The Sales Manager isn’t Dead but Being Buried Alive!
By Michael J Griffin, CEO ELAvate
5-minute read
Recently, I read a short blog by Mike Arsenault of Team Revenue that stimulated my thinking. His title of the blog, “The Sales Manager is Dead” certainly caught my attention as the majority of my consulting is focused on sales manager productivity. It got me thinking about the obstacles and roadblocks I observe that sales managers encounter when they are trying to do their job.
Earlier this year, I collaborated with an Asian MNC to conduct a cross Asia sales manager survey on how their organization is supporting or hindering their sales manager performance. The number one roadblock to better sales coaching was the burden of admin and reporting work that sucked time away from the activities of effective sales coaching. Sound familiar?
Your Sales Manager is the strongest or weakest link in the sales revenue chain. Weak hobbled coaching, a broken revenue chain. Strong quality coaching, strong revenue chain.
Sales Managers overburdened by admin work are being buried alive and bringing their salespeople along with them!
So what does the research say about effective sales coaching that leads to higher revenue attainment?
CSO Insights (now part of Korn Ferry) says salespeople who got less than 30 minutes of coaching a week had a 43% win rate, versus 56% where reps were coached more than 2 hours a week.
Gartner says frontline sales managers devote only about 9% of their time to coaching direct reports. A Gartner study also found effective manager coaching can lift sales performance by 8%.
Sales Management Association (SMA) research: Managers averaged 7.2 hours a week coaching (median 5), yet 76% of firms said managers coach too little. Managers coaching 9+ hours a week outperformed by 7%, and those under 2.5 hours underperformed by 5%. A related summary puts the gap at more than 12.6% better sales performance for firms coaching 9+ hours per manager per week versus those under 2.5 hours.
Tommy Neitzel who was a top performing coach at UPS and Xerox says sales teams that receive weekly coaching hit quota 76% of the time, compared to 56% for monthly coaching and only 47% for quarterly coaching. He cautions that all coaching research emphasizes that simply logging hours is not enough. A common pitfall is that "coaching" time gets hijacked for pipeline reviews or deal troubleshooting rather than actual skill development.
Spark Hire/Chally Research has consistently found over 30 years of legally defensible sales manager competency research that effective sales managers who prioritize consistent coaching for their reps and support it with regular training and feedback lead top performing teams.
No research I found says admin work boosts sales performance……. or as Sam Reese of Vistage has said, “CRM doesn’t close deals.”
What might be a basic plan? Plan on roughly 1 to 2 hours of coaching per salesperson per week. For a sales manager with 6 to 8 reps, that is about 6 to 12 hours a week. Treat 1 hour per rep as the minimum and 2 hours as the level where the strongest results show up. My research doesn’t say how to split that time between office, virtual and joint field visits. Just remember sales coaching focuses on selling skills, key account management, AI assisted role playing, and joint visit but NOT pipeline review. Coaching should focus on the leading sales indicators/activities of sales success.
Your organization may have to rework processes, and work flows to get sales managers out from being buried in admin to actively coaching salespeople.
How can you assess how effective your sales managers will be in coaching and managing their sales teams to produce above average results? Since 1997, I have used the Sales Manager Profile by Chally, now Spark Hire, to help me hire and promote sales managers that will produce revenue and motivate reps to stay and sell. I believe in it so strongly, that if a potential sales manager cannot score above average on at least 5 out of the 7 Chally core competences, I do not hire or promote.
No need to regurgitate the Spark Hire Chally sales manager profile in this blog. What may be better is for you to investigate my recent Sales Manager profile that I retook about a month ago. The proof is in the pudding: my sales manager assessment “competency pudding.” Just remember I am not looking for you to hire me! Ho ho ho!
Download my Chally/Spark Hire Sales Manager profile here.
As 2026 comes to a close and 2027 planning begins, you may want to research how the Chally Sales manager profile and my +30 years of Asian coaching expertise can support and grow your sales managers in being more productive in 2027. Call or contact me with my details below at no obligation.
Michael J Griffin
CEO and Founder of ELAvate
Spark Hire Chally Partner
Salesably Sales AI Studio Partner
Maxwell Leadership Coach
michael.griffin@elavateglobal.com
+65 – 91194008 (WhatsApp)