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title: "Sales Manager Best Practices"
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# Sales Manager Best Practices
 

### Review Command Plans

*   Regularly review an aggregate of your team's Command Plans in this [Salesforce Report](https://gitlab.my.salesforce.com/00O4M000004e1dZ). This will allow you to scan your team's progress on both a macro and micro level and identify possible information gaps or obstacles that can hinder an opportunity. 

### Coaching

*   Develop a Coaching Action Plan for each rep on your team. Conduct one-on-one development sessions with each person to review their plan.
*   Conduct **weekly** Opportunity Consults with each rep on your team to review specific command plans. 
*   Coaches should ask more questions to first understand the current level of understanding of those they are coaching before explaining key or misunderstood concepts.
*   When conducting Opportunity Consults, coaches should encourage reps to commit to specific, concrete, actionable next steps (i.e., “I am going to do X, Y, and Z to test my Champion” instead of “I am going to test my Champion”) and request that the reps document those action items in a shared way (i.e. document in Salesforce or send a summary wrap-up communication after the meeting).
*   Include the SA and TAM teams in Opportunity Consults – these should be team conversations and facilitate improved transparency and collaboration.
*   Coach reps on the best practices related to the close plan within a command plan:
    *   Close plans should be updated in real time and at minimum on a weekly basis
    *   Time stamp the latest update at the top with the date of the refresh
    *   Each line item should start with a specific date
    *   Liberally use ( ) or ** ** between line items or at the end of line items to denote Close Plan gaps that the SAL intends to fill during the next communication with the prospect/customer. This is a key **_pay-off to the SAL_** item to highlight since it should help make them better
    *   Keep the action / people involved / expected outcome as crisp as possible. Endeavor to keep it on one line so as not to make it a blog.
    *   Refer to the Paper Process when appropriate so efforts aren't duplicated
    *   If you can still ask, "what happens between one line item and the next" and you don't know...then see item 4 and use that knowledge as a guide to continually drive higher fidelity through each communication.

### Strategic Coaching

*   Celebrate your wins and socialize success stories to help with motivation across teams 
*   Continue to leverage your fellow managers for feedback and input on what is working well
*   Lead with “Why” in team and 1:1 rep discussions (GitLab has done a good job of explaining “Why” for GitLab organizationally, but managers will want to ensure that daily interactions lead with “Why” for teams and individual reps)
*   Enable partner sellers to jointly run deals leveraging Command of the Message and MEDDPICC
*   Conduct Command of the Message and MEDDPICC refresh sessions covering 1-2 slides/tools per week

### Career Development

*   Leverage GitLab's [Career Development](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/learning-and-development/career-development/) resources

### Leadership Toolkit 
* For additional leadership resources, check out the [Leadership toolkit](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/leadership-toolkit/)