Think Twice Before Promoting Your Best Salesperson - Andris A. Zoltners, PK Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer - Harvard Business Review

Think Twice Before Promoting Your Best Salesperson - Andris A. Zoltners, PK Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer - Harvard Business Review:

Do the best salespeople make the best sales managers? Almost unanimously, when we ask sales leaders this question, the answer is "no." Yet paradoxically, and too often, sales leaders look for candidates among the sales ranks and select the best salesperson for the manager job. They assume that because an individual was successful in sales, that individual will be successful in management too. 

Of course, many great salespeople can and do become great managers. But this is not always the case. Too often, when a super-salesperson gets promoted to manager, one or more of the following happens:

• He (or she) can't let go of his old role. He takes charge of customer relationships and jumps in to close deals, undermining salespeople's motivation and confidence and weakening their relationships with customers.
• He manages by results only. He expects everyone to produce the same results that he got as a salesperson, but isn't good at coaching and giving people constructive feedback on how to get there.
• He avoids administrative responsibilities. He becomes frustrated by the many routine but important tasks that headquarters requires of him.

Before long, the salespeople he manages stop learning and growing. They become disenchanted, disengage from their work, and may even leave the company. Soon, district performance is in jeopardy.

What it takes to succeed in sales is different from what it takes to succeed in management.Salespeople succeed when they meet customer needs while achieving the company's financial goals for their territories. Sales managers also succeed by meeting customer needs and achieving objectives linked to company goals. But the manager is not the hunter, the playmaker, or the center of action. Managers contribute to customer and company success when their team of people is successful.

Managers are coaches, not players; they get satisfaction from achieving objectives through others. When a salesperson gets promoted to manager, it's no longer about "me" — it's about "the team." Managers help people grow by walking around with a watering can in one hand and a bag of fertilizer in the other.

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