The Sales Manager Development Playbook [Guide]
The Sales Manager Development Playbook:
15 Steps to Unlock Revenue Acceleration
[Guide]
Sales Training
4 Sales Manager Types Explained: Strengths, Skill Gaps, and Growth Tips
Most sales managers never got formal training. They were great reps, promoted for crushing quota, and then… handed a team.
Sound familiar?
Managing people requires a whole new set of skills. And when you’re juggling forecasts, pipeline reviews, hiring, and fire drills all before lunch, it’s easy to default to what you think good management looks like.
That’s why we created the Sales Manager Quiz, to help you identify your natural leadership style and see what’s working and where you can level up.
In this deep dive, we’re breaking down the four manager types (Powerhouse, Cheerleader, Quarterback, and BFF) and…
- What each type nails
- Where they struggle
- And exactly how to level up
This isn’t a personality quiz just for fun (though it is fun). It’s a growth tool to help you lead more effectively, feel more in control, and build the kind of team that actually hits their number.
The Powerhouse Manager
You’re the engine of the team. Powerhouses get stuff done, no excuses, no delays, no loose ends. Your standards are sky-high, your work ethic is unmatched, and your team probably describes you as intense, but fair. You’re the person people trust when they need results fast.
But here’s the tradeoff: That pressure you thrive under? It can overwhelm your team. When everything is urgent and nothing falls through the cracks, reps can struggle to keep up or feel like they’re always letting you down. You may find yourself stepping in to fix things, juggling too much, or skipping coaching because it feels slower than just doing it yourself. Sound familiar?
If you’re a Powerhouse, your next level of leadership isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing less and leading smarter.
Traits:
High achiever, results driver, flawless executer, pressure lover, chronic improver, priority juggler
Strengths:
- Creates a high-performance culture
- Work gets done on time (and done right)
- Team focuses on the right things
- Solves problems quickly
- Leads by example
- Pushes team to deliver results
Areas for Growth:
- Risks burnout — both for self and team
- Micromanages instead of developing independence
- Prioritizes task reviews over real coaching
- May miss signs of team fatigue or lack of collaboration
How to Level Up:
- Block time for dedicated skill coaching
- Use a standard coaching form: 3 wins + 1 area to improve
- Set one clear priority at a time
- Assign ownership to reps (even if you’d do it faster)
- Add team-led training sessions to build collaboration
Resources:
- Download: The Eisenhower Matrix – Use this worksheet to prioritize what actually moves the needle and stop wasting time on low-impact tasks that drain your day.
- Course to Take: Own Your Day – The go-to course for managing priorities, time, and team expectations without burning out.
The Cheerleader Manager
You’re the hype squad, heart, and hope of your team. Cheerleaders are natural motivators who lead with positivity, praise, and a deep belief in their people. Your reps feel seen, supported, and genuinely like coming to work. You’re the one reminding them they’ve got this, because they usually do.
But high morale doesn’t always equal high performance. If you’re not careful, you might avoid giving hard feedback, hesitate to push underperformers, or focus so much on celebrating strengths that you miss the growing skill gaps.
Being a Cheerleader means balancing the pep with a plan. Confidence is the fuel, but your reps still need a clear destination and a map to get there.
Traits:
Confidence builder, esteem booster, strength finder, encourager, positivity spreader, inspirer of self-directed improvement
Strengths:
- Builds confident, high-performing teams
- Creates a safe, engaging team culture
- Reinforces wins to accelerate growth
- Boosts rep loyalty and retention
Areas for Growth:
- Hesitant to give tough feedback
- May avoid holding reps accountable
- Over-focuses on strengths, under-focuses on gaps
- Team may not be improving skills or results
- Lacks systems to track progress
- Risks getting blindsided on forecasts
How to Level Up:
- Set clear, measurable skill and results goals
- Use a balanced meeting framework (coaching + accountability)
- Start peer mentoring to scale support
- Schedule recurring team trainings to improve skills (not just confidence)
Resources:
- Download: The COACHN Model – Use this framework to run more effective 1:1s, coaching sessions, and performance conversations that actually drive action.
- Course to Take: Having Difficult Conversations – helps managers deliver honest feedback with empathy and clarity.
The Quarterback Manager
You’ve been in the trenches. You’ve carried the bag. You know exactly what it takes to win a deal, because you’ve done it a hundred times. As a Quarterback, your team relies on you for play-by-play guidance, deal-saving advice, and that one perfect story that closes the deal. You’re sharp, strategic, and always ready to jump in and move things forward.
