What Happens Next?
After clarifying your responsibilities with your boss, the next challenge is knowing where to put your attention. Many new managers fall into the trap of focusing only on sales numbers. It feels like the safest thing to track. But, it’s not the full picture.
The Mistake: Focusing Only on the Numbers
You may be tempted to judge performance based on revenue, conversion, or closing rates. Those are important, but they don’t tell you everything. What if your team is hitting targets, but:
Numbers alone won’t warn you about problems like these until it’s too late.
The Fix: Broaden Your View
Good leaders zoom out. They look beyond the sales metrics to see what’s really driving or blocking performance. You’ll want to regularly check:
This doesn’t mean ignoring numbers. It means making better sense of them by adding context.
Ask your team and your customers simple questions like:
Coaching Prompt
Ask yourself:
What am I currently tracking, and what am I not seeing?
Write this down:
Your Leadership Action
Do these:
- 1Add one people-focused and one customer-focused indicator to your check-ins
- 2Examples: team engagement, customer complaints, support issues, response time
- 3Ask your team: “What’s one customer issue we’ve been overlooking?"
- 4Ask yourself: “What’s the story behind our recent numbers?”
Start collecting insights that help you lead smarter, not just react faster.
Keep It In Practice
The best sales managers don’t just look at results, they understand what’s driving them. When you start tracking what your team and customers are saying (not just what the numbers show), you’ll make better decisions, faster. Keep this habit going in the weeks ahead. It will help you stay ahead of problems before they grow.