Sales Training & Development Manager

Sales Training & Development Manager

Reports to: Head of Sales Strategy & Operations

Location: Louisville, KY preferred. Remote considered for the right candidate.

Type: Full-time, Exempt

About us

We're on a mission to modernize annuities by bringing disruptively priced products and easy-to-use technology to market. DPL Financial Partners was founded to remove the problems created by commissions-complex and expensive products, conflicted sales practices, eroded benefits-and put the power in the hands of fiduciaries and retirement investors.

Position overview

Our sales team, top performers, and leaders have deep knowledge of our business, our products, and what great conversations with advisors and clients look like. We're creating this new role to turn that knowledge into a structured, measurable training program that helps every member of our sales team be more effective.

Some training materials exist today, but they're outdated, so this role is largely a build. You'll create our onboarding, product and platform training, and learning paths, reusing existing materials only where they still help.

Our sales team has 36 people across five groups: Sales Support Associates (SSAs), our bench for future internal consultants, often hired right out of college or from other careers; internal sales; External Sales; Relationship Management; and Membership Consultants. We sell mainly remotely, and External Sales travels some. We typically hire two to three people about once a quarter, sometimes fewer depending on promotions and turnover. This role requires no travel, though you're welcome to travel with External Sales to observe the sales process.

This is not a role that only delivers existing content. The right person draws knowledge out of experts, organizes it into clear programs, delivers it well, and shows that it changes how people perform.

Who you are

• You're a builder. You've created training programs from scratch, not only delivered someone else's curriculum, and you can point to something you built that didn't exist before.
• You're curious about how experts think, and you're skilled at drawing out what they know and making it teachable.
• You measure what matters. You want to know whether people perform differently, not only whether they finished the course.
• You hold a high standard for quality, stay organized, and deliver reliably against a plan.
• You adapt well to change. We're a growing company, and priorities and tools evolve; you see that as an opportunity.
• You communicate clearly and you're confident recommending a better approach, including to senior leaders.

How we'll work together

• You'll work closely with the Head of Sales Strategy & Operations, who will invest in your growth: helping you learn the business, giving guidance, and offering stretch assignments shaped around skills you want to build.
• You don't need to arrive as an expert in our products. Our people are, and our sales leadership team has committed to working with you.
• Leadership sets the direction for what the team needs to learn; you own how it's designed, delivered, and measured. We value thoughtful, purposeful training over volume.
• Sales managers will reinforce what you teach, and sales leadership and Compliance will review and sign off on content.
• You'll start by bringing recommendations and working through decisions together, and take on more ownership as you learn the business.

What you'll own

New hire onboarding

• Design and deliver onboarding for new sales hires, run in small cohorts of typically two to three people, blending classroom, virtual, self-paced, and shadowing formats.
• Define clear milestones and readiness checkpoints so new hires, managers, and leadership share one standard for "ready."
• Build onboarding in modules so other teams across the company can adopt parts of it.

Knowledge capture and curriculum

• Work with sales leaders and top performers as subject-matter experts to capture and document best practices, sales process, and conversation frameworks.
• Build product and platform training.
• Create and maintain a standard template for training on new functions, features, and initiatives, so every rollout is built consistently.
• Maintain an organized, current library of training materials and reference guides.

Learning paths and career development

• Build role-based learning paths: knowledge milestones for SSAs and internal sales team members, and initiatives and best-practice sharing for External Sales.
• Partner with sales leadership and HR to define and document competency requirements for each role and level.
• Build and administer the assessments that set the minimum bar to interview for promotion, such as written competency tests and presentations scored against a defined rubric by sales leadership and senior External Sales team members.

Assessment and measurement

• Design knowledge checks and skill assessments with clear criteria. For example: Did they ask the right qualifying questions? Did they gain clarity? Did they explain concepts using our taught language? Did they ask for the business?
• Measure effectiveness beyond completion, including knowledge retention, skill application, and business impact, using CRM and sales performance data.
• Use results to identify gaps and build targeted reinforcement.
• Share skill assessment results with sales managers, who own performance management.

Delivery and program management

• Facilitate engaging sessions both in person and virtually.
• Choose the right medium for each learning objective, such as live instruction, video, role-play, quizzes, or job aids, and be able to explain why.
• Maintain a training calendar and release plan the sales team can rely on.
• Build programs using our current learning platform, Digital Chalk, along with Microsoft 365. You'll have the freedom to evaluate whether Digital Chalk serves what the team needs and, if it doesn't, recommend a different platform with a supporting business case.

What this role does not own

This role trains on the sales process; leadership defines it. It does not set sales strategy or process, own compliance training, or manage individual performance.

What success looks like in year one

By the end of your first year, we expect first iterations of each program to be in place and improving based on feedback. We don't expect them to be finished or perfect; we expect a solid foundation we can build on together. Programs will be built in this order: onboarding first, then training for new initiatives, then internal sales learning paths, then External Sales.

• A first version of a milestone-based onboarding program, used with new hire cohorts.
• A standard training template, used for new initiatives and launches.
• First versions of learning paths for SSAs and internal sales, with External Sales to follow.
• A draft competency framework and first promotion-eligibility assessments, built with sales leadership and HR.
• An evaluation of Digital Chalk, with a recommendation to keep it or move to a different platform, backed by a business case.
• Early measures of new hire readiness and assessment results, with a plan to improve them.

What we're looking for

Required

• 5+ years of experience, or equivalent, building new training programs in learning and development, instructional design, or sales training, including experience supporting a sales or client-facing team.
• Experience turning subject-matter expert knowledge into training programs end to end, using a recognized design approach such as ADDIE or SAM.
• Experience building competency frameworks, assessments, and scoring rubrics.
• Experience measuring training effectiveness beyond completion rates.
• Strong command of blended learning, including when each format works best.
• Confident, engaging facilitation, both in person and virtually.
• Skill at interviewing experts and turning what they know into clear, structured learning.

Preferred

• RIA, wealth management, or financial services experience.
• Experience selecting or implementing an LMS and using authoring tools.
• Experience supporting career ladders or promotion processes.
• A professional L&D credential, such as ATD's CPTD.