What’s the most overlooked factor in sales growth? Your frontline sales managers.
They influence every deal, every rep, every forecast, and yet about 60% of new managers report they never received training when they stepped into leadership.
Let’s stop looking past the obvious. Your frontline managers are the secret to scaling sales growth.
If you want more reps hitting quota, more deals converting, stronger forecasts, and less burnout across the board, it starts with your managers. Not your tech stack. Not your latest AI tool. Not another rep enablement platform (though these are important and we love them, check out our friends at Allego).
I’ve worked with thousands of sales teams and here’s the hard truth. Most companies are investing in everything except the role that has the biggest impact on team performance and revenue growth.
And when we flip that, the results are massive. We’re talking 20 to 47% increases in rep conversion rates. And we didn’t even touch the rep. Just by developing their manager.
So if you’re planning for growth, keep reading. Because managers aren’t a bottleneck. They’re your biggest growth engine.
CASE STUDY: Quill saw a 33% increase in sales reps above quota within 2 months after manager training
1. Managers Bring Consistency (and That’s What Scales)
Change is part of growth. Reps switch teams. Territories shift. Comp plans evolve. But in the middle of it all, your frontline managers keep the team focused, engaged, and aligned.
That only works when they’re supported.
Too often, every manager ends up running their own playbook. Not because they want to, but because they’ve never been shown what “good” looks like. And even when you have playbooks, they don’t get translated into everyday actions and team rhythms.
Here’s where the cracks usually show up:
- Hiring: Everyone’s looking for different things. Even with a profile in place, managers need support identifying what good sounds like in an interview.
- Performance management: Breaking down a big quota into measurable KPIs isn’t intuitive. And very few new managers have been trained to do it.
- Rep engagement: Some managers meet weekly. Some meet monthly. Some skip 1:1s entirely. Most spend time reviewing pipeline, not developing skills or coaching.
- Pipeline hygiene: Definitions for deal stages vary across teams. That makes forecasts unreliable and coaching hard to scale.
Consistency is what turns momentum into real, scalable growth. And it starts at the manager level.
Give them the tools to:
- Hire with confidence using a shared rubric
- Set goals and track KPIs that actually drive performance
- Run a standard meeting cadence that blends coaching, performance, and career conversations
- Clean up pipeline processes so everyone’s speaking the same language
Even tenured managers benefit from this kind of clarity. One enterprise team we worked with had over 10 years of management experience and still walked away from this training saying, “I wish I’d had this years ago.”
2. Great Managers Build People, Not Just Pipelines
Most sales managers were promoted from rep roles. And as reps, their entire world revolved around winning. So when things get tough, what do they fall back on?
Closing the deal.
They hop on the call. They take over the demo. They second-voice the close. It’s not bad intentions, they’re just doing what worked for them. But when a manager becomes the deal hero, the team stops learning.
And that’s when reps leave.
- They leave when they don’t feel developed
- They leave when they’re not hitting quota
- They leave when they don’t have a strong relationship with their manager
The revolving door hurts growth. Every open seat is lost pipeline. Every green rep takes months to ramp. Every exit chips away at morale.
What helps? Redefining the manager role and giving your leaders a new toolkit.
- Help them shift from deal-doer to rep-developer
- Give them interaction frameworks like COACHN so coaching doesn’t feel like guesswork
- Recognize managers for building people, not just saving quarters
Because a manager who builds skill, confidence, and trust is someone who retains reps, not replaces them.
READ: Build Your Sales Manager Cadence (& Save Time and Stress)
3. Coaching Is a Skill, and It Can Be Learned
We all love to say coaching is the silver bullet. And it is. But only when it’s done well.
Real coaching moves the needle on performance, confidence, and retention. But too often, what we call “coaching” is just a pipeline review in disguise.
If you’ve ever listened in and heard:
- The manager doing all the talking
- A rep leaving with three disjointed to-dos
- A session that feels more like a performance review than a development convo
Then chances are, your managers need support here.
The most common trap? The Mini-me. That’s the manager who coaches every rep to be a version of themselves. It works for the one or two reps with the same style. Everyone else gets frustrated, disengaged, or overlooked.
Good coaching is consistent, rep-centered, and rooted in skill development, not deal rescue.
That’s why we don’t treat coaching like a one-hour workshop. It’s now a six-hour, three-part course here at Factor 8. Because shifting behavior and building confidence takes time. And when it clicks, reps perform. They stay. And they grow.
READ: The Best Sales Coaching Questions Ever
If You’re Skipping Manager Development, You’re Skipping the Scale
Let’s be honest. The biggest miss isn’t the manager. It’s us.
We’ve skipped the basics. We assume managers will figure it out because we did. We prioritize tech over training. We fix people problems with process or platform investments.
But if you want more reps to hit quota, you don’t need a new tool (yet). You need stronger conversations first.
That comes from skilled, supported, confident managers.
Most reps today get a sliver of what they need in onboarding. Then they’re tossed five tools and a quota. They’re still learning the basics. And the person who owns the rest?
Their manager.
So let’s invest in them. Train them. Coach them. Give them a framework, a cadence, and a community. Make development part of the rhythm, not a one-time event.
Because your reps aren’t going to grow if your managers aren’t growing too.
Managers are the secret to scalable revenue growth. Let’s stop hoping they figure it out, and start helping them knock it out of the park.
