Sales & Customer Success

Sales Manager Job Description

A Sales Manager turns a commercial plan into consistent team execution by coaching sellers, managing pipeline evidence, improving forecast quality, and removing barriers to suitable customer decisions.

Define the team, market, target, sales motion, management authority, and player-coach expectations before adapting this template.

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Candidate-facing template

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Sales Manager

Location: [Location, territory, and working arrangement]
Employment type: [Full-time]
Reports to: [Commercial leader title]

About the role

[Company name] is looking for a Sales Manager to lead [team and market]. You will translate the revenue plan into clear operating priorities, coach opportunity and prospecting skills, maintain an evidence-based forecast, hire and develop team members, and coordinate the support needed to serve suitable customers well.

What you will be responsible for

Set clear team expectations for territory, pipeline creation, opportunity quality, customer conduct, forecasting, and CRM records.
Coach sellers through observed calls, opportunity reviews, prospecting work, negotiation preparation, and individual development plans.
Review pipeline coverage and conversion by segment, source, stage, seller, and time period, then address the constraint causing the gap.
Submit a realistic forecast supported by customer commitments, decision evidence, risk, and documented changes.
Recruit, onboard, develop, recognise, and manage performance with timely expectations and evidence.
Partner with marketing, product, customer success, finance, legal, and operations to resolve recurring commercial friction.
Protect customer fit and delivery credibility when balancing short-term targets with sustainable revenue.

What success looks like

Sellers understand the behaviours, evidence, and customer outcomes expected at each stage.
Forecast variance falls because risk and stalled commitments are addressed early.
Coaching produces observable changes in seller judgement and execution.
The team achieves sustainable revenue without hiding poor-fit deals or service commitments.

Essential qualifications

Experience leading or coaching sellers in a comparable business-to-business sales motion.
Strong opportunity qualification, discovery, negotiation, and forecast judgement.
Ability to interpret pipeline evidence and diagnose the specific operating constraint.
Experience setting expectations and handling both strong and weak performance fairly.
Clear cross-functional communication and constructive challenge.
Reliable CRM and reporting discipline.

Preferred qualifications

Experience with the relevant product, customer segment, region, or deal complexity.
Experience hiring and onboarding a sales team during growth or change.
Familiarity with the organisation’s sales methodology where it is actively used.

Tools and working knowledge

CRM, forecasting, sales-engagement, and conversation-review platforms
Proposal, contract, pricing, and revenue-reporting systems
Approved customer and market intelligence sources

Compensation: [State fixed pay, currency, management variable plan, target basis, team and individual components, ramp, accelerators or caps, and benefits.]

[Company name] provides an accessible recruitment process and will consider reasonable adjustments for interviews and the role in line with applicable local requirements.

How to apply

Apply through [application method] with examples of the team, sales motion, coaching changes, and forecast or revenue outcomes you personally led.

Edit the complete candidate-facing description

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Sales Manager

Location: [Location, territory, and working arrangement]

Employment type: [Full-time]

Reports to: [Commercial leader title]

About the role
[Company name] is looking for a Sales Manager to lead [team and market]. You will translate the revenue plan into clear operating priorities, coach opportunity and prospecting skills, maintain an evidence-based forecast, hire and develop team members, and coordinate the support needed to serve suitable customers well.

What you will be responsible for
- Set clear team expectations for territory, pipeline creation, opportunity quality, customer conduct, forecasting, and CRM records.
- Coach sellers through observed calls, opportunity reviews, prospecting work, negotiation preparation, and individual development plans.
- Review pipeline coverage and conversion by segment, source, stage, seller, and time period, then address the constraint causing the gap.
- Submit a realistic forecast supported by customer commitments, decision evidence, risk, and documented changes.
- Recruit, onboard, develop, recognise, and manage performance with timely expectations and evidence.
- Partner with marketing, product, customer success, finance, legal, and operations to resolve recurring commercial friction.
- Protect customer fit and delivery credibility when balancing short-term targets with sustainable revenue.

What success looks like
- Sellers understand the behaviours, evidence, and customer outcomes expected at each stage.
- Forecast variance falls because risk and stalled commitments are addressed early.
- Coaching produces observable changes in seller judgement and execution.
- The team achieves sustainable revenue without hiding poor-fit deals or service commitments.

Essential qualifications
- Experience leading or coaching sellers in a comparable business-to-business sales motion.
- Strong opportunity qualification, discovery, negotiation, and forecast judgement.
- Ability to interpret pipeline evidence and diagnose the specific operating constraint.
- Experience setting expectations and handling both strong and weak performance fairly.
- Clear cross-functional communication and constructive challenge.
- Reliable CRM and reporting discipline.

Preferred qualifications
- Experience with the relevant product, customer segment, region, or deal complexity.
- Experience hiring and onboarding a sales team during growth or change.
- Familiarity with the organisation’s sales methodology where it is actively used.

Tools and working knowledge
- CRM, forecasting, sales-engagement, and conversation-review platforms
- Proposal, contract, pricing, and revenue-reporting systems
- Approved customer and market intelligence sources

Compensation: [State fixed pay, currency, management variable plan, target basis, team and individual components, ramp, accelerators or caps, and benefits.]

[Company name] provides an accessible recruitment process and will consider reasonable adjustments for interviews and the role in line with applicable local requirements.

