Welcome to The Sales Managers' Academy.
Developing your skills and confidence
for better results.
New Sales Managers, please click here to schedule a free consultation on how to make the transition with ease.
Sales Mangers who want more time in the day, please click here to schedule a free consultation on top tools that will save time..
Sales Management is vital for success.
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Imagine a business where there are no sales managers. How confident would that business be that their business and marketing plans are being implemented effectively?
Equally how sure would that business be that it really understood what was happening at that vital interface where customers and salespeople are having conversations and what customers are really thinking and how they are behaving?
The fundamental reason that sales managers exist today is still the same as it has always been - to lead salespeople to be as effective as possible. The Sales Managers’ Academy® is here to help sales managers do that. The Sales Managers’ Academy® is here to help sales managers do that. We hear from some sales managers that they find it difficult to perform that crucial role of helping salespeople to be as effective as possible because.
§ They are often undervalued by their organisations.
§ They are often underutilised.
§ They are often under prepared for their role
This last point is crucial as our research shows:
70% said they had had no real preparation or support for their transition to their role as a sales manager.
30% had had some form of general management training, or in very few cases they had had really good support and mentoring to support this transition.
The Sales Managers’ Academy® is here so that all Sales Mangers, especially when they make the transition from being a successful salesperson are helped to become successful sales managers. This benefits everybody..
Set up a free 30 minute consultation for tips, tools and resources.
The job of a Sales Manager spans
many different job titles.
Who is a sales manager? We think that any person who has responsibility for the actions and behaviours of anybody who’s responsible for revenue transfer from a customer to your own business is a salesperson. Anyone who’s responsible for guiding those actions and behaviours is a sales manager. We see essentially three different types of sales managers.
The Intentional Sales Manager
A professional salesperson who has stepped up to lead a team of professional salespeople. We call these people the intentional sales managers because they are following a career path and using their professional or functional expertise as a building block on which to add the leadership and management skills required for the role.
For an initial conversation on how we might be able to help you or your colleagues develop their careers, please contact us - we’ll set up an initial 30 minute call.
The Expert with Commercial Responsibility
A technical or professional expert who has assumed a role of leading other technical or professional experts and also possibly professional salespeople. They are responsible for the commercial interface with customers and potential customers. They may already have developed leadership and management skills and need to be able to apply them in this different context.
For an initial conversation on how we might be able to help you or your colleagues develop as professional commercial leaders, please contact us - we’ll set up an initial 30 minute call.
The Business Owner
A small or medium business owner who leads the sales effort for their business people. They may not see themselves as sales managers. Nonetheless they are responsible for the future success of their business and need to develop the specific skills that a successful sales manager has.
For an initial conversation on how we might be able to help you transition from an unintentional sales manager to a competent one, please contact us - we’ll set up an initial 30 minute call.
Sales Management Made Easier.
The Sales Managers’ Academy® is a collection of resources and assets combined into programmes supported by experienced sales managers, to
help sales managers develop the skills and confidence they need to be effective in their job.
The Academy offers a variety of ways to improve Sales Manager skills and confidence for improved results.
Formal Learning:
We offer formal learning strategies such as our personalised learning programmes, programmes designed to suit each individual and meet their specific objectives.
Informal Learning:
We have the facility as well as the facility to help you benefit from self managed informal learning. For example, you might just want to come in and access the free resources and tools that we have and take those away to work on them yourselves. You may want to join in our community based learning groups.
1) Mentoring & Coaching.
The Sales Managers’ Academy® is run by experienced sales managers, who have learned lessons along the way that have helped them to be successful; they've also learnt from other sales managers. So as mentors we’re able to share that experience, and we may already have some of the answers that sales managers are looking for. As coaches, we can help them to identify how to take our experience and make it work for them.
Who do we help? Firstly, successful salespeople who are looking to develop their career and are transitioning to a sales manager role. We help them make that transition, helping to deal with some of the things they will have to do for the first time, such as their first coaching session, their first sales management meeting, and their first sales team meeting. We've built experience of what works in of all those sorts of activities so we can help them accelerate that journey, from being a successful salesperson, to being a successful sales manager. There are many experienced sales managers who really want to be on top of their game; they have built up a set of effective leadership and management practices that they are doing really well.
Thirdly, many sales or commercial managers do not come from a professional sales background; they been successful in selling through their technical or professional expertise, and now they actually have to run a revenue generating organisation. We help this group fill in the gaps in terms of the structures required to create an effective sales system, the processes that will make it efficient and how you lead people in a commercial environment.
