Should You Promote Your Best Salespeople to Management?
Jason Jordan, Partner, Vantage Point Performance
One recurring question that I frequently get from sales leaders that I can answer confidently: “Should we promote our best salespeople to become sales managers?”
On the surface, this sounds tricky. Selling and managing are two profoundly different tasks, and success at one is no guarantee of success at the other. Furthermore, you could argue that promoting a great salesperson has a doubly devastating effect on sales performance. First, you’ve just removed one of your best salespeople from the field — almost assuredly to be replaced with a less-capable seller. Second and more troubling, odds are you’ve also just created a mediocre manager.
Do you have another choice?
So how then do I respond with I’m asked the question “Should we promote our best salespeople to become sales managers?” I simply reply “Is there any other choice?”
In reality, you’re never going to promote a bad salesperson into a sales management role. First, to successfully manage and coach salespeople, you must know how to sell successfully yourself. Second, the sellers on that team are likely to reject the idea of being managed and coached by a former peer they don’t really respect. So, promoting anyone other than an exemplary salesperson into a management role is a losing gambit. Only great salespeople will command the attention and respect that they need to do their jobs effectively as sales managers.
How do you make them successful?
So the question of whether to promote great salespeople is not really relevant. You have to do it. The real question is how do you to promote great salespeople and make them successful managers?
We believe the primary reason 75% of sales managers fail to excel in their role is because their companies don’t sufficiently prepare them to succeed. The assumption is if they can do sales, then they should be able to teach sales. Wrong, wrong, wrong. To help new sales managers succeed, we believe new sales managers should be met with an onboarding process, no different than new salespeople in your company might receive.
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