Second Line Manager / Sales Director

Coaching for sales leaders managing managers. Build manager capability, scale consistency and lead without being in every deal.

Too many sales directors are just very expensive managers. It isn’t for lack of effort or ability. A great front line manager gets promoted, then keeps doing the job that made them successful. Six months in they’re exhausted, the number is slipping, and the managers below them aren’t growing.

The most dangerous thing a new director can do is run the playbook from the level below. The job has changed: you’re now coaching coaches, and your influence on any single deal sits two layers away.

Sound familiar?

  • Your 1:1s with managers are the same pipeline conversation, one level up.

  • You step into deals because it’s where your authority feels certain.

  • You think you’re supporting your managers, but they experience it as a lack of trust.

  • “My managers aren’t ready” has become a reason to stay involved.

  • Each manager is running their own version of the team.

The three-week test

Imagine you’re away for three weeks. Which of your managers would have a worse quarter, and why? If the honest answer is “most of them, because I’m in their deals”, the transition hasn’t happened yet. You’ve just built a bigger team.

What changes

  • Your operating rhythm. Your time goes to work only you can do. Managers own their team’s number and become the first point of escalation. Pipeline, forecast and deal reviews move into their own forums.

  • Your 1:1s. They’re about how each manager leads, where they’re stuck and how they want to grow, not about their deals.

  • Shared direction. Purpose, vision, strategy and operating principles are built with your managers rather than handed to them, so everyone runs the same plan.

  • From directing to coaching. You don’t need more experience than your managers to coach them. You need better questions.

  • Consistency at scale. A common language for pipeline, forecasting and deal inspection across teams. Consistent doesn’t mean rigid.

What we work on

  • Designing your operating cadence: manager meetings, 1:1s, forecasts and deal reviews

  • Developing your managers into coaches, including experienced ones

  • Culture: what you tolerate, celebrate and model on a forecast call after a bad quarter

  • Choosing which fights are worth taking on

  • Your promotion case, and the conversation with your leader

How coaching works

  1. Discovery. A conversation about where you are, what’s getting in the way, and whether we’re the right fit.

  2. A focused arc. Usually four to six sessions, designed around your real situations: the team, the conversation, the decision in front of you.

  3. Light pre-work. Short, specific preparation so session time goes on coaching, not catching up.

  4. One committed action. Every session ends with one thing you’ll do before the next, so progress shows up in how you lead.

Coaching is confidential and is led by Dan Bognar, a former senior sales executive at HubSpot, DocuSign and Salesforce who has led teams at every level described here.