But here’s the catch: if you’re always calling the plays, your reps never learn to run them. That creates a team of highs and lows, some stars, some stragglers, and a lot of dependence. You may find yourself rescuing deals instead of coaching skills, or relying more on stories than questions.
To level up, it’s time to trade the helmet for the headset. Coach the rep, not the deal.
Traits:
Leader of deals, experienced pro, knows how to win, storyteller, answer man, saver of deals
Strengths:
- Deep sales expertise and sharp instincts
- Knows how to map the path to success
- Offers tactical, deal-specific advice
- Leads confidently from experience
- Earns quick trust from the team
Areas for Growth:
- Inconsistent team performance (highs and lows)
- Focuses too much on deals, not enough on rep development
- Struggles to let reps fail and learn
- Doesn’t block enough time for skill coaching
- Leans on telling stories instead of asking questions
- May unintentionally build a team of “mini-me” clones
How to Level Up:
- Run win-loss sessions (game tape style) to break down deals
- Take a manager coaching course to shift focus to skill-building
- Share personal failures to normalize mistakes
- Establish a regular cadence of 1:1s, team meetings, and reviews
- Appoint peer experts to foster independence and collaboration
Resources:
- Download: Tasks to Start vs. Stop Doing – Use this guide to shift out of “super rep” mode by focusing on high-impact leadership tasks and leaving the old rep responsibilities behind.
- Course to Take: The COACHN℠ Model – helps you coach reps more consistently and shift from fixer to developer.
The BFF Manager
You’re the safe space. The one your reps vent to. You know their pets’ names, their partner’s promotion status, and who’s on the verge of burnout (because they told you, not their therapist). As a BFF manager, your superpower is trust. Your team feels supported, understood, and motivated—and in today’s world, that’s no small thing.
But emotional intelligence isn’t a substitute for leadership. When you’re too close to your team, it gets harder to hold the line. Performance conversations get postponed. Boundaries blur. And the reps you care most about? They may end up stuck, because no one’s pushing them to grow.
Being a great manager isn’t about being liked. It’s about being respected and effective. You already have the heart. Now it’s time to build the structure.
Traits:
Empathetic, emotionally attuned, deeply connected, personal motivator, team nurturer
Strengths:
- Builds strong morale through personal connection
- Creates psychological safety and trust
- Reads emotional cues and team dynamics well
- Motivates with recognition and empathy
- Fosters collaboration and peer support
Areas for Growth:
- Too patient with underperformance
- Avoids hard conversations to preserve relationships
- Lacks clear performance metrics and expectations
- Risks playing favorites
- Inconsistent accountability
- Needs a more structured roadmap for team development
How to Level Up:
- Implement a standard meeting framework with clear expectations
- Get comfortable setting (and sticking to) deadlines
- Schedule recurring performance reviews with every team member
- Set (and keep) professional boundaries (save the lunch dates for Fridays)
Resources:
- Download: Coaching Frequency Guide – Use this to categorize your reps by skill vs. will, so you know who needs your time, who’s coasting, and where to focus your coaching energy.
- Course to Take: Driving Performance With Goals – gives you tools to set clear expectations and build accountability without sacrificing team trust.
Knowing your type is step one. The real magic happens when you use that insight to grow.
The best sales managers aren’t stuck in one style, they flex. They coach intentionally, delegate purposefully, and lead with both heart and structure. Whether you’re a Powerhouse learning to let go, a Cheerleader learning to lean in, a Quarterback trading the playbook for coaching time, or a BFF building boundaries, there’s always a next level. Better managers build better teams. Let’s get to work!
Subscribe to our email list to receive new content, webinar invites, and training offers.
What Type of Sales Manager Are You? (& How to Make It Your Superpower) [Webinar Recording]
What Type of Sales Manager Are You? (& How to Make It Your Superpower)
[Video Recording]
Your Sales Manager Survival Kit [Cheat Sheets]
Your Sales Manager Survival Kit
[Free Resources & Cheat Sheets]
How Tenured Sales Leaders Took Their Coaching to the Next Level
At Dun & Bradstreet, some of the most tenured sales managers, leaders with over 20 years of experience, had a breakthrough they didn’t see coming.
John Healy, one of our Sales Advisors, spent a full day with the team, leading a session on Driving Performance with Goals (a longtime manager favorite). But this wasn’t another pep talk about why goals matter. It was hands-on. Practical. Focused on building real connections between daily activities, KPIs, and long-term outcomes.
