When Strategy Mapping Selling's CEO Tim McMahon was first promoted to sales manager of a company he worked for, he painfully realized something - that even though he had been a great salesman it didn't prepare him at all for his new job. Even worse, there were very few resources available for him to learn the specific sales management skills he needed. "Most of us became sales managers because we were great sales reps. Nobody told us that the skills weren't necessarily the same - that we would need a mix of both management and leadership skills to become an effective coach and team leader ... or that we would all need some help and advice along the way". That's what inspired McMahon to create Strategy Mapping Selling's newest online professional networking and development offering, "The Sales Managers Leadership Community".

According to McMahon, "The Community is the first professional networking offering specifically targeted to sales managers. We not only provide opportunity for active networking among members, we are focused on providing uniquely valuable tools and resources that help sales managers advance their careers and build high performing sales teams. We are as interested in the owner or manager of a small company or distributor as we are in a Fortune 50 company."

Most of the resources and tools in The Sales Managers Leadership Community are free as is the open networking for the membership. For a minimal monthly subscription fee, however, members can access the site's Professional Development Center which includes a suite of 30 sales and sales management elearning programs, sales planning tools for sales territory management, key account management, sales opportunity planning, sales coaching, interviewing, and much more. Subscription members receive Personal Sales management Coaching from the Strategy Mapping Selling expert team and attend member-only monthly webconference events.

McMahon is the founder and CEO of Strategy Mapping Selling, a successful global sales & management training group founded in 1995. "Over the last few years", says McMahon, "we have invested heavily in developing an extensive library of outstanding sales and management elearning programs and sales tools. Our primary clients have always been large corporations and we were looking for a way to offer the same training to smaller companies with the same quality but at a cost they could easily afford. We believe The Sales Managers Leadership Community is a great solution."

The company is using a 'best of breed' technology strategy to power the Community including CollectiveX, Officezilla, and online collaborative tools developed by Zoho and Yugma. "We felt there was no need to reinvent the wheel considering the elegance of the new generation of collaborative tools. We focus our time and expertise in developing the exceptional content that will make the Community more than just another networking site, i.e., one that is so robust members will be motivated to stay involved."