If you’re in sales or sales management, I’m sure you’ve noticed that all of the sudden the internet is crawling with social community sites designed for you to interact with your peers.  It seems that I get one or two invitations every week to join a new group.

Naturally, at some point, there will be a washout of some these sites as there are only so many salespeople and managers and if they are really working, they can’t participate in them all.

Some sites are older and established such as Sales Practice.  Some are more specialized such as Start Up Nation and Account Maven.  Some are geared toward salespeople, some toward management.

Here are 5 new or relatively new communities that you should consider joining—or at least take a serious look at:

Sales Gravy:  Jeb Blount founded Sales Gravy as an interactive community for salespeople and managers and the site is growing steadily, as are the site’s features.  Naturally, there is a forum for discussion and each member can post blog entries of articles he or she has written.  In addition, the site includes a job board, articles written by a group of sales trainers and consultants, several specialized blogs written by well known trainers, a number of training videos and podcasts, and a bookstore of recommended books.

Sales HQ:  A site sponsored by Monster.  SalesHQ is one of the youngest sites mentioned here but is growing rapidly.  Although the number of sales articles is smaller than some of the other new sites, the quality is high and there are a number of articles dealing with areas that are not typically covered by other sales communities such as etiquette and business attire.  The forum although new is fairly active.  It also seems the site draws a younger group of members.

Sales Management 2.0:  A more specialized site geared toward management as the name implies, although many members are not managers.  This is the smallest of the 5 sites as one would expect with its more narrow focus.  If you’re in sales management, this is a site worth looking at and in particular, worth participating in as it is one of the few sites designed to address your particular issues and as the site grows, you’ll have the opportunity to interact with more and more other managers dealing with your issues.

The Customer Collective:  The newest of the sites and another site geared toward sales and marketing executives.  The Customer Collective has partnered with Business Week and CNET.  Currently the site is primarily geared toward blog posts from a group of top trainers and consultants from both sales and marketing.  The sales and marketing combination sets it apart from most other communities that tend to focus on one area or the other.  Of course, members have the opportunity to promote themselves and their business, connect with other members and share their strategies and ideas.

Account Maven:  The only by invitation only site listed here.  Account Maven is designed specifically for business-to-business salespeople to share information about accounts.  Salespeople can interact anonymously with the purpose of sharing account information to help one another crack and sell targeted accounts.  You enter general data about your accounts and you are then matched to other salespeople working the same type of accounts.  You can then share information offline to help one another approach new accounts.  Although membership is by invitation only, you don’t have to wait to be invited by someone.  Account Maven has a form on the front page you can fill out and if you match their criteria, they’ll send you an invitation to join.

Do you know of other really good new communities that should be added to this list?  If so, let me know in the comments section below.