It is common for some companies to promote the best salesperson to manager, which in many cases can lead to chaos and destruction of value. The reasons below.
I will tell you the story of Pedro and Arturo. Pedro had never worked in sales when Arturo hired him and in a short time he became the best salesman in the company. The company was undergoing a process of expansion and Arturo frequently asked himself questions such as: Where is so-and-so? What happened to this or that account? How much do you think we will sell next quarter? Does such a person work or not?
With 6 salespeople in two different cities and more expansion activities on the horizon, it became clear that Arturo needed someone dedicated full time to sales management. Arturo immediately thought of Pedro, because first, he was the best salesperson in the company and what better example than him was to follow and second, it was a way of recognizing his achievements. What could go wrong with this decision?
Reason 1: unconscious competencies
Many salespeople have innate skills that make them successful without knowing why. They just naturally do their job well. Perhaps they are empathetic and naturally put themselves in the customer's shoes; Maybe they don't have a hard time building relationships with others. Or maybe they have a great need for achievement and are chasing their prospects to closure. All of these people are "unconsciously competent," that is, they are successful in their work but do not know exactly why.
Unfortunately, this is incompatible with one of the great tasks of every sales manager: developing their executives. If a person does not know why she is successful, it will be difficult for her to verbalize it and transmit it to others.
Reason 2: focus shift
A professional sales manager is responsible for getting their sales force to its goals by doing three and only three things: recruiting, developing, and retaining sales talent. When recruiting you choose with whom you are going to achieve the result: who should leave and who should stay.
When developing, he is in charge of initially training his salespeople, going out into the field with them continuously, advising them on how to handle certain business opportunities or clients; and to give coaching and feedback on a specific sales skill: prospecting, presenting, handling objections, effective follow-up, and so on.
When retaining, he is in charge of proposing - in conjunction with the management - the appropriate compensation plan to keep his salespeople incentivized and aligned with the needs of the organization. He is also in charge of establishing metrics and setting challenging goals but at the same time possible, that maximize income for everyone.
Reason 3: new skills
Changing focus requires new skills: analysis, strategic thinking, leadership, communication, active listening, and coaching, among many others. The worst thing that can happen to the "competent unconscious" is to take him to a new playing field where his innate skills will not do him much good. In the vast majority of cases, the new manager is frustrated because as the months go by and not obtaining the results that have been imposed on him, he ends up moving to another company to do what he knows he dominates: sell.
The end of the story
Pedro received his new appointment with emotion. His career was on a meteoric rise: in a short time he was the best salesman in the company and now he was the sales manager. However, things started to get complicated as the months went by. The Human Resources department made hiring that apparently weren't the right ones: the new executives didn't have the profile, because Pedro, no matter how hard he tried to set an example of how to sell, they didn't seem to understand. Some vendors began to rotate, incurring additional hiring expenses and opportunity costs from having unattended territories.
Initially both Arturo and Pedro agreed that he would keep his portfolio, since he had the most important clients, but soon after Pedro was saturated doing both functions, so Arturo forced Pedro to distribute a large part of his portfolio among the other sellers. Even with all these changes the results were not given, Pedro and Arturo began to have problems.
Soon after, Pedro resigned and Arturo accepted his resignation. Their relationship was already untenable. Arturo temporarily took over the responsibility of management and shortly after, Pedro found a job with a competitor doing what he has always done: “sell”.
The moral of this story: "Don't turn your best salesperson into your worst manager."
