Promoting a Sales Manager From Within

Many businesses promote Sales Managers from within their own salesforce. Quite often, however, it does not work out as they hoped. There are many reasons a new Manager flounders even though they have excelled as a Salesperson.

 

I am a strong believer in promoting from within as often as possible. I worked for an organisation in the US where I joined as an entry-level business developer and worked my way up to management positions. There are many advantages for an organisation of promoting from within: long tenure; fits your business culture; has a strong work ethic; and is someone you trust. From an employee perspective, where advancement/promotion from within is standard practise, they will have higher morale, work harder, and stay with you longer.   But, preparation for their new role is key.  Upskilling should be an integral part of ongoing training.

 

Managing and selling are two distinctly different skill sets. Compare the job descriptions you have for each role - which skills are stressed in each?  As a matter of fact, giving the prospective manager the job description and asking for a self-assessment (SWOT exercise) to help identify areas that need improvement, is a very valuable exercise. Bringing in a trainer to upskill the candidate can pay huge dividends.

 

Very often a new manager does not really understand the role he or she is taking on. They think they are there to make sure everyone toes the line and to check up on them. The only thing they know about the role is the part where their previous manager interacted with them. They do not know all the administration or planning parts of the role. They may have never had to analyse KPIS to see what is going well or poorly. They lack the skill set to nurture and improve performance. Think of sports, often the best players do make effective managers.  However, the players that had to really learn the game just to compete really understand how to make others better.

 

Top performing sales reps often find sales easy because they have a natural ability for the role. They know what works for them and thus don’t have to think about techniques very often. When moving to a management role, it’s important to understand these techniques and be able to break them down for their team. They need to understand that everyone learns differently and be able to communicate in ways each individual team member will benefit from.

 

Remember, if you promote from within and it does not work out, you’ve just lost a top performing salesperson and a valued employee, and now need to fill two roles instead of one. Putting training and mentoring efforts into preparing each employee for the role can make all the difference.