Overview
You're a Sales Manager at Xelix reporting to the VP of Sales who's aggressively scaling the team. You'll manage 4-8 reps (likely AEs or SDRs based on the hiring push) and be accountable for their quota attainment. Expect to split time between coaching, deal reviews, forecasting to leadership, and potentially carrying 50-75% of an individual quota yourself.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Player-Coach Sales Manager |
| Sales Motion | Managing team executing consultative B2B sales |
| Deal Complexity | Your team's deals are consultative to enterprise |
| Sales Cycle | 3-6 months (what your team is running) |
| Deal Size | Managing team carrying $2-4M in annual quota |
| Quota (est.) | Team: $2-4M/year, Personal: $300-500K/year |
Company Context
Stage: Growth stage (167 employees suggests Series B/C)
Size: 167 employees
Growth: VP is opening multiple sales roles simultaneously - you're building the machine, not just running it
Market Position: Competitive market requiring structured sales management
GTM Reality
Your Team:
- 4-8 direct reports (AEs or SDRs, depending on the role)
- Mix of tenured reps and new hires you'll need to ramp
- Some inherited reps, some you'll hire yourself
What You Control:
- Coaching and skill development
- Deal strategy and pipeline management
- Your team's activity levels and CRM hygiene
What You Don't Control:
- Product roadmap and feature gaps
- Pricing and packaging (mostly)
- Marketing lead quality
- How fast support resolves customer issues
Competitive Landscape
Your Challenge:
- Your reps are selling against bigger, more established competitors
- You need to coach them through "Why not [competitor]?" conversations
- You're building process while competitors have playbooks figured out
What Your Team Needs From You:
- Battle cards and competitive positioning
- Deal strategy on complex opportunities
- Air cover when they need pricing flexibility or product exceptions
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Coaching & 1:1s (30%) | Deal Reviews (25%) | Forecasting (20%) | Your Deals (15%) | Hiring/Admin (10%)
Key Activities
- Weekly 1:1s: Hour with each rep reviewing pipeline, coaching skills, unblocking deals. These are where you actually manage - not in the team meetings.
- Pipeline Reviews: 2-3 group sessions per week going deal-by-deal. You're pressure-testing commit numbers, identifying slipped deals, reallocating resources. The VP will hold you to your forecast.
- Deal Strategy Sessions: Jumping into complex deals with reps. You're reading the room, coaching discovery, joining calls with executives, figuring out how to unstick stalled opps.
- Forecasting to Leadership: Building your weekly commit number and defending it to the VP. You need to know every deal in commit category inside-out.
- Carrying Your Own Number: You might have 5-10 active deals yourself, especially strategic accounts or expansions. You can't fully coach if you don't sell.
- Hiring: At a growing company, you're constantly interviewing, selling candidates, onboarding new reps. This never stops.
- Building Process: Creating talk tracks, qualification frameworks, pipeline stages. The VP wants scalable process, not just individual heroics.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- You're accountable for your team's number, but you can't actually close their deals. Watching a rep blow an opportunity you coached them through is painful.
- The VP is scaling aggressively, which means your team size and structure might change quarterly. You're building the plane while flying it.
- Your best reps need less coaching and your struggling reps need more, but you only have so many hours. Triage is constant.
- Growth-stage companies have product and process gaps. Your reps will complain about missing features, broken integrations, unclear pricing. You're the buffer.
- You'll lose deals to bigger competitors with more features and bigger brands. Your reps will get demoralized. You need to keep them motivated anyway.
- Some reps won't make it. You'll coach them, PIP them, and eventually replace them. It's part of the job but never easy.
- You're still carrying a number yourself, so when your team is struggling, you can't go full-time into coaching mode.
What Success Looks Like
- Your team hits 85-95% of quota as a group (not every rep, but the team average)
- Low variance in forecast accuracy - you call within 10% week-over-week
- Your best reps get promoted or are getting recruited away (annoying but means you're developing talent)
- Reps you've coached are replicating skills across deals, not just winning one-off
- The VP trusts your forecast and doesn't second-guess your deal calls
- New reps ramp to productivity in 90-120 days because you've got a real onboarding plan
Who You're Managing
Your Direct Reports:
- Mix of experienced reps (who might resist coaching) and newer reps (who need more hand-holding)
- Some you inherited, some you'll hire
- Expect 1-2 underperformers at any given time
What They Need From You:
- Deal strategy and coaching on complex situations
- Air cover with product, support, and leadership
- Clear expectations and honest feedback
- Help prioritizing when everything feels urgent
- Career development and promotion paths
Requirements
- 5-8 years in B2B sales with at least 2 years closing complex deals yourself
- Track record of personally hitting quota before managing others
- Experience coaching reps through consultative sales cycles
- Comfortable with forecasting accuracy and defending your numbers
- Ability to diagnose skill gaps (discovery vs. closing vs. prospecting) and coach to them
- Data-driven approach to pipeline management and activity metrics
- Experience hiring and ramping new reps
- Resilience to manage underperformance and have hard conversations
- Willingness to work in a scaling environment with evolving process