What skills and competencies do you need to become a sales manager?

At its most basic, a sales manager role combines sales skills with leadership skills - literally a manager within the sales discipline. But take a look at Michael Page's sales manager vacancies on any given day and you'll see a much broader variety of sales manager skills and competencies in demand.

So, what are the most important sales manager leadership skills? In this guide, we'll take a look at some of the core sales manager skills and competencies that can help you to land the job of your dreams.

Leadership skills

Regardless of the sales skills required, you will need strong leadership skills in order to work in a managerial position. You may have a sizeable team working below you in the hierarchy, and over time it's likely you'll be responsible for training new recruits, or retraining employees who are not performing to expectations.

Even on a typical day, it takes an effective leader to steer a steady ship. You'll need to be adept at delegating tasks and keeping everyone working to targets. The old adage is to "make hay while the sun shines" and a good manager will do exactly that, to get ahead on targets and team goals, and to free up some capacity to deal with future problems when they inevitable arise.

Recruitment skills

Ironically enough, to get recruited into a sales manager role, you may need to demonstrate that you have experience of recruiting in the past. That's because managerial positions typically include a degree of responsibility for hiring and firing. While you might not be the final decision-maker, you will probably be expected to participate in interviewing candidates and also, when necessary, recommending who should be let go.

These can be quite challenging processes - you need to be able to detach yourself from the human aspect of hiring one person over another. However, experience of acting as an interviewer or hiring manager in the past can give you a significant advantage when it comes to applying for your own next job.

Mentoring skills

Different individuals need a different approach, so a versatile ability to train, coach and mentor people in personalised ways is an excellent addition to your managerial arsenal. New recruits might just need to be steered through a predefined training programme, whereas more experienced employees might want you to mentor them towards a particular promotion opportunity.

It's important that you feel able to train your immediate team members, even if that means they could become a rival for roles you apply to in the future. Professionalism means setting those doubts aside and working in the best interests of your team members and your employer - even if that sometimes entails acting against your own best interests in the process.

Research skills

As a manager it's your job to steer your team in the right direction, both in general and in terms of sales-specific trends and issues. This can mean following the most respected sales blogs and forums, reading and recommending the best books to improve sales skills, and attending networking events and business brunches to keep up to date with other sales managers in your local area.

The sales sector is always moving forwards, with changing buyer behaviour from both consumers and B2B customers, emerging technologies and new practices in online marketing and real-world outreach alike. Effective management means keeping an intelligent eye across all of this, so that you can feed back to your employer and coach your team accordingly.

Planning and forecasting

Once you know the current position of your industry, sector or market, you're in a position to plan ahead. Again, this is less likely to be required in a junior sales role, but as you move into leadership, producing forecasts and generating sales plans independently becomes one of the core management skills needed in senior sales jobs.

Effective planning can mean predicting the market - what will sell well, and what will be in demand at certain times of year, for example - but it's also about forecasting your team's needs, ensuring that together, you are capable of reaching the goals you set (or alternatively, setting goals that you know you will not achieve, but which will deliver maximum output from your team).

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Essential soft skills for a sales manager

Let's end by summing up the essential soft skills for sales managers, some of which we've already looked at above. Transferable skills are often 'people skills' and this is important in management roles, where a significant portion of your working day will be spent dealing with your subordinates, rather than working in isolation on meeting sales targets.

Communication skills are a must, as you'll need to be able to speak professionally and candidly with all team members, including the unhappy ones.
Adaptability is essential to prioritise any problems as they arise, and act quickly to tackle the most pressing matters head-on.
Organisational skills are crucial too, to compile performance data, plan the week ahead and make long-term forecasts of capacity and output.

Demonstrate a good combination of the above skills and competencies, and you're in with a good chance of portraying yourself as a desirable sales manager, ready to deliver on challenging targets, while getting the best performance from your team.