First-Line Sales Managers: Building An Enablement Playbook

In many B2B organizations, executive and sales leadership assume that strong performance guarantees strong potential — that high-performing reps will naturally turn into effective managers. As a result, most revenue enablement energy is expended at the rep level, with far less focus on defining and supporting the competencies required to develop successful managers. The skills, knowledge, and process expertise that inform strong first-line sales manager outcomes are very different from those of individual sellers. In this report, we address the need for B2B sales leaders to emphasize enablement tactics that directly support first-line managers to drive consistently strong performance from the reps on their teams and, ultimately, help their teams attain quota.