For many in the room, it was the first time the dots fully connected.
The real shift didn’t come from slides or lectures. It happened inside The Sales Bar by doing the work.
The managers rolled up their sleeves and practiced how to:
- Map goals to rep behaviors
- Build coaching cadences that actually stick
- Practice conversations before trying them live
- Lead like strategic managers, not just task supervisors
By the end of the day, those same leaders were mapping out new team strategies, role-playing coaching conversations, and sharing real-life examples of how they would start applying new approaches immediately.
They weren’t just talking about change. They were leading it.
Why did it work?
Because they didn’t just learn about managing performance. They experienced it.
The Sales Bar isn’t just another resource. It is where even the most experienced sales leaders go to sharpen their edge and lead with purpose.
Subscribe to our email list to receive new content, webinar invites, and training offers.
Building a Top-Performing Sales Team [Webinar Recording]
Building a Top-Performing Sales Team
[Video Recording]
Meet the Speakers
Lauren Bailey
Founder
Factor 8 & #GirlsClub
Lauren Bailey, known to many as “LB”, is a sales leader, enablement leader, and entrepreneur and founder of 3 successful brands: Factor 8, providing front-line job training for inside sellers and managers, The Sales Bar, a subscription-based virtual sales training platform, and #GirlsClub, a community and development program helping more women earn leadership positions in sales.
Her mission is to change lives by supercharging people’s careers and helping them love coming to work. When we feel confident and successful at work, everything is better, right? Known on the speaker circuit for her “No B.S.” style and spunk, look for LB to make you laugh, keep things moving quickly, and help you take immediate action with her tactical tips and insights.
Devyn Blume
Sr. Account Executive
Allego
Devyn is a Sr. Account Executive at Allego with 8 years of experience in sales, specializing in consultative selling and client relationship management. Throughout her career she has excelled in driving revenue growth, building strong customer partnerships, and leveraging sales technologies to streamline processes.
At Allego, Devyn focuses on delivering innovative sales enablement solutions, helping teams optimize training, onboarding, and content sharing. With expertise spanning multiple industries, she is a trusted advisor to clients seeking to enhance sales performance through technology-driven solutions.
Join Another Webinar
View our live Sales Shot webinar schedule and register for upcoming events below.
How To Build A Sales Manager Cadence (And Save Your Own Life) [Webinar Recording]
How To Build A Sales Manager Cadence (And Save Your Own Life)
[Video Recording]
5 Tips to Maximize Your Sales Training Investment
After you’ve hired a sales training vendor, there are a series of questions you need to answer in order to ensure you’re getting the most out of your sales training investment, like:
- How do I maximize sales training ROI?
- How do I measure training success?
- How do I get results FAST?
Having been both the vendor and the buyer in this equation, I definitely have some insight to share. I’ve made mistakes as the Training Director hiring a sales/sales leadership training vendor, and I’ve had clients do some really smart (and less than smart) things.
Although I could write about this topic forever, I’ve narrowed it down to my top 5 tips to maximize your sales training investment.
1. Customize the Customization. Then customize that. Twenty years ago, I paid a vendor $15,000 extra to customize the training for my company. I spent countless hours sending them examples, marketing data, and websites. I forwarded redacted emails and unpublished case studies. I just KNEW they would get the “real feel” for how special our snowflake was. The result?
The vendor added one half-page sheet to the back of the workbook with two custom role plays. TWO! The pages weren’t even numbered with the rest of the workbook. Total afterthought! Literally, nothing else was custom.
Ready for the vendor flipside? Six years ago we up-leveled all our workbooks for Factor 8. This meant I couldn’t build custom workbooks from scratch anymore for clients (the downside of totally custom is a less professional look – even a few errors). Now each of our course workbooks of about 10 pages has around 15 sections in bold red font that our Advisors tailor prior to delivery. It might be the customer’s language, an industry example, a customer voice example, specific sales objections, etc. During the live interactions, our coaches play their sales calls, coach actual delivery, and will give custom samples/scripts of every skill. That’s customization!
Tip: Get an actual list of what is tailored to your organization, its format, and when/how it is delivered.
