Why Your Best Salesperson Makes a Terrible Manager
It is the last Thursday of the quarter, and your team is short of target. One of your people has a deal that would close the gap. It is stuck on a pricing question.
You have closed a hundred deals like it. You know exactly what the buyer needs to hear. You pick up the phone and take over. Forty minutes later, the deal is signed and the team hits its number.
It feels like the best day of your new job. It is also the day your team member learned that when things get hard, the manager takes the deal.
You did what made you a great salesperson. That is the problem.
None of this is a flaw in you. It is what happens when someone gets a promotion without getting a new job description. Companies do it on purpose and they call it a reward.
Why do companies promote their best salesperson into management?
Because results are easy to see and managing ability is not. A sales number sits on a leaderboard. How well someone develops other people shows up slowly, in other people's results, and nobody measures it before the promotion.
Economists Alan Benson, Danielle Li and Kelly Shue studied sales workers and put the finding plainly: the best worker is not always the best candidate for manager. They found that firms lean on current performance when deciding who to promote, even though other traits predict better who will manage well. Outstanding sales results made a promotion more likely. They were a weaker guide to who would do the job well than other things the firms could see. The authors also estimated that the cost of promoting people with less managerial potential is high.
A promotion works as a thank you. It works much less well as a hiring decision. Most companies treat it as both.
Which sales habits work against a new manager?
Three habits that made you good at selling will now cost you.
Taking over. In sales, you win by being the person in the room who can get it done. As a manager, every time you take over, one more person learns that the hard part belongs to you.
Moving fast. Salespeople are paid to compress time. Answer the objection and close today. Developing someone is slow. A conversation about a lost deal takes an hour and pays off over months, which feels like waste when the quarter ends on Friday.
Scoring alone. Your old number had your name on it. Your new number has everyone else's name on it. You can have a brilliant week and your result can still look flat, because the work that counted happened on someone else's calls.
None of these habits is bad. They are aimed at the wrong target.
Many years ago, we promoted an exceptionally high-performing Sales Agent on my team into a management role. He consistently achieved sales targets well above budget, was highly regarded by clients and was well liked by his colleagues. On paper, he was an obvious choice for promotion.
However, once he became responsible for managing a team of salespeople, his approach changed. He began micromanaging other high performers, insisted on being involved in most sales calls and frequently stepped in to close deals himself, often without giving his team members the opportunity to find their own solutions.
The team's sales numbers remained strong, but something else was happening. Morale was low. The salespeople felt they had little room to demonstrate their own capabilities or take ownership of their results. Their manager had become the star of the team, rather than the person helping others become stars.
Why does nobody tell the new manager the job has changed?
Because everyone is pleased. The promotion is a celebration. The new manager gets a title and a team and is told to keep up the great work. Nobody adds, "You will be worse at this for a while and that is normal."
So the first months feel like a quiet failure. Last quarter you were first on the board. Now you are a beginner, in public, managing people who used to be your peers.
Most people handle that feeling the same way. They go back to what they are good at. They take the call. They rewrite the proposal. They tell themselves they are helping.
It is not laziness. It is relief. The old job is the one place the new manager still feels competent.
What should a company ask before it promotes its best seller?
Ask one small question. Has this person ever made someone else better? Not helped out. Made better, in a way you could point to. If you cannot name a time, the promotion is a bet and you should know it is a bet.
If you go ahead, change the scorecard on day one. Most companies tell a new manager what to start. Few say what to stop. Name the parts of the old job the person no longer does and put a date on it. Agree what the first ninety days should look like and how you will tell whether they are working.
A new manager who has been told what to stop, stops sooner.
How can a new manager tell if they are still selling?
Look at whose name is on the result. If the win has your name on it, you are still selling. If your team member can tell you how they won it, you are managing.
The next time you feel the pull to jump in, ask the person what they would try first. Then wait for the whole answer. It will feel slow. Sometimes the answer will be wrong and that is useful too, because now you have something to talk about.
The deal that closed on Thursday was good for the quarter. Your team member watched you close it and learned that you are good at closing. Next quarter another deal gets stuck. The question is who picks up the phone.
Key Takeaways
- Count the deals and decisions you took over this week. Next to each one, write down who you took it from.
- Ask your own manager what you are no longer expected to do. If nobody has told you, ask this week.
- Sit in on one call without speaking. Afterwards, ask the person what they would do differently and say nothing about what you would have done.
- If you are the one promoting someone, name a time the candidate made another person better. If you cannot, find one before you decide.
- Choose one measure that shows your team is getting better, not only winning. Look at it every month.
Related: the From Doer to Leader course.