New sales managers typically are promoted for their selling skills, yet aren't likely to receive management training.

It's a story that repeats itself over and over again in many organizations: a sales representative who excels at selling is selected for promotion to a sales manager role, despite a lack of management experience. Then, upon assuming the sales manager role and the weighty responsibility of managing and developing a representative team, she realizes there are few training offerings aimed at building the skills needed to be an effective sales manager.

Indeed, 52 percent of organizations do not offer any training programs specifically for incoming sales managers, according to a recent report by the Association for Talent Development (ATD) and the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp). The report, sponsored by Revenue Storm, draws on the responses of 168 learning and sales leaders from organizations of varying sizes that are primarily in business-to-business sales. It found that general sales training is light on managing and coaching skills. Together, these areas account for less than 15 percent of all sales training hours.

The survey participants confirmed that sales managers, despite having strong selling abilities, are unlikely to be skilled at managing. In fact, 62 percent reported that sales managers possess expertise in creating and closing opportunities, but the rate for mastery in management was considerably lower, at 34 percent. These findings are concerning given that, at more than 80 percent of organizations, sales managers have an average of three or more direct reports, and at 15 percent of organizations, they have 10 or more.

The shortfall in management expertise may be a direct result of the typical hiring process for sales managers. The top recruiting channel for sales managers, according to respondents, is internal promotion within the sales department. Moreover, when promoting representatives to sales managers, only about one-third of organizations look for candidates with some management experience.

One bright spot that emerged in the research was that, although the majority of respondents indicated that their organizations do not have training programs targeted at new sales managers, most of these individuals believe that their organizations "should have" them or may add them "possibly in the future."

As one learning leader in the technology industry said about introducing training programs for incoming sales managers, "Sales managers have already proven themselves to have product knowledge and customer service and negotiation skills. ... \[The goal of training is\] to get them to be successful as managers."

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