Autocratic

An autocratic manager forces a unilateral decision on his team members and expects them to follow blindly. It is the most unattractive style of management, and you should avoid it at all costs.

However, under non-negotiable circumstances, let’s say in high-pressure or faster turnaround environments where taking an action is critical, you can use it.

Democratic

A democratic manager is open to ideas, and feedback before making a decision. Key characteristics of sales management in this style include collaborative goal setting, an open platform welcoming ideas, and shared accountability.

Transactional

A transactional style is built on exchanges with employees. This could be performance rewards for those who achieved their targets and quotas. You can use this to motivate your team when you want to see a revenue spike or even retain high-level talent.

Transformational

A transformational leader brings about change and innovation within the team. The motive of this style is to inspire, empower, and coach the team not only to become better at sales but also to grow personally.

Organizations who are seeking a change in culture or want to build a high-trust, high-performing sales team look for such mentors.

Strategic

A strategic sales manager is always looking out for new opportunities that align with the company’s long-term business goal. 

If this is your taste, you will have to be at your A-game when it comes to balancing market insights, resource allocation, growth & account planning, and long-range forecasting. 

Consultative

A consultative style of management prioritizes customer relationships. If you follow this ideology, your focus should be on coaching your reps to empathize with customer needs, pain points, and long-term value over one-off transactions. 

While hiring, look for candidates who actively listen, can ask skilful questions and design solutions based on customer needs. 

The nature and scope of sales management of this style are mostly seen in enterprise and SaaS industries where making high-value sales is crucial. 

At Superleap, we hold sales reps responsible to ensure all client requirements are understood clearly and solutions are customized accordingly before delivering the final product or even getting into an agreement.

Now that we know the different styles of sales management, let’s dive into its functions.

🤹🏻‍♂️ Managing sales force and personnel

The sales team is the backbone of any company, quite literally, and it is important that they are chosen wisely. Managing sales team and personnel involves hiring the right talent, training them well and getting them equipped with necessary tools if required, motivating them to achieve targets and monitoring performance to bridge areas of improvement.

🎯 Setting sales targets

One of the key functions of sales management is setting sales targets and coming up with plans to achieve them. Sales managers decide on how much the company should sell monthly, quarterly or yearly, choose the right sales approach, and determine product and pricing. This helps sales representatives stay on track and work toward maximizing the company’s profits.

🤝 Customer relationship management (CRM)

Customer relationship management is a practical application of the customer centric strategy. It involves using a CRM to personalize interactions, handle objections, and keep all opportunities in one place.

🚀 Sales forecasting and analysis

Sales management also includes sales forecasting, which means predicting future sales by analyzing past performance, customer behaviour, and market trends using past data.

Specific forecasting techniques can include qualitative forecasting (relying on expert opinions), quantitative forecasting (using statistical data), and time-series analysis (analyzing historical trends).

📈 Sales operations and performance tracking

‍Sales operations involve the day-to-day management of sales activities, while performance tracking ensures the team is meeting its targets. This again uses information like conversion rates, average deal size, customer lifetime value (CLTV), and sales cycle length.

🌐 Sales territory management

An important aspect of sales management is defining, assigning, and managing sales territories. This ensures that each salesperson has a specific geographic area or customer segment to focus on, preventing overlap and maximizing coverage.

With a clear understanding of the scope, let's examine how sales management has evolved over the years.

🆚 Traditional vs. modern sales management

Sales management in early centuries was focused on selling products and features without much consideration for individual customer needs. Decisions were often based on intuition and experience, with minimal reliance on data analytics. Emphasis was placed on transactions rather than building long-term customer relationships.

On the contrary, today, sales management has evolved to be more customer-centric and data-driven. The introduction of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, AI, automation tools (Gong, Outreach, Mailshake) and sales intelligence software (Lusha, Apollo) has enabled personalized and efficient sales approaches. Sales managers now utilise data analytics to inform strategies, forecast sales, and measure performance.

📱Impact of technology and digitalization

The rise of online purchasing compelled the use of digital sales methods such as social media marketing and online customer support. These platforms enabled real-time communication much easier, allowing for personalized responses.

👀 Changing consumer behavior and trends

Consumers today have access to a wealth of information and demand personalized experiences – reinforcing the importance of a customer-centric strategy.

Launched in 2015 and revamped in 2016, Spotify Wrapped reveals each user’s top artists and has since become a viral campaign that dramatically boosts the brand’s visibility and engagement.

Wrapped also allowed artists to sell their merch to their top listeners for the first time ever in 2023 in the USA and Canada – an opportunity for artists to earn additional revenue.

🤖 Role of AI and automation in sales

The last decade has transformed sales management through the integration of AI, automation, and data-driven tools. AI-powered platforms have made it easier than ever to analyze data and identify potential leads more accurately, increasing efficiency in the sales funnel. Sales managers can train their reps to use AI for sales for effective forecasting. Repetitive tasks such as data entry and scheduling are automated while AI-powered chatbots provide instant responses, freeing up human agents for more complex tasks.

These evolutions have led to several key characteristics of modern sales management. Let’s dive in to understand them. 

🏆 Goal-oriented approach

A goal-oriented approach in sales management includes setting clear and achievable targets that the sales teams can strive toward within a specified time. 

👥 Customer-centric strategy

A customer-centric strategy focuses on understanding customer needs, preferences, and behaviors to tailor products, services, and interactions that enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. Modern sales management revolves around this principle, using data, AI tools, and personalized interactions to consistently deliver value.

Superleap, a CRM platform, implemented features such as lead tracking and automation to accurately assess customer behavior and trigger personalized follow-ups, demonstrating a customer-centric approach. Everything in our workspace is a custom object, allowing freedom for clients to choose how their workflow would look like. 

