Why Your Best Sales Person May Be Your Worst Sales Manager

I’ve seen this movie so many times before that I know every scene by heart.

The company is badly in need of a vice-president of sales.

The CEO takes notice of her top sales rep who hustles, talks a great game and outperforms the rest of the team. The rep expresses an interest in the vice-president role. Thinking the rep can spread the magic to the rest of the salesforce, the CEO names him to the top job.

Within weeks, rumors of discontent from the sales team spread throughout the organization. Performance declines. A couple of well-established reps quit to join a competitor.

SOURCE: FREEPIX

In an attempt to show strong leadership, the newly appointed vice-president restructures the group and comes up with a new strategy. The situation worsens. The vice-president begins blaming others and micromanaging the team.

By now, everyone knows the promotion was a mistake. The CEO has no alternative but to fire the vice-president or pray that he leaves for another job.

The end result: the organization loses what had been its best sales rep and now must find a new vice-president of sales to turn around an underperforming and demoralized team.

Obviously, I’m painting with a broad brush here. Some top-performing sales people transition into great sales managers.

Unfortunately, many do not.

There is academic research which confirms my experiences as an executive recruiter and entrepreneur.

In a study of 214 companies, researchers from Yale, MIT and the University of Minnesota found that companies promoted sales people who doubled their sales much more frequently than their lesser-performing sales colleagues.

However, the sales stars who were promoted to lead teams saw their team sales drop by 7.5% on average, while managers who were promoted despite lesser individual achievement improved the performance of their teams.

Ah, the irony.

The researchers concluded that the skills and motivations required to be a top sales person vary significantly from those required to be a top-performing sales manager. And I couldn’t agree more.

Consider your top sales rep. In all likelihood, the person sets ambitious individual goals, maintains a high activity level and takes pleasure in competing with and outperforming colleagues. The rep likely thrives on personal accountability, incentive compensation and immediate feedback.

Now consider a top-performing vice-president of sales.

Rather than relishing competition with colleagues, the person probably works hard to support and encourage others, sets goals and enforces standards, derives satisfaction from the team’s performance and focuses on the group’s long-term results.

In short, success in sales is about the individual while success in sales management is about the team.

If a person’s primary driver is individual accomplishment, it may be hard to step back and let someone else win the big sale and take all the praise (and commission).

While it’s understandable to think that a top-performer in any given area has the ability to coach others to similarly high levels of performance, it rarely occurs.

Think about sports.

Almost all the great coaches or managers in major American sports had undistinguished playing careers.  Hitting a 100-mile-per-hour fastball is a vastly different skill than getting the best performance out of 25 players with diverse talents and personalities.

Similarly, managing a group of sales reps is completely different from closing on a deal with a major customer who is being wooed by two of your fiercest competitors.

If you’re thinking about appointing a sales rep to a sales management position, make sure you appreciate the different competencies required for selling in the field versus running a department from a corner office.

An effective sales leader must:

• Create a positive climate, characterized by a clear purpose, well-understood standards, team spirit and rewards for strong performance.
• Build incentives and motivators for the entire team to encourage salespeople to coach and support each other and achieve team goals.
• Work with top salespeople to prioritize efforts and maximize big accounts, while coaching less experienced salespeople to improve their skills and grow their client base.
• Provide input and work with other department heads on a wide range of issues involving marketing, product development and commission plans.

The transition from salesperson to sales manager can be dramatic. And painful.

The day-to-day work, the objectives and the required skills and competencies differ completely.

To facilitate the transition, you’ll want to provide training and development for any skill/competency gaps, appoint a mentor or mentorship group consisting of former sales managers, and provide thoughtful and frequent feedback… particularly in the new vice-president’s first year in the role.

If you choose your next vice-president of Sales carefully and provide a great deal of support, your movie just might have a happy ending.