Leadership development is vital across industries and job functions.
If you’re hoping to enhance or modernize your leadership development initiatives on your sales team, it’s important to understand how to go about effectively implementing a training program.
Here’s an overview of the key skills sales leaders need to prioritize developing, as well as a practical way to upskill your team in these areas.
Key Skills Sales Leaders Need
To successfully train their salespeople, leaders need to ensure they’re equipped to handle the needs of their team.
To take a modern approach to sales leadership training, consider adding the following skills to your repertoire.
Maintaining Effective Focus & Deadline-Orientation
A survey from Harvard Business Review (HBR) found that the most effective sales leaders are skilled in what HBR calls “target fixation.”
In other words, sales leaders need to be able to set and hit revenue goals within the allotted time.
The HBR survey shows that the most effective sales managers score:
- 19% higher in self-discipline
- 27% higher in effective prioritization of goals
Ultimately, they’re better able to help their team avoid unnecessary distractions and maintain a positive sense of urgency.
Recommended experience: Sleigh Your Goals
Keeping Team Members Accountable
Accountability is an often misused concept in business, and sales isn’t an exception.
According to Harvard Business School Professor and Teamraderie Advisor Amy Edmondson, “Many people equate accountability with punishment — that’s instantly what the word means.”
However, Edmondson argues that this understanding is the wrong way to frame the concept.
“Accountability is really about psychological ownership,” says Edmondson. “Accountability is about inspiring people to do their very best to make progress. It’s about being accountable for your part in achieving ambitious goals and accountable to each other — a kind of willingness to really show up, do your best, be honest, be engaged.”
According to HBR, top-performing sales leaders cultivate a culture of accountability where their team strives to be better, rather than holding their team accountable via micromanagement or punishment.
Recommended experience: Debrief to Win
Relationship-Building
According to research from Gartner, the best sales leaders are effective at building relationships with their higher-ups. This includes:
- Board members
- CEO
- CMO
- CFO
- CHRO
This is important for achieving organizational alignment and growing your business.
In addition to finding ways to establish these relationships, it’s also important to ensure that any team members you’re training to become future leaders are effective at relationship-building.
Establishing trust and cultivating open communication with leaders is an important component of advancing your sales career.
Recommended experience: Meaningful Connections
Staying Updated on Relevant Sales Skills
Today’s sales leaders need a modern approach in order to effectively develop leaders.
According to additional insights from Gartner, the skills required for salespeople to succeed in today’s environment include:
- Mentalizing: This includes understanding buyer motivations, empathizing with customers, and anticipating behavior.
- Flexibility: Comfort experimenting with various sales strategies and adapting to buyer needs in real-time.
- AI-partnership: Effective use of AI tools to augment sales tasks, such as call summarization, and data collection.
These competencies are vital for sales leaders, so focusing your efforts on these areas is a good starting place.
Recommended experience: Adopting Gen AI
Effectively Implementing Sales Leadership Training
If you’re unsure how to start leadership training your sales team, Teamraderie’s live, virtual experiences are a great place to begin.
Teamraderie’s team experiences are live, virtual workshops to help promote team learning, upskilling, and connection.
These experiences offer the following benefits for sales teams:
- Expert-led: Your team experience will be hosted by an expert. Our experts include authors, speakers, professors, Olympic athletes, and many more.
- Cohort-based: There are many benefits to team learning, and Teamraderie’s experiences capitalize on them.
- Synchronous: Instead of your team learning on their own time, they’ll work with the expert in real time, giving them the ability to ask questions and interact with the host.
These experiences are perfect for annual events — such as Sales Kickoffs (SKOs) — as well as quarterly opportunities for your team to connect.
Click here to explore Teamraderie’s experience finder and find the perfect experience for your team.
