Build a 30-day plan that moves your time from selling to managing.
Write down, on one page, how you'll spend your first 30 days as a sales manager, or your next 30 if you've already started. You've read three lessons of module 1, but agreeing with them doesn't change how your week gets spent. Without a written plan, most new managers fall back on the routine they had before the promotion. Good intentions leave a calendar as it was, and a written plan changes it.
The plan comes from four decisions, and you write each one down:
what happens to your own pipeline which weekly blocks you fix for management work which three habits you stop which measures your own manager will use to judge your first month
Wei Ming's plan is the worked example for each step. He is a newly promoted sales manager with four reps and one open role. Once you've seen his version, you write your own.
This is the hardest of the four decisions. Lesson 1.1, "Your job is the team's number, not your own", made the point that keeping a large personal book of deals while you manage usually means doing both jobs badly. Go through every open deal you hold. For each one, decide whether you keep it or hand it over, who gets it, and by what date. Close dead or cold deals out in the CRM instead of passing them to someone else.
For every deal you hand over, book a short call with the rep and the client together, so the client hears about the change from you. A handover done by email alone often costs you the client's trust as well as the context of the deal.
Wei Ming had eleven open deals when he was promoted. He kept two that were close to signing, with buyers he had worked with for months, and set a deadline three weeks out to close them or hand them over. He handed six earlier-stage deals to reps whose territory or industry matched. He closed out three cold deals in the CRM. That accounts for all eleven: 2 + 6 + 3. For every deal he handed over, he booked a short joint call with the rep and the client.
If your company expects you to keep a personal sales target, agree its size with your own manager now. Write down how many hours a week it should take.
Management work is easy to postpone because no client is waiting on the other end of it. To protect it, put it in your calendar as repeating blocks before anything else goes in. Every sales manager needs four blocks: one-to-ones, a pipeline review, coaching time and hiring. For now you're only reserving the time. Lesson 1.3, "Setting expectations with your old peers", covered one-to-ones. Module 2 covers hiring, module 5 covers pipeline reviews and module 6 covers coaching.
Before the promotion, Wei Ming's week was 45 hours: 22 selling, 8 managing people, 10 on admin and 5 in meetings. His week after is still 45 hours. He spends 4 hours closing out his own deals, 4 on one-to-ones with his four reps, 2 on the team pipeline review, 6 on call reviews and coaching, 4 joining reps' meetings, 5 hiring for the open role, 2 on forecasting and time with his own manager, 8 on admin, 5 in other meetings and 5 on sales process and dashboard work. That adds up to 4 + 4 + 2 + 6 + 4 + 5 + 2 + 8 + 5 + 5 = 45.
These are his figures and not a standard to copy. Your split will vary with your team size and industry. Two details in his split are worth noting. Selling doesn't disappear in the first week: his 4 hours on his own deals drop to 0 once the two remaining deals are closed or handed over. Admin falls only slightly, from 10 hours to 8, which is realistic because a manager's admin doesn't disappear.
Each management block needs a fixed slot, such as one-to-ones on Tuesday mornings or the pipeline review at 9am on Mondays. With a fixed slot, the block still happens in a busy week.
This is the step most new managers skip. Every hour of management has to come from somewhere, so name what you'll give up. Write three things you'll stop doing, and next to each, what you'll do instead. They should be habits you have now, not ones you've already dropped. To test each one, ask whether a colleague would recognise the habit from the past month.
Wei Ming's stop list has three items. He'll stop rewriting reps' proposals himself; instead he'll comment and let the rep make the changes. He'll stop joining calls because a deal is slipping, and use the three reasons from lesson 1.2, "When to join a rep's deal and when to stay out", instead. He'll stop answering client emails that should go to the account's rep, and forward them to the rep with a one-line note.
Many new sales managers are judged only on team revenue. In your first month, that revenue mostly reflects deals created before you started. Take your plan to your own manager and ask for one or two measures that show whether your management habits are being built. Examples are one-to-ones held as planned, a pipeline review run every week, the open role filled or the hiring process started, and your own pipeline handed over by the agreed date.
Wei Ming's manager agreed to judge his first month on four things: all one-to-ones held, four pipeline reviews run, the handover finished by the end of week three, and a hiring profile written for the open role. Revenue will still be discussed, but as the team's number and not as a test of Wei Ming.
Write the agreement down and send it to your manager the same day. This is how you sent your team members their notes in lesson 1.3.
The finished plan is one page with four parts. The first is the list of your deals, with what happens to each and by when. The second is a weekly calendar template with the management blocks fixed. The third is the three things you'll stop doing, and the fourth is the measures your manager agreed to. Someone reading it should be able to tell, week by week, where your hours are going. Use the time log from lesson 1.1, the preview lesson, as the starting point for the calendar.
The activity below asks you to write the full plan now, while the gap between how you spent last week and how a manager should spend it is still fresh.
Write a 30-day plan with a weekly calendar template, a handover plan for your pipeline and three things you will stop doing.
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