🔄 Dynamic and evolving nature

The evolution of sales management has been shaped by shifting market trends, technological advancements, evolving consumer behavior and competitive pressures. As a sales manager, set an effective sales management strategy that is adaptive to meet these ever changing dynamics. 

📊 Data-driven decision-making

Modern sales management relies heavily on data analytics to inform strategies, forecast sales, assess team performance, and identify areas for improvement. By collecting and analyzing accurate sales data, managers can make objective, evidence-based decisions rather than relying solely on intuition. This includes studying customer behavior, market trends, sales patterns, and performance metrics to optimize processes and boost outcomes.

🔗 Integration with marketing and business strategy

Aligning your sales management with marketing activities and a broader business strategy enables you to maintain consistent messaging, effective resource allocation, and sales reps working towards shared goals.​

💸 Drives business revenue and growth

Revenue is the fuel to any business. As a sales manager, you should be able to craft a well-structured sales management strategy by setting realistic sales targets and ensuring all sales reps are equipped with the right tools and training.

Apple Inc. has developed a highly effective sales management strategy. The company does not just rely on the demand for its products; it builds a strong sales pipeline through pre-orders, product launches, and exclusive retail partnerships. Their approach ensures consistent revenue growth, with Apple reporting over $124 billion of revenue for the first quarter 2025. 

💯 Improves customer satisfaction, leading to repeat sales

As discussed in previous sections, customer satisfaction drives retention and also encourages repeat business. It is important you regularly hold meetings regarding the same with your team.

Let’s say you are approaching a client; treat the meeting/call like a conversation and don’t jump to close a sale.

Amazon is an excellent example of a company that excels in customer satisfaction through its sales management strategies. With features like one-click purchase, fast shipping, and a seamless return policy, Amazon keeps customers coming back, making it the world's largest online retailer.

✅ Hiring the right people

As a manager, you want to reduce micromanaging instances. Hire people who have strong communication skills, resilience, and an adapting nature. Conduct behavioral interviews and role playing exercises to assess the candidate’s problem solving skill. 

📚 Provide onboarding and training

Once you’ve hired the top talent, train them to understand the product, who your competitors are and market trends. Teach them the company’s sales funnel, CRM usage, and lead qualification. You can also have them shadow senior sales reps for on-the-job training. 

🏅 Setting achievable goals

Use the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) framework to set achievable targets. Conduct sales meetings regularly to review progress through weekly/monthly check-ins.

📈 Use data to drive decision

Constantly track your conversion rates, the speed at which opportunities move through the pipeline, and rep performances to identify potential bottlenecks and if required, optimize the sales process.

💪 Keeping the team motivated 

A good sales manager always motivates his team and pushes them to achieve their targets. Acknowledge and reward top performances during sales meetings and congratulate reps for closing deals. Monetary incentives are also a great push to work harder. However, it's equally important to promote a healthy work-life balance and offer clear career growth opportunities to retain top talent.

🌟 Diversity and inclusion in sales teams

When you build a diverse and inclusive sales team, it becomes a game changer. People from different backgrounds bring fresh perspectives, unique problem solving techniques and opportunities to connect with a wider audience.

As a manager, take up training on how to manage such a vast team and make sure that everyone has an equal shot at success. When inclusion is done right, it drives better results and builds a more dynamic, forward-thinking sales organization.

🎭 Role-playing training

Essentially, sales reps enact real-life scenarios with peers. This is a great way to enhance confidence, objection handling, and adaptability in real sales situations.

⏳ Real-time coaching

This method will involve managers to provide immediate feedback during or after a sales call. It helps understand and correct mistakes instantly and reinforces positive behavior.

🎓 Mentorship programs

This is the good old technique where junior sales reps shadow experienced sales leaders. It is one of the best ways for hands-on learning, picking up industry insights, and on-the-spot guidance.

When a new sales rep shadows top-performing sellers, they can pick up on what the potential obstacles are, how to tackle objections effectively, sales negotiation tactics and different techniques of closing depending on the client and their pain points and requirements.

📉 Data driven sales coaching

CRM tools like Superleap use AI-powered data to coach reps and streamline processes. Refer to the AI and automation section for better understanding.

👨🏻‍⚖️ Ethical and Legal Considerations

Making sure that ethical and legal issues are taken into account as part of your sales strategy is essential if you're a sales manager or business leader. This means prioritizing data privacy compliance (like GDPR and CCPA) to protect customer information and build trust. You must monitor whether your team is practising fair and honest sales to avoid any misleading claims or high-pressure tactics that could damage relationships.

Keep your pricing and contracts transparent. Customers should always understand what they're paying for, with no hidden surprises.

Finally, strong anti-bribery and corruption rules guarantee that integrity is a fundamental principle in all agreements. Encourage sales reps to maintain honesty and responsibility at all times. This helps you not only remain compliant but also build a reputation that partners and clients may depend on.

🚩 Common Sales Management Challenges

Sales managers face many challenges for which strategic solutions are required to keep the team morale and performance intact. These problems include:

• To get the better of sales slumps, try re-engaging your prospects, increase personalization of messages and improving outreach strategies.
• The best way to handle high sales rep turnover is to provide competitive pay, open opportunities for career growth, and foster a strong company culture.
• To stay on top of the always-changing market trends, it’s important that sales managers are clever, regularly track industry trends, and accordingly mould their sales strategies.

The best way to tackle objection handling is to train your sales rep (you can refer to the sales methodologies topic on how) to ask appropriate questions regarding pricing, differentiate competitors and address concerns of risk aversion.