2. Require Manager Involvement. Note: I didn’t say attendance. You need attendance AND involvement! Back when I was delivering training in an enablement organization, we were afraid to invite all the sales managers to our training. They were so busy and important (and let’s be honest, a little rude). As I gained more confidence, I would meet with them 1:1 after the training with tips on what we trained and what to look for. As I got busier, I would schedule a 15-minute meeting so I could do this all at once. When I was put in charge, I required them to come AND met with them for 30 minutes afterward.
Guess what? They still couldn’t coach the skills. Sure, they attended the training, but they didn’t participate. They didn’t come and play to win as if they, too, would be graded on their adaption of the skills. They half-listened, did some email, smiled and nodded, and stole the stage as often as possible to give sage advice.
Vendor Flipside: At Factor 8, we meet with managers before the training, require attendance at the training, train the managers on how to coach the skills after the training, give managers 3+ tools to make it easy to support and coach the training, then do a follow-up meeting with the managers on how skills went, AND certify the managers to certify the reps on the skills. It may seem like overkill, but trust me, it works.
Your ROI will be cut in half if your managers aren’t underlying the importance of using the new skills and coaching their execution. Go overboard making sure they are trained, incentivized, and supported by your vendor to do this!
3. Measure Your Heart Out! If you aren’t crystal clear on the results, KPIs, and metrics that should be impacted by the training, then you’re not ready to outsource sales training. (Really, a vendor just said that!) In fact, ask the vendor what numbers they expect to move with this engagement (and don’t hire them if they don’t know!) At some point, you’ll have to show your sales training ROI, so define during the interview stage what success looks like and then go get a 3-6 month baseline on these metrics. As a training manager, I was nervous early in my career to do this. It only took one sales leader saying, “You are not solely responsible for the 35% uptick in XYZ…!” for me to start backing down and measuring success anecdotally or with smile sheets. As I grew in my career, all I did was add two words: “contribute to.” If we measure pre and post, we can all SHARE the credit!
Vendor Flipside: I love a case study. Number one reason I don’t have one on every client? They don’t provide us with their reporting. The leader pulls the trigger on the contract and then sales managers or the enablement team are left to execute and the ask never bubbles to the top. In fact, I’d love to take contracts based on the up-side (we get paid when you improve) and have offered it many times in the past, but the baseline metrics and results weren’t available from the client.
4. Get Leadership Involved (more than they are). How do I know they aren’t very involved? I’ve had about 3 clients out of 300 who were. As a training leader, I had about none. Why is this critical? Because your attendees determine how important the training is based on what the leader says, does, and spends money on. Even if you have to write the script for the VP to kick off the meeting and send over the questions they need to ask in their 1:1 meeting afterward, take the time and do it. Otherwise, you may be the flavor of the month.
Vendor Flipside: They’re my favorite three clients ever. And when they ask for anything extra, they get it. I’ve helped them get jobs 10 years later, spoken free at their conferences, and featured them on our blogs. When a leader lends their time, voice, and stature to training, it will literally change the organization’s culture. Help convince them they’ll get more ROI by being involved. Make it easier on them with cheat sheets and reminders. These clients get double their money’s worth.
5. Focus on Long Term. Ever met with an internal client who wants you to train 5 things in 20 minutes? Me too. Try every single sales leader ever. Here’s why: Most people don’t know the difference between telling and training. That’s why their people don’t change their behavior after being told. Folks, if you want people to change what they’re doing, the training will take 5x longer than you want it to AND the support “tail” for the training will be months, maybe even years. Don’t make training an event – studies show they’ll remember about 30% of what is taught. The best leaders get this fact:
Training isn’t something you did, it’s something you do.
Vendor Flipside: Events are fun. They’re low risk and high reward. We often would have better selling days during training than normal days (live calling during training). Lots of energy, buzz, and results. But if that’s all your vendor is doing, reconsider. What about keeping skills alive? Pulling the buzz forward? Seeing skills move from the classroom to the sales floor? 15 years ago we offered a 1-day post-training follow-up. Then 90 days virtual. Now we do one-year contracts. It’s the right thing to do and the right way to do it. Doesn’t fit the SKO? Hire a speaker instead.
If you’re evaluating sales training, we’re here to help. Fill out the form or email info@factor8.com and let us know how we can help.
Want more information on how to maximize your sales training investment?
Contact us today to request information on our customizable virtual sales training programs
available for reps (and managers).
Sales Manager Fears, Fails, and Fixes: Fast Actions to Prevent Burnout & Failure! [Webinar Recording]
Sales Manager Fears, Fails, and Fixes: Fast Actions to Prevent Burnout & Failure!
[Video Recording]