How to apply
Apply through [application method] with examples of the team, sales motion, coaching changes, and forecast or revenue outcomes you personally led.

Performance expectations

What good performance looks like

Use these outcomes to replace vague activity lists with the evidence the hiring manager expects to see after the person joins.

Opportunity reviews improve seller decisions instead of becoming status-report meetings.

Forecast calls surface evidence, downside, dependencies, and actions without punishing early honesty.

Each seller has a focused development plan grounded in observed behaviour and results.

Hiring, onboarding, territory, enablement, and cross-functional support match the revenue plan.

Hiring-manager intake

Questions to settle before advertising

Record specific answers so sourcing, screening, and interview decisions use the same definition of the role.

1
How many people, roles, territories, and experience levels will the manager lead?
2
Is this a pure management role or does it carry an individual quota, named accounts, or closing responsibility?
3
What are team quota, attainment distribution, pipeline sources, sales cycle, and current constraint?
4
Which decisions can the manager make about territory, discount, hiring, performance, and process?
5
How are calls, opportunities, forecast changes, and coaching quality currently reviewed?
6
What must improve in the first two quarters: hiring, pipeline, conversion, forecast, skills, or cross-functional execution?

Evaluation criteria

Evidence to use in a Sales Manager scorecard

Agree the criteria before interviews begin, then score examples against the same evidence standard.

Criterion

Useful evidence

Concern to explore

Coaching

Observes real work, identifies one behaviour, practises the change, agrees follow-up, and measures transfer to live selling.

Calls advice or deal intervention coaching and cannot show how sellers became more capable.

Forecast judgement

Tests customer commitments, decision process, risk, dates, stage evidence, and downside consistently across the team.

Pressures sellers to maintain optimistic dates or substitutes personal confidence for customer evidence.

Performance leadership

Sets clear standards, diagnoses skill and will separately, supports improvement, documents fairly, and acts in time.

Avoids underperformance until quarter end or uses one management approach regardless of cause.

Commercial system

Connects people, territories, pipeline sources, capacity, conversion, enablement, and support to a coherent operating plan.

Responds to every gap by demanding more activity without diagnosing quality or system constraints.

Structured interview

Sales Manager interview questions and strong signals

Ask the same core questions in the same order, then use follow-ups to understand the candidate’s individual contribution.

Tell me about a seller whose performance improved through your coaching.

Strong answer signal

Describes observed evidence, diagnosis, practice, follow-up, changed behaviour, and a result the seller could sustain independently.

Walk me through a forecast call you would consider effective.

Strong answer signal

Creates psychological safety for bad news while testing stage, stakeholders, commitments, risk, next action, and timing rigorously.

Describe a quarter when the team missed plan. What did you change?

Strong answer signal

Separates leading and lagging evidence, owns management choices, prioritises the constraint, and avoids rewriting history.

How do you stop a poor-fit deal when the team needs revenue?

Strong answer signal

Assesses delivery and customer risk, explores a truthful alternative, involves appropriate leaders, and protects long-term value.

Related titles

Check the scope behind the title

Head of Sales — normally owns a broader commercial plan, management layer, executive decisions, and cross-functional revenue leadership.

Sales Team Lead — may coach and coordinate peers with less authority over hiring, compensation, territory, and performance.

Regional Sales Manager — usually owns a geographic market and must handle local coverage, partners, travel, and market differences.

Common hiring mistakes

Problems to remove before publishing

Promoting the strongest individual seller without assessing coaching, judgement, people leadership, and operating discipline.

Combining a full personal quota with a substantial team and expecting both to receive proper attention.

Advertising an unrealistic earnings figure without explaining the management plan and performance basis.

Making the manager accountable for revenue while withholding authority over hiring, territory, process, discount, or poor-fit deals.

Continue the hiring workflow

Related roles and recruiter resources

Related job descriptions

Account Executive VP of Sales Sales Operations Manager Sales Development Representative

Helpful recruiter resources

Recruitment Sales Pipeline Management

Manage commercial stages with evidence, ownership, and next actions.

Recruitment KPI and Goal Tracking

Keep commercial targets and operational evidence visible to the team.

Recruitment Business Development

Connect prospecting, account development, and vacancy opportunity work.

Source and review notes

How this template was prepared

Language: International English
Prepared by: ATZ CRM Editorial Team
Review: ATZ CRM Recruitment Editorial Review
Last reviewed: 2026-08-04

O*NET: Sales Managers

Reference for occupation tasks, knowledge, skills, abilities, and work activities.

ESCO: occupations and skills

Reference for internationally recognised occupation and skills terminology.

Qualifications, compensation, licences, working conditions, and equal-opportunity wording must be checked for the role and location before use.

Recruiter questions

Sales Manager job description FAQs

What should a Sales Manager job description include?

Define team size, customer segment, territory, sales motion, target, pipeline sources, forecast process, coaching expectations, management authority, and whether the role carries an individual quota.

Should a Sales Manager have an individual quota?

Some player-coach roles do, but the scope must leave enough time for observation, coaching, hiring, performance, forecast, and cross-functional leadership. State the split and compensation basis clearly.

How should Sales Manager candidates be assessed?

Ask for evidence of seller development, forecast judgement, performance decisions, operating diagnosis, hiring, customer fit, and team outcomes rather than judging only their personal sales record.