When you are a sales manager, you’ll be responsible for the performance of your whole team. You cannot afford to make mistakes, and you need to be familiar with the common mistakes that almost every sales manager makes. Here are 12 mistakes that every new sales manager makes:

1. 12 MISTAKES EVERY
FIRST-TIME SALES
MANAGER MAKES

2. When you are a sales manager, you’ll be responsible for the performance of your
whole team. You cannot afford to make mistakes, and you need to be familiar with
the common mistakes that almost every sales manager makes.
Here are 12 mistakes that every new sales manager makes:
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3. 1. CONTINUE FOCUSING ON YOUR OWN SALES
•Salespeople are driven by the number of sales
they make in a business
•When they get promoted, it might seem
difficult to focus on managing the team rather
than focusing on increasing their own sales.
•To avoid that, you should appoint someone else
to handle the accounts and focus on training
your team.
•If that is not possible, you should put in extra
efforts and prioritize coaching your team.
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4. 2. NOT GIVING MORE VALUE TO YOUR CURRENT JOB
•The role of a salesperson and a sales manager is
completely different.
•The important duty of a sales manager is to manage
their team, among the other jobs that are assigned
to them.
•You need to develop more skills to deliver better
results.
•Set clear and ambitious goals and explain it to your
team
•Make them understand what expectations they are
supposed to meet.
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5. 3. STILL TREATING YOUR EMPLOYEES AS FRIENDS
•Embrace your leadership and be open about the effect
you’re your advancement will have on your
relationships.
•Hold your employees accountable when they mess up,
even if they are your friends.
•Rather than focusing on being everyone’s favorite, focus
on earning respect through your work.
•But definitely be friendly with everyone!
•Set clear boundaries and have a proper balance
between the relationship between you and your team.
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6. 4. KEEPING AWAY FROM STRUGGLE
•Struggle and conflict become an integral part of a
sales manager’s routine.
•The job is to resolve them properly.
•When you see someone making mistakes that could
put a sale at risk, instead of ‘fixing’ it on your own,
help your employees to learn from their mistakes.
•Concentrate on tracking the activities that your
employees make, that helps in gaining more sales,
so that it can be useful in the future.
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7. 5. MAKING OTHERS DO YOUR JOB
•Getting promoted to the position of leader doesn’t
mean that you should make your employees do
your job.
•You still have to make sales, market products,
negotiate with customers etc.
•Set an example to your employees, and still be a
part of the team.
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8. 6. MAKING UNWANTED CONVERSATIONS
•You should avoid having too much unwanted
conversation with your employees.
•Ask more probing questions that elicit
responses from salespeople, resulting in a
deeper understanding and ownership of the
process.
•Talk less and listen more
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9. 7. PRETENDING TO KNOW EVERYTHING
•If you’re stuck in a circumstance where you
don’t know what the solution is, never act
like you do.
•Instead of pretending you don’t make any
mistake, let them know that you are
vulnerable too.
•When you mess up, admit it and be honest
with your team demonstrate to your team
how to cope with them.
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10. 8. MICROMANAGING
•You tend to control every part, however small,
of any activity happening within your team,
and force others to depend on you by
creating bottlenecks.
•This will make the employees uncomfortable
and not being able to think and execute their
work properly.
•Allow them to carry out their work and let
them make mistakes. Your job is to correct
them and train the employees accordingly.
•Use strategies other than micromanaging to
empower your team.
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11. 9. EXPECTING PERFECTION IN EVERYTHING
•Problems will persist regardless of anything,
and perfectionism will make you miserable.
•You will tend to react aggressively to even
small problems, and you create unrealistic
aspirations.
•This will not help in the growth of the team.
•People tends to make mistakes and that’s why
they’re in need of a manager.
•Remember that you are in charge of your
team’s performance.
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12. 10. FORMULATING IMPRACTICAL PLANS
The finest outcomes come through properly
constructed plans.
Lack of proactive planning will result in many
problems that will affect the sales and the
company over all.
The manager must be careful and formulate
plans with specific, measurable goals and carry
out a trial to check if it works.
Take opinions and feedbacks from employees
and review, modify and execute the plans.
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13. 11. UNDERESTIMATING POOR PERFORMANCES
•When an employee performs poorly, you
tend to give them a second chance.
•This transmits a message that bad
performances are okay.
•And salespeople can take that message for
granted.
•Such performances must be taken care of at
the earliest, and the employee must be given
a chance to correct their mistake before it
worsens to the point where their job is at
stake.
•A month of bad performance can be
overlooked but a year cannot.
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14. 12. SECLUDING INSIDE AN OFFICE
•Stop spending the whole time buried at your
desk
•Spend time with the salespeople, make one-on-
one sales coaching meetings a priority.
•Learn about your team’s objectives, strengths
and shortcomings.
•Spend time coaching them on strategy,
planning and specific talents that they can
develop.
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15. •Look out for these mistakes when you take up
the job.
•The main goal is to put your team first and do
everything possible to cater to the growth of the
team.
•This will ultimately help in increasing the sales.
•Good Luck!
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