Edinburgh Napier University

  This conceptual paper has the aim of providing a tool suitable for supporting the continuous professional development of sales management and staff.

Previous research highlighted a lack of poor ongoing training and opportunities for continuous professional development within a large range of sales managers and sales executives. We conducted some primary phenomenological research to sense-check this perspective. Our results suggest there is a lack of cohesive training regimes within SMEs for sales managers and sales personnel and confirmed a lack of opportunities for continuous improvement. This paper argues that a training/mentoring/coaching cycle, underpinned by sales coaching and educational literature should be adopted as an antidote for the lack of professional development within many SME sales managers and sales executives. The ‘Training/Mentoring/Coaching’ (TMC) cycle approach beings with ‘induction’ then progresses to ‘mentoring’ and ‘coaching’, however, it continues to offer a targeted approach to refresh skills and knowledge, thereby providing a new paradigm for continuous professional development. It is argued that this TMC approach will provide an effective and useful tool for: sales managers, sales executives, trainers and HR practitioners. It acts as an informative and useful guide for knowledge and skill building from both constructivist and social constructivist perspectives.