Why Great Salespeople Make Lousy Sales Managers

It’s been said so many times that (at least I hope) it is a business axiom on the same level as “cash is king.” Promoting your best salesman to sales manager is guaranteed to cost you a great salesman and leave you stuck with a lousy manager. The belief is so widespread that I’m amazed that owners keep doing it, and yet owners keep doing it. Why?

There are several reasons. First, an ambitious salesman (or woman) wants to get ahead. In most organizations, “getting ahead” means promotions and titles. It’s natural, actually inevitable, that they seek recognition as the “lead dog” on the team.

On the owner’s side, he is discussing it not only with a high performer whom he wants to keep happy, but one who can sell. If the salesman is truly gifted, he probably has developed a pretty cogent argument as to why he is the best candidate for the job.

The salesman will argue that he can lead by example. From the owner’s perspective, who could be better to show the other salespeople how to sell than the one who does it best? Even if his message is no more than “watch me” it has to generate some positive effect.

In addition, there are the issues created by promoting someone else, or hiring from the outside. If your top performer is resentful or uncooperative, there could be dramatic consequences.

So the owner makes the move, with the usual stipulations. “Bob, you’ve never been great at paperwork, but you will now be responsible for tracking everyone’s activity. You will be expected to develop plans and procedures, and you have to follow our HR policies when dealing with your direct reports.”

The salesman, knowing that he is a hair’s breadth from closing the deal, of course agrees to everything.

The new sales manager starts off great guns. He has team rallies, and implements a new incentive program to reward high performance. He travels with the other salespeople, showing them how he does it by closing their biggest prospects for them, and upselling their marginal customers on additional lines.

Here is a menu of general variations that may happen next.

1. The manager will tell his people “I’m not worried about reports, only results.”
2. The salespeople will complain that the manager is giving special deals to their customers that they can’t duplicate.
3. The sales manager will start to irritate his management colleagues by showing up late or being unprepared for meetings. (He is always late for his own sales meetings.)
4. Department turnover will increase as salespeople are being chastised by the manager for “making me look bad.”
5. The manager will start ignoring direct reports whose performance is mediocre.

Great salespeople are egocentric, adept empathizers, and skilled improvisers. There is nothing wrong with those traits, but they aren’t core competencies for someone who needs to teach, manage and develop others. Often the owner winds up stuck with the managerial tasks of running the sales department, working around the gaps in the manager’s performance.

That doesn’t alleviate the pressure on an owner to satisfy the top salesperson. Compensation isn’t enough, it has to be recognition of his special status in a way that doesn’t undermine the person he reports to. If you can’t navigate that minefield, you will wind up wasting resources circumnavigating the resulting issues.

A title with limited responsibility, participation in higher-level discussions, special status symbols such as a separate credit card where the employee keeps the points, or an automobile may do the trick. But for heaven’s sake, don’t make him a manager.