When Not to Promote a Top Salesperson to Sales Manager

By Robert Estupinian

I recently had the opportunity to work with a small software business that had a sales team composed of three sales people. Recently the company had just lost their sales manager and they were trying to decide if they should make one of the salespeople the manager or go outside the company in search of a manager. The president of the company was a fellow who not only developed the software, but had marketed and sold it himself. This remarkable gentleman had taken a concept from inception to a viable business. Now his company had grown to such a degree that he was hiring others to do much of the work that he once did. With hiring came the headaches and the frustration that others were not doing things the way he used to do them. His most recent disappointment was the departed sales manager that was not getting the salespeople to produce despite the fact that only a year earlier this manager had been the top salesperson. The president was also upset that the manager’s own personal production had totally evaporated. The president believed that the manager was simply not doing anything and there was no other choice but to fire him.  I was shortly brought in after the departure of the sales manager to assist in locating a new sales manager for this company.

One of the common mistakes made by a lot of employers is to hire a sales manager based on that person’s personal production as a salesperson.  Many organizations make this mistake because the concept makes logical sense. After all who better to motivate, train, and supervise other salespeople than the person who did the work the best?

However, research has shown that in most situations top salespeople are often lousy sales managers. One reason for this result is that being a top producer and managing  a sales team require two different sets of skills.  The fact is that rarely do people posses both in equal amounts. This is not to say that someone who can’t sell can therefore be a sales manager. Rather a good sales manager posses good sales skills, but has superior strengths in being able to train, motivate, hire, promote and lead sales people.

A second reason is that top sales people are often motivated by different things. Many top salespeople are motivated by the hunt and the glory that comes from beating all others. A sales manager should not be in a competitive environment with his salespeople, but rather should be available to provide support and direction.

Third, not everyone who is good at a particular skill is also going to be good at teaching that skill to others.  Let me explain, many years ago I was asked to go skiing with some friends who were really good at the sport. I had never skied before and they naturally offered to teach me. I was assured that once I was on the slopes it was going to be easy because they were so good at it. As you can imagine the day was one frustration after another. Despite their great abilities I could not pick up what they were trying to teach me. So, I hired one of the pros and that allowed me to get more out of the experience as well as keep my friends from killing me.  The point is that the same thing often happens with top sales people. They are good at selling but that does not translate to them being able to coach others on increasing their sales success.  A manager needs to have a lot more skills than just being able to sell they need to be able to motivate, train, hire, and manage the various personalities.

Lastly, it is important for the sales manager to work effectively with the organization and be able to incorporate the overall mission of the company into the sales operation. The last thing that any company needs is a sales manager who believes that it is important to make sales at all costs. The sales manager must be able to work effectively with all the other key departments for the organization to function well.