About Omar Cobian and Sales Manager Academy
I built Sales Manager Academy for wireless and authorized dealer managers who were great reps and never got trained to coach.
I’ve been where you are
I’ve been in sales since 2005 and leading sales teams since 2010. Most of those years were on the floor of wireless retail stores, first as a store manager and then as a district manager. I hit targets, missed some, and learned the hard way what actually moves a team.
For a long time, what moved my team was me. If a deal was stuck, I closed it. If a rep was struggling, I stepped in. My numbers looked fine, but my team was not getting better. They were getting better at waiting for me.
In sales since 2005 | Sales leadership since 2010 | Founder, Sales Manager Academy
The trip that changed how I lead
Then I took a trip to Mexico. I had barely landed when my phone lit up with 11 missed calls from my team. Every one of them needed me to solve something. I was the safety net, and they had learned to wait for me to show up.
That was the moment I stopped blaming my reps. They had the ability. What they didn’t have was a system that made the plan theirs instead of mine.
What I built instead
I came back and built a 15-minute weekly coaching conversation. Four steps:
- Goal check. The rep reviews last period’s results and sets their own goal for this one.
- Keystone focus. One skill or behavior the rep will develop.
- Action items. Three actions the rep proposes. They write them. They own them.
- When / I Will / Because. The commitment, in the rep’s own words.
When the plan comes from them, it sticks. I used it in my own stores and to train my own teams, as a store manager and as a district manager.
What it looked like in real stores
San Antonio, TX. I took over a store with 1 manager, 1 ASM and 5 employees and led it as district manager, with Gabe as the store manager, until it ranked in the top 3 of 600 stores. It went from 250 to 1,000 units in a month at its holiday peak and consistently sold about 700 a month the rest of the year. By then the team had grown to 1 manager, 2 ASMs and 15 full-time employees.
North Houston, TX. One of the most expensive rents in our portfolio. Under its previous manager, the store produced about 120 units a month. Under Mel, with 1 ASM and 5 sellers, it consistently sold 300+ units a month and reached flagship status within 6 months. Her reps set their own targets. She stopped chasing them for updates.
Results are from stores I personally led. They are not a guarantee of future results.
Why Sales Manager Academy exists
Great reps keep getting promoted into management with no real training on how to coach. So they do what I did: carry the team, work every Saturday, and wonder why nothing they coached last week stuck.
Sales Manager Academy teaches wireless retail managers the same system I used. No theory. No generic sales training. Just a framework built for the specific pressure of running a wireless or authorized dealer location. It’s for:
- Store managers whose reps wait for them to close the deal.
- District and multi-unit managers who can’t be on every floor.
- New managers who were promoted for selling and never got trained to coach.
- Owners and general managers of small dealer groups who want the team to run without them.
Where to start
Start with the free 15-Minute Sales Coaching Framework. It’s a free download, no credit card and no webinar, and you can run your first conversation this week. When you’re ready to run the whole system, the District Manager Toolkit gives you the forms, templates and 6+ hours of video training I use.
Questions? Email me at omar@salesmanageracademy.com.
See the system for yourself
Download the free 15-Minute Sales Coaching Framework and run your first conversation this week.
Get the Free Framework