replacing your entire salesforce every three years. 

Many sales managers think better pay is the answer—and it is, if you’re already underpaying. If you’re not, commissions are inherently a risk-mitigation tactic. As we said in this blog, using them to incentivize or motivate behaviors simply isn’t going to work. That’s accomplished with an effective L&D strategy. 

• Creating a flexible sales structure 

One of the hardest things about being a sales manager is managing different types of people with varied skill sets and learning styles. You’ve also probably “inherited” some reps you might not have hired on your own. Sales frameworks are a good way to provide a flexible structure that accommodates different working styles.  

Frameworks help align people with different perspectives, allowing them to have meaningful conversations and grow. After all, sales is really about helping everyone make good decisions. 

But decisions are hard because you’re predicting your vision of the future. We’ve all had decision fatigue. It’s even worse when you’re involved in a complex sales process with many participants. Frameworks help sales reps make better decisions with more confidence.

• Recruiting better salespeople

In this market, talent shortage is a major concern. If you want to attract the best salespeople, compensation matters, of course. However, for the strongest salespeople, compensation isn’t the best draw because they know they’ll do well no matter what. 

To be truly competitive you need to offer growth opportunities. A company with clear pathways for growth will attract the strongest, most ambitious talent.

• Building resilience

Sales success hinges on the ability to pivot when necessary. L&D gives your salesforce the hard and soft skills employees need to adapt to change or unexpected obstacles, especially when markets are volatile. With L&D in place, organizations have increased resilience in volatile markets. 

Resilience is also related to continuous improvement. Everyone, even your best rep, will fail at some point, whether it’s due to the market or a lack of skills. An L&D strategy can help them to rebound and learn from their mistakes.

If you want to succeed as a sales manager, you have to help your reps succeed. Yet, when you look at the amount of turnover in a typical sales organization, it’s clear that most reps aren’t succeeding. When they leave, the cycle starts all over again… 

What’s often missing is an L&D strategy—specifically, one that aligns sales reps’ skill-building with the company’s overall business goals. That’s the secret sauce that empowers salespeople to close sales, particularly at a time when 40 to 60 percent of sales end in no decision at all. 

If you want to spend more time meeting your goals—and less time hiring and firing—a targeted L&D strategy can help you be more effective and successful.