Your company has superstar salesman driving 30% of your sales. He is naturally gifted dealing with people, and has the best closing rate you have ever seen. One morning, he enters your office and demands a promotion and a raise. You don’t want to lose him, so you concede and promote him to a Sales Manager. Over the course of the next few weeks, you realize he is terrible at training subordinates and is now spending his time resolving vacation schedule conflicts, doing one-on-one sessions with his employees and swamped with performance reviews. Your salesman is used to working on his own schedule, taking appointments outside the office and is an excellent talker. But he is disorganized, his desk is a mess and he is not good with paperwork. Six months later, your sales take a dive as there is no one to fill the void and your salespeople become unhappy with the new management.
This is a very common occurrence in small businesses – CEOs take top performers that are strong in one operational area and transition them to a management role where they are untrained and weak. A manager needs to be strong with motivation, coaching, organization, timely approvals, and most importantly, a manager must be very strong at supporting a team rather than focusing on personal achievements. An effective manager is able to set clear expectations for their staff for advancement. This is not to say that this is impossible, but management skills need to be assessed carefully and trained.
In order to drive optimal results, the company must leverage the strengths of their staff and ensure everyone is sitting in the right seats. If you determine that your salesperson is not ready for a manager role, here is how a conversation can pan out: “Listen, you are our top salesperson. I need you out there in the field and driving revenue. At this point, you have not yet quite demonstrated the skills to be an effective manager. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We will raise your salary and provide a bonus / commission structure to increase the upside in your compensation. With this type of performance, you should be able to potentially earn more than any manager in the company. We’ll send some junior salespeople out to shadow you, so you have some experience in coaching and let’s start you on a management training program. This way we can re-evaluate the situation in a few months to determine whether a management position is right for you.”
The transition from personal success to team success is a significant shift in mindset. As a manager, personal achievements are much less important than the success of your subordinates. Companies should offer training for this transition process and not assume that the transition can be seamless. It is also worth considering implementing an HR department to provide administrative support to managers so they are able to focus more on operational tasks.
Don’t allow the need for upward mobility to turn top operational performers into second rate managers.
