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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for B2B Sales Manager

💰 $ - $

SalesB2BManagementBusiness Development

🎯 Role Definition

The B2B Sales Manager is a revenue-focused leader responsible for developing and executing a repeatable sales process that drives new business, expands existing accounts, and consistently achieves or exceeds sales quotas. This role combines strategic territory planning, consultative selling, and cross-functional collaboration with hands-on coaching of sales representatives. The ideal candidate manages full sales cycles for complex B2B deals, leverages CRM and analytics to forecast and optimize pipeline health, and partners with marketing, product, legal and customer success to deliver exceptional commercial outcomes.

Key SEO / LLM keywords: B2B Sales Manager, enterprise sales, account management, quota attainment, pipeline management, CRM (Salesforce), contract negotiation, SaaS sales, business development, territory planning, account-based selling.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Account Executive with proven enterprise deal experience
  • Business Development Manager or Sales Development Manager (SDR/BDR lead)
  • Industry Sales Representative with territory management experience

Advancement To:

  • Director of Sales
  • Head of Sales / Regional Sales Director
  • Vice President of Sales / Chief Revenue Officer (for high-growth trajectories)

Lateral Moves:

  • Customer Success Leadership (Head of Customer Success, Renewals Director)
  • Product Marketing Manager (Go-to-market role)
  • Partnerships / Strategic Alliances Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Build, own and consistently exceed a defined sales quota by identifying, qualifying, and closing new business opportunities across assigned territories and target accounts, using a strategic account-based selling approach tailored to complex B2B buying cycles.
  • Develop and execute a territory plan that prioritizes high-value accounts, maps buying centers, sequences outreach, and outlines tactics for achieving both short-term wins and long-term pipeline growth.
  • Manage the full sales cycle for enterprise and mid-market deals, including discovery, requirements gathering, solution design, pricing, negotiation, contracting and handoff to customer success for implementation and retention.
  • Generate new revenue through proactive lead generation, targeted outbound outreach, marketing collaboration, and strategic networking at industry events and conferences to expand the top of funnel.
  • Lead high-impact sales conversations and deliver compelling product demonstrations and tailored presentations that align solutions to client business outcomes, ROI, and use-case scenarios.
  • Negotiate commercial terms, pricing, and contractual agreements in partnership with legal and finance, ensuring favorable margins while mitigating commercial and compliance risk.
  • Build and maintain accurate, up-to-date pipeline and CRM records (e.g., Salesforce) with rigorous stage progression, forecast inputs, activity logs and next steps to enable predictable revenue forecasting.
  • Produce rolling sales forecasts and pipeline reports for leadership, providing commentary on assumptions, risk areas, expected close dates and action plans to accelerate deals.
  • Identify upsell, cross-sell and renewal opportunities within existing accounts and develop account expansion plans that increase customer lifetime value and reduce churn.
  • Collaborate closely with marketing to develop and iterate on target account lists, campaign messaging, sales collateral and demand generation tactics tailored to buyer personas and industry verticals.
  • Conduct qualification and needs analysis to diagnose client pain points, align internal stakeholders, and create customized proposals and solution architectures that demonstrate measurable business impact.
  • Lead RFP/RFI responses and coordinate cross-functional contributions (product, legal, finance) to deliver timely, compliant and competitive proposals for strategic accounts and public-sector opportunities.
  • Establish and track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as win rate, average deal size, sales cycle length, pipeline coverage and quota attainment to continuously optimize sales motions and resource allocation.
  • Coach and mentor direct reports or cross-functional sellers on consultative selling techniques, objection handling, negotiation strategies and CRM best practices to elevate team performance.
  • Partner with product and engineering teams to relay market feedback, feature requests and competitive intelligence that inform product roadmaps and positioning for B2B customers.
  • Implement and iterate on scalable sales processes, playbooks and enablement materials (call scripts, discovery templates, proposal frameworks) to improve consistency and speed across the sales organization.
  • Drive competitive displacement by developing battlecards, objection responses and competitive positioning that enable sellers to win in contested enterprise situations.
  • Execute renewal and contract extension strategies in partnership with customer success and account management to secure long-term commitments and reduce revenue leakage.
  • Manage pricing exceptions, discount approvals and deal economics in alignment with commercial policy, ensuring profitable growth while maintaining competitiveness.
  • Coordinate internal stakeholders (legal, finance, implementation, support) to create seamless customer onboarding and delivery experiences, minimizing time-to-value and maximizing adoption.
  • Monitor industry trends, regulatory changes and macroeconomic factors affecting customers’ buying behavior, and adapt go-to-market tactics to stay ahead of market shifts.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Represent the sales organization at executive customer meetings and steer strategic account conversations that influence long-term relationship and partnership decisions.
  • Support recruiting and interviewing efforts to scale the sales organization with top-performing talent.
  • Assist marketing with customer references, case study development and testimonial capture to strengthen social proof and accelerate deal cycles.
  • Participate in pricing reviews and go/no-go decisions for strategic or complex deals that have non-standard commercial terms.
  • Share best practices and lessons learned with cross-regional sales teams to replicate successful strategies in other markets.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • CRM Mastery: Expert use of Salesforce, HubSpot, or comparable CRM platforms to manage pipeline, automate workflows and produce executive-level forecasts.
  • Forecasting & Pipeline Management: Ability to build and defend accurate revenue forecasts, assess pipeline health and implement tactics to mitigate at-risk deals.
  • Contract Negotiation & Commercial Acumen: Strong experience negotiating Master Services Agreements, SOWs, NDAs, and commercial terms with enterprise buyers.
  • Enterprise Selling: Demonstrated capability to sell complex solutions into multi-stakeholder organizations with long sales cycles.
  • Proposal & RFP Management: Skilled at creating persuasive proposals, responding to RFPs and coordinating contributors across functions.
  • Data-Driven Decision Making: Proficiency with sales analytics tools and Excel/Google Sheets for territory modeling, quota-setting and performance analysis.
  • Solution & Technical Knowledge: Comfortable discussing integrations, APIs, product roadmaps and technical value propositions with customer technical stakeholders.
  • Pricing Strategy & Deal Structuring: Experience in structuring creative pricing, subscription and multi-year agreements that balance customer needs with company margins.
  • Presentation & Demo Tools: Strong command of presentation software (PowerPoint/Keynote), screen-sharing, and product demo platforms.
  • Lead Generation & Prospecting: Expertise in outbound prospecting techniques, account-based marketing coordination, and qualifying inbound leads.
  • Cross-functional Program Management: Ability to coordinate implementation timelines, legal reviews, invoicing and support handoffs to ensure successful delivery.

