Sales management: a practical guide for new sales managers

The job description usually lists targets and reporting. The real job is simpler and harder: make every rep on the team better than they would be without you, and make the numbers predictable. Everything else is in service of those two outcomes.

If you were promoted from the team, the first month is also about changing relationships. Your former peers need to see that you will be fair, that you will not play favourites and that you are there to help them earn more. Say that plainly in your first one-to-ones.

Hiring is the decision with the longest tail. A great hire makes the team better for years; a poor one costs months of management time and pipeline before it is fixed. Slow down and use a consistent process.

For SDR hiring and ramp in detail, see how to build an SDR team in Australia and the SDR onboarding playbook.

Good targets are built from the business's revenue goal backwards, using real conversion rates. Bad targets are a number from above divided by headcount. Reps know the difference, and they only chase targets they believe are possible.

1. Start with the revenue target for the period.
2. Divide by average deal size to get deals needed.
3. Divide by win rate to get opportunities needed.
4. Divide by meeting to opportunity rate to get meetings needed. Nousu's benchmark is 50% for phone-sourced meetings.
5. Divide by meetings per 100 dials to get activity needed. Nousu's benchmark is 1.3 meetings per 100 dials, against 0.3 for offshore teams.
6. Check the activity against the hours available. If it does not fit, the target, the rates or the headcount must change.

The pipeline calculator runs the full sum from revenue to activity, and the meetings per dial calculator solves the daily dials for a meeting target. Set activity targets as leading indicators, but judge people on outcomes.

A commission plan tells reps what the business really values. Keep it simple enough to explain in one sentence, paid on outcomes the rep can influence, and stable for at least a quarter.

The plan mechanics that cause most disputes

• Ramp. Give new reps a reduced target that steps up to full target over their first months, matched to the ramp you actually expect. A plan that pays nothing until a new rep hits a full target pushes your best hires out in month three.
• Accelerators. A higher rate on results above target rewards the reps who overdeliver and costs you least, because that revenue was not in the plan. If you have a lower rate below a threshold, keep the threshold modest so one bad month does not make the rest of the quarter pointless.
• Caps. Capping commission saves money in the rare great quarter and tells your best rep to stop selling once they reach it. Cap only where a single windfall deal would distort the plan, and say so in writing.
• Clawbacks. If commission is reversed when a customer cancels early or never pays, define the window and the trigger in the written plan. Deductions from wages are tightly restricted under the Fair Work Act 2009, so get advice before you recover a clawback from pay.
• Credit splits. Decide in advance who gets credit when an SDR books the meeting, an account executive closes it and a partner introduced the account. Disputes about credit after the deal closes do more damage than the money involved.
• When it is paid. State whether commission is earned on signature, on invoice or on cash received, and when it is paid. Monthly payment soon after the event keeps the link between effort and reward.

Role: {{role}}    Plan period: {{start_date}} to {{end_date}}

What you are paid on: {{measure}}, as defined in {{definition_document}}
Target: {{target}} per {{period}}
Ramp: {{ramp_targets_by_month}}
Rate up to target: {{rate_to_target}}
Rate above target: {{accelerator_rate}}
Cap: {{cap_or_none}}
When it is earned: {{signature_invoice_or_cash}}
When it is paid: {{payment_timing}}
Clawback: {{clawback_trigger_and_window}}
Credit splits: {{split_rules}}

Worked example: if you {{example_result}} this {{period}}, you earn {{example_commission}}.

Questions or disputes go to {{owner}} within {{dispute_window}}.

A sales team runs on a predictable rhythm. When everyone knows what happens daily, weekly and monthly, less time goes on chasing updates and more on selling.

Never schedule internal meetings over the peak calling windows. In Nousu's data, 68% of qualified meetings come from 10am to 11am and 2pm to 3pm in the prospect's local time.

A pipeline review is not a status update. It is a coaching session on deals: what is real, what is stuck and what the rep will do next. Ask the same questions every week so reps prepare the answers in advance.

Deal: {{account}}, {{value}}, stage {{stage}}, close date {{date}}

1. What has the buyer done since last week, not what have we done?
2. What is the agreed next step, and is the date in their calendar?
3. Who is the budget holder, and have we met them?
4. What is the cost of the problem in the buyer's words?
5. What could stop this, and what are we doing about it?
6. Has the close date moved? Why?
7. What help do you need from me?

For the forecast, weight deals by stage using your own historical conversion, and call out deals whose close date has moved twice. A forecast you can trust is worth more to the business than an optimistic one.

Write the rules down and apply them the same way to every rep. The point is not the labels. It is that a deal moves category only when the buyer does something, so the forecast reflects the buyer's behaviour rather than the rep's mood.

Coaching is where managers create the most value, and where new managers spend the least time. The detail is in our sales coaching guide, but the core habit is simple: every week, every rep gets feedback on one skill, based on a real call or deal, with one thing to practise before next week.

When a rep is behind, the first question is where. Stage metrics usually show it: a low connect rate points to the list or timing, a low decision-maker conversation rate to gatekeepers or targeting, a low meeting rate to the opener and the ask. Diagnose the stage before you judge the person.

Be early, specific and fair. A rep who hears about a problem for the first time in month five has been let down by their manager. If a formal performance process becomes necessary, follow your company's policy and get HR or legal advice.

For SDR teams in detail, see our SDR metrics and benchmarks.

The handover between the two teams is the manager's responsibility. Write the qualified meeting definition down, review meeting quality weekly with account executives, and make sure SDRs hear the feedback within a day. Our post on how an outbound agency defines a qualified meeting has a version to adapt.

A sales manager spends more time with other teams than most new managers expect. Marketing supplies leads and content, customer success inherits the customers your team wins, finance asks for the forecast and product wants to know what buyers are saying. The relationships you build in the first quarter decide how much help you get later.

• Agree definitions with marketing. What counts as a lead, a qualified meeting and an opportunity, written down and reviewed quarterly.
• Share what buyers say. A short monthly note of objections, competitor mentions and requests is gold for marketing and product.
• Hand over cleanly to customer success. The same discipline as an SDR handover: what the customer bought, why, and what they expect.
• Give finance a forecast they can plan with. Better a conservative number that lands than an optimistic one that misses.

Sales is a job with a lot of rejection, public numbers and monthly pressure. Managers who only talk about targets lose good people. The best managers notice energy as well as activity: a rep whose numbers are fine but who has gone quiet is often closer to leaving than one who is behind and asking for help.

Many of these are easier to avoid with good tools for the team: scripts from the cold call scripts library, emails from the sales email templates and a shared qualification framework from the frameworks library.