They also recognise that if they could just do a few things in a different way, they’d get some different results, and they’d be able to take their sales management practice to the next level. We support this group by helping them to be clear and confident about their strengths and work with them on developing those skills that will take them to the next level. Thirdly, many sales or commercial managers do not come from a professional sales background; they been successful in selling through their technical or professional expertise, and now they actually have to run a revenue generating organisation. We help this group fill in the gaps in terms of the structures required to create an effective sales system, the processes that will make it efficient and how you lead people in a commercial environment. Think our Mentoring and Coaching service can help you or your colleagues? Please contact us - we’ll set up an initial 30 minute call, and you’ll be able to judge for yourself.
2) Personalised Learning Programmes.
At The Sales Managers’ Academy®, our aim is to deliver learning programmes that are the right fit for every sales manager. We do that by using the insight and expertise of successful and experienced sales managers.
We think every learning programme should produce a really good outcome, that is, a sales manager who knows what to do in a particular situation, who knows how to do it, and has the confidence to do it. As every sales manager starts at in unique place in working towards that outcome, every programme has to be designed around them.
Accordingly, you may be a new sales manager who has many new things to learn. An experienced sales manager may have built up good practices but there are some gaps, which when filled will improve the results you get.
For these two different situations, we may draw upon the same sort of resources and tools, to create a personalised programme to address the particular need for each sales manager., One size doesn’t fit all.
Wondering if our personalised learning programmes might be right for you or your colleagues? Please contact us - we’ll set up an initial 30 minute call, and you’ll be able to judge for yourself.
3) Improved Sales Team Motivation.
What if everybody in the sales team was more motivated and therefore more productive – what would that do for your team’s performance? This happens when sales managers can access what is called “discretionary energy”. This is the energy that someone chooses to offer over and above that required to just get by.
By accessing this hidden reserve of motivation and harnessing this potential energy, sales managers can improve activity, productivity, and performance.
The challenge for many sales managers, however, is that motivation is challenging to improve and sustain for 3 reasons.
Motivation is an internal state. How an individual thinks and talks about what motivates them (their motivators) is very different to the next person. As a result, a sales manager doesn’t have a uniform way to engage with their team about motivation. It takes time and their energy to work out what each individual’s motivators might be.
Motivation is invisible. Usually, we can see the physical signs of either high or low states of motivation. Most of the time, a sales manager cannot really tell what a team member’s level of motivation is, let alone be able to measure it.
Motivation is individual. What motivates and energises one team member is often very different from the next. Indeed, what one motivates one person can be a demotivator for another. To energise the whole team consistently, the sales manager has to find the right motivational strategy for each team member.
We work with Sales Managers to help them understand which motivational strategies to use with each team member and how to unleash the extra energy for better productivity and performance.
At The Sales Managers’ Academy, we use a tool called The Motivational Map® to help sales managers understand what motivates different sales team members and HOW motivated they are right now. The Map makes the invisible, visible and the vague, measurable.
Wondering if our approach to improving sales team motivation might be right for you or your colleagues? Please contact us - we’ll set up an initial 30 minute call, and you’ll be able to judge for yourself. We’ll probably off you a complementary Motivational Map® and review so you can see how thousand of people have been able to improve their motivation using this tool.
About Us.
We're experienced sales managers, who now work to help other sales managers develop their own skills. As well as being experienced sales managers, we have other skills and experience that we've gained along the way and that lend themselves to actually supporting an academy such as this; whether it's having worked effectively in learning design, digital learning, coaching, or working very much at the high end of sales manager performance development.
Meet The Team.
A perfect blend of experience and expertise.
ANNIE FAULKNER
Boosting the confidence of sales leaders during career transition, resulting in better team performance and inspiring growth.
Expertise and Experience
General Management
Sales Leadership
Personal branding & storytelling
Personal development
Resilience training
Executive coaching
Mentoring
DAVID MASON
Working on changing the world, one sales team at a time.
Expertise & Experience
General management,
Sales leadership
Sales and marketing interface
Sales performance improvement
Mentoring
Coaching
Learning design & impact
Experiential learning
Team development
Founder David Mason Answers Some FAQs
We know that you are likely to have some questions, so in this short video, we've given it a go to anticipate what they might be.
Take a few minutes to learn what the Academy is all about. If you want to get involved then sign up below.
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