Soft Skills

  • Consultative Communication: Exceptional active listening and questioning skills to uncover customer business drivers and craft tailored solutions.
  • Negotiation & Persuasion: Confident negotiator with the ability to find win-win outcomes and influence stakeholders at all levels.
  • Relationship Building: Proven track record of establishing and maintaining trusted advisor relationships with C-level and functional leaders.
  • Strategic Thinking: Ability to design account plans and long-term strategies aligned with company growth objectives and market dynamics.
  • Coaching & Leadership: Skilled in mentoring salespeople, delivering feedback and driving performance improvement through coaching.
  • Resilience & Tenacity: Persistence to navigate long sales cycles, rejection and complex internal approvals while maintaining momentum.
  • Problem Solving: Strong analytical mindset to identify root causes, propose solutions and implement corrective actions quickly.
  • Time & Priority Management: Efficient at multitasking across opportunities while focusing on high-impact activities to meet deadlines.
  • Collaboration & Influence: Natural collaborator who can align cross-functional teams around shared goals and client commitments.
  • Customer-Centric Mindset: Deep commitment to customer success, adoption and ongoing value realization.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Finance, Technology or a related field; or equivalent professional sales experience.

Preferred Education:

  • MBA or advanced degree in Business/Strategy.
  • Certifications in sales methodologies (e.g., MEDDIC, Challenger Sale, Sandler, SPIN) and/or industry-specific certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Business Administration
  • Marketing
  • Finance
  • Computer Science / Information Systems (for technical sales roles)
  • Economics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 3–8 years of progressive B2B sales experience; 5+ years preferred for enterprise-focused roles.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of directly managing complex B2B sales cycles with consistent quota attainment.
  • Demonstrated experience selling SaaS, technology or professional services to mid-market and enterprise customers.
  • Past experience coaching or leading a team of sellers or cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Proven success with CRM-driven pipeline management, forecasting and negotiation of multi-year contracts.
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