Strong sales manager skills, such as forecasting, data analysis, prospecting, communication, and problem-solving, help you present yourself as a capable leader who can deliver consistent results.
However, simply having these competencies is only half the equation; you also need to showcase them compellingly on your resume. Follow along as we show you how to do just that and offer a breakdown of the top 14 skills for this position that employers typically look for.
Key Takeaways
The top hard skills a sales manager should have include forecasting, pipeline management, prospecting, negotiation, and understanding of contractual terms.
Soft skills, such as communication, coaching, mentorship, problem-solving, decision-making, emotional intelligence, and time management, are also crucial for the role.
When showcasing sales manager skills for your resume, be sure to support them with numbers, tie them to business objectives, and mirror the language used in the job description.
You can continue to improve your skills by regularly asking for feedback, learning from other individuals in professional associations, and taking targeted courses.
What Are the Roles and Responsibilities of a Sales Manager?
The roles and responsibilities of a sales manager vary by organization, but typically include:
Sales Manager Responsibilities
Setting sales strategy and targets aligned with overall business objectives
Forecasting revenue, managing the pipeline, and tracking performance metrics
Coaching and motivating sales representatives to improve results
Supporting high-value, complex, or at-risk deals to protect margins
Collaborating with other teams to improve sales processes
To fulfill these, sales managers need a strong mix of technical, interpersonal, and conceptual skills, so let’s take a closer look at 14 useful ones they should possess!
7 Hard Sales Manager Skills for Your Resume
Here are seven sales manager hard skills you should showcase in your job application:
#1. Sales Forecasting & Pipeline Management
Sales forecasting is the ability to gauge future sales over a specific period based on available data. As such, it relies on your critical and analytical thinking. Meanwhile, pipeline management refers to tracking, organizing, and moving leads and deals through each stage of the sales process. It helps you identify the right prospects to focus on and thereby improve your win rates.
Together, sales forecasting and pipeline management help you stand out as a high-performing sales manager.
Tip: You should highlight this hard skill on your sales manager resume by quantifying results, for example, “improving forecast accuracy by X%” or “increasing win rate by Y%”.
#2. CRM Software Proficiency (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho)
Sales managers are expected to use CRM tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho to run their team effectively.
When hiring, employers look for someone who can step in and quickly understand what is happening in the pipeline, who is performing, and where revenue is at risk, and that’s exactly the purpose of using CRM systems.
More importantly, your software skills should help you lead better; you must be able to use CRM data to spot patterns, identify stalled opportunities, and support your reps.
#3. Data Analysis & Sales Reporting
Employers expect you to look beyond surface numbers and understand what the data is really saying about revenue, risk, and growth. That’s why you should showcase sales reporting and analytical skills clearly in your sales manager cover letter and resume.
You should be able to identify trends, spot risks early, explain why results are improving or declining, and translate those insights into actions for your team. When done well, data analysis and reporting demonstrate that you can manage performance with clarity, accountability, and consistency.
#4. Prospecting
Prospecting is the process of identifying and engaging potential customers to create new sales opportunities. It is a core activity across all sales roles, as every part of the sales organization depends on a healthy flow of new leads.
However, for sales managers, this process comes with broader responsibility. You need to set standards for targeting, track activity levels, and adjust the approach as soon as results start to slip. And, because prospecting directly influences pipeline health, it is one of the most in-demand skills for sales managers.
#5. Presentation
While sometimes overlooked among other skills needed to be a sales manager, presentation abilities affect how well you communicate performance, priorities, and decisions, and are therefore highly valued by employers. In practice, this includes walking teams through targets and expectations, briefing leaders on results, and aligning stakeholders around next steps.
It is best to demonstrate presentation skills while answering sales manager interview questions. You can highlight specific situations in which you have provided pipeline updates and forecasts to different audiences, emphasizing your ability to structure information clearly.
#6. Negotiation
Negotiation is a core skill for sales managers because it has been proven to directly affect deal outcomes, margins, and long-term customer relationships. While you may not negotiate daily like sales representatives, you are expected to be involved in higher-value or at-risk deals.
These require you to balance competing interests, manage objections, and support your team during the most sensitive stages of the sales process. As such, demonstrating strong negotiation skills also reflects your communication, commercial judgment, emotional intelligence, and capacity to work collaboratively within a team.
#7. Understanding of Contractual and Commercial Terms
Although sales managers don’t have to write contracts, you are expected to understand key phrases that affect risk, revenue, and customer expectations. This can include pricing structures, payment terms, renewal conditions, service levels, liability considerations, etc.
Being well-versed in contractual and commercial terms helps you guide negotiations and flag risks early, both of which protect deal outcomes and margins. Equipped with this skill, you can deliver tangible results that set you apart in an increasingly competitive industry.
7 Top Soft Skills Every Sales Manager Should Have
Below are seven sales manager soft skills that can strengthen your candidacy:
#1. Leadership & Team Motivation
Leadership and team motivation are central to a sales manager’s role because performance depends on how well the team is guided and supported. This skill shows up in how you set expectations, coach others through challenges, and maintain morale when targets are under pressure.
You can include this on your resume’s sales manager skills list and expand on it in your cover letter by sharing specific examples of how you motivated your team during challenging periods; the STAR method can help you highlight your impact clearly.
#2. Communication
Sales managers need to communicate with sales representatives, leaders, cross-functional partners, and customers, each with different goals, expectations, and priorities. So, beyond articulating ideas, you need to be able to adapt your communication approach.
Clear communication builds trust, which is the foundation of successful sales management. However, as a soft skill, it can be difficult to demonstrate convincingly on a resume, cover letter, or within an interview answer. So, rather than simply claiming, “I communicate well,” you should provide specific examples that show how your communication led to measurable results.
#3. Coaching & Mentorship
For any sales organization, results hinge on how effectively the team performs and how long top salespeople stay. A sales manager’s ability to coach and mentor directly influences both.
For example, you might:
Schedule weekly one-on-ones
Host training workshops
Share resources and tips through presentations
By closely supporting your team, you help sharpen their capabilities and ensure they can consistently improve results. When they feel guided and invested in, they are also more engaged and committed, as well as less likely to leave.
This is important given the high cost of hiring, onboarding, and ramping new sales staff. In addition, turnover disrupts the team’s momentum and weakens customer relationships, both of which affect revenue continuity. As such, from an employer’s perspective, coaching and mentoring are high-value skills.
#4. Problem-Solving & Decision-Making
Problem-solving and decision-making are critical skills for these professionals because issues arise constantly across people, processes, and deals. Employers expect you to assess situations quickly, weigh trade-offs, and implement solutions that keep the team moving.
In sales management, problems and poor decisions compound quickly. A single misjudgment in pricing, territory strategy, or pipeline prioritization can lead to huge revenue losses. Therefore, demonstrating this skill clearly on your resume can set you apart from top-performing candidates.
#5. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is essential for sales managers because success depends as much on people as it does on numbers. You are managing diverse personalities, high-pressure targets, and frequent rejections, usually at the same time.
Strong emotional intelligence allows you to read situations accurately, regulate your own responses, and respond to others with empathy and clarity. This helps you coach underperforming representatives and maintain trust with both your team and customers.
Tip: While it might seem harder to showcase, you can share situations where you managed conflict or adjusted your approach based on individual needs to spotlight your emotional intelligence.
#6. Time Management & Prioritization
Sales managers are expected to think strategically while executing daily, often across several deals, teams, and stakeholder groups at once. Strong time management and prioritization skills allow you to focus on high-impact activities, rather than reacting to every urgent request.
This skill helps ensure key opportunities are not missed, teams stay aligned on priorities, and resources are allocated where they deliver the most value. On a resume or during an interview, you can highlight how you manage competing priorities or meet deadlines in high-pressure environments to show that you can manage time well.
#7. Adaptability & Resilience
Adaptability and resilience refer to your ability to adjust quickly to change and recover from setbacks. For example, when a key enterprise deal collapses late in the quarter, how do you react and respond? Can you quickly reassess the pipeline, redirect effort toward viable opportunities, and reset targets while keeping the team focused and motivated?
This soft skill is important because sales environments are inherently volatile. Employers need managers who can contain disruption, protect performance, and lead consistently through uncertainty.
How to Showcase Your Sales Manager Skills on Your Resume Professionally
To showcase your sales manager skills on your resume effectively, you should:
#1. Support Them With Measurable Outcomes
With metrics and numbers, employers have context to assess whether your experience is relevant to their revenue targets, team sizes, and sales processes.
For example, instead of simply listing “negotiation” under your Skills section, write “Stepped into stalled negotiations on high-risk deals, recovering $1.8 million in revenue” in your Work Experience section.
#2. Tie Them to the Organization’s Goals
Linking your skills to business objectives shifts your resume from a list of capabilities to a clear business case. It signals that you think like a sales manager, not just a high-performing sales representative, and makes it easier for employers to see how you can contribute.
To do this effectively, take time to research the company’s priorities. You should review their website, LinkedIn presence, and recent updates to understand what the sales function is expected to deliver, then align your skills accordingly.
#3. Word Them in the Same Way as the Job Description
Using the same wording helps your resume register faster with both applicant tracking systems and human reviewers. It suggests a strong fit and increases the likelihood that your application moves forward.
You can start by identifying repeated phrases in the job description, such as “pipeline management” or “cross-functional collaboration.” Then, reflect that language directly in your skills, as long as it accurately describes your experience.
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3 Tips for Improving Your Skills as a Sales Manager
Keep these three tips in mind to sharpen your skills as a sales manager:
Ask for feedback. This can include short one-on-one check-ins with your team to ask what is helping or hindering their performance and conversations with leaders about how your decisions are landing. By gathering feedback in specific moments, you can make targeted adjustments that have an immediate impact on results.
Join professional associations. Groups such as the National Association of Sales Professionals (NASP) can give you access to peers, proven frameworks, and real-world insights beyond your own organization. You should join these communities to learn how others handle common challenges and stay current on best practices.
Enroll in courses. Targeted online and offline courses can help you strengthen specific sales management skills, such as forecasting, coaching, or data-driven decision-making. You should look for programs designed for sales leaders and prioritize those that address areas where you are falling short, so you can directly apply what you learn to your team and see improvements faster.
Closing Thoughts
Employment opportunities for sales managers are expected to grow 5% over the next decade, with growth projected to outpace the average for most occupations. But as more roles open up, employers will be increasingly selective about the skills they hire for.
So, it is more important than ever to be intentional about which skills you highlight, back them with evidence, and align them with business priorities. This way, you can position yourself as a credible, job-ready candidate and win over employers!
Sales Manager Skills FAQs
#1. What are the most important skills for a sales manager?
The most important skills for a sales manager allow you to drive revenue while leading and developing a high-performing team. These include a mix of hard skills, such as forecasting, pipeline management, CRM proficiency, and negotiation, alongside soft skills like communication, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, and decision-making.
#2. Are sales manager skills more technical or leadership-based?
Sales manager skills are a balance of both technical and leadership-based skills. Technical skills are essential for managing data, forecasts, and deal execution, while leadership-based skills let you coach teams, influence stakeholders, and navigate change.
#3. How many sales manager skills should I include on my resume?
You should include 8 to 12 sales manager skills on your resume and focus on those most relevant to the role. Also, don’t forget to support them with measurable results and tie them to specific business objectives.
