If you run a company, it’s tempting to turn your highest-performing salespeople into sales team leaders. It makes sense to think the best people at doing sales would also be the best at managing others who do sales. But that’s not actually always true.
There are several reasons why the best salespeople