Great Sales People Are Often Poor Sales Managers

It’s a common leap in logic that good sales people will be good sales managers.

After all who better to lead the sales team to superior results than someone who has personally achieved excellent sales? Ideal sales people make ideal sales managers right? Not necessarily.

Here are four distinguishing factors that could make your top sales performer a bad fit for a Sales Manager role.

Impatience – Good sales people often are impatient. This can suit them well when selling. They are always looking for opportunities and want to move the sales process along. However, this trait is a problem for sales managers. Patience is critical because the sales manager needs to nurture the sales team and analyze performance.

Focused on the Sale – Good salespeople focus on a sale. They know the who, what, when, and where, and why of a prospect and their chances of buying. Again this trait serves a sales person well so that they can competently manage accounts and close prospects. However, a sales manager needs to focus on the sales process. Rather than focusing on a particular sale they need a higher level view to focus on the pipeline and how the team is performing as a whole.

Competitive – Superior sales people are competitive. They want to be the best and their performance is often a way of demonstrating a win. Sales manager need to have a coaching mentality. They shouldn’t be looking to glorify their skills but rather help transfer those abilities to the sales team.

Detail Challenged – Good sales people are often detail challenged. They are action people that want to make a sale. Sales managers need to be organized and have a more analytic nature.

It’s critical to analyze the best sales person’s suitability as a sales manager before putting them in that position because making a mistake has a compounded negative effect.

The first negative consequence is that the best sales person is taken off the active group of people selling. If this person can’t or won’t transfer their skills to the rest of the team then sales performance will take a significant hit.

The second negative consequence I that the sales force will struggle without competent leadership to guide performance.

All this is not to say that a good sales person can’t be a good sales manager. It’s just some cautionary traits to look at before automatically putting the best sales person in a management role.