You will build a 30-day plan that shifts your time from selling to managing.
You have read three lessons about managing instead of selling, and you agree with all of them. Then Monday comes, a client calls about a renewal, a rep needs a proposal checked, and by Friday you have spent the week exactly as you did before your promotion. Good intentions do not change a calendar. A written plan does.
This exercise turns module 1 into a plan for your first 30 days as a manager, or your next 30 if you have already started. You will make four decisions and write each one down. We will work through Wei Ming's plan as the example, then you will write yours.
Start with the hardest decision. As the preview lesson, lesson 1.1, Your job is the team's number, not your own, explained, keeping a large personal book while managing usually means doing both jobs badly. So decide which deals you keep, which you hand over, who gets each one, and by what date.
Wei Ming had eleven open deals when he was promoted. He sorted them into three groups. Two were close to signing with buyers he had worked with for months, so he kept those and set himself a date three weeks out to close or hand them over. Six were at earlier stages and went to reps whose territory or industry matched. The last three had gone cold, so he closed them out in the CRM rather than passing dead deals to someone else.
For every deal he handed over, he booked a short call with the rep and the client together, so the client heard the change from him. A handover that happens by email alone often loses the client's trust along with the context.
If your company expects you to keep some personal sales target, agree the size of it with your own manager now, and write down how many hours a week it should take.
Management work is easy to postpone because none of it has a client waiting on the other end. Protect it by putting it in the calendar as repeating blocks before anything else goes in.
The four blocks every sales manager needs are one-to-ones, a pipeline review, coaching time and hiring. Lesson 1.3, Setting expectations with your old peers, covered one-to-ones. Module 5 covers pipeline reviews, module 6 coaching and module 2 hiring. For now, just reserve the time.
Here is Wei Ming's week before and after, in hours. These are his example figures, not a standard to copy. Before: selling 22, managing people 8, admin 10, meetings 5, a total of 45.
After, for the same 45 hours: closing out his own deals 4, one-to-ones with four reps 4, the team pipeline review 2, call reviews and coaching 6, joining reps' meetings 4, hiring for the open role 5, forecasting and time with his own manager 2, admin 8, other meetings 5, and work on the sales process and dashboard 5.
Notice that selling did not vanish in one week. The four hours for his own deals shrink to zero once the two remaining deals are closed or handed over. Notice also that admin fell only slightly. That is realistic, since a manager's admin does not disappear.
Your split will differ by team size and industry. What matters is that each management block has a fixed slot, such as one-to-ones on Tuesday mornings and the pipeline review at 9am on Mondays, so it happens even 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 will give up.
Wei Ming's list:
Rewriting reps' proposals himself. He will comment on them instead and let the rep make the changes. Joining calls because a deal is slipping. He will use the three reasons from lesson 1.2, When to join a rep's deal and when to stay out. Answering client emails that should go to the account's rep. He will forward them with a one-line note.
Pick things you actually do now, not things you have already stopped. The test is whether a colleague would recognise the habit from the past month.
Last, take the plan to your own manager. Many new sales managers are judged only on the team's revenue, which in the first month mostly reflects deals that were created before you started. Ask for one or two measures that show whether you are building the management habits: one-to-ones held as planned, a pipeline review run every week, the open role filled or the hiring process started, 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 would be discussed, but as the team's number, not as a test of Wei Ming.
Write this agreement down and send it to your manager the same day, the way you sent your team members their notes in lesson 1.3.
When you are done, you should have one page with four parts: the list of your deals and what happens to each by when, a weekly calendar template with the management blocks fixed, the three things you will stop doing, and the measures your own manager agreed to. Someone reading it should be able to tell, week by week, where your hours are going.
Use your time log from lesson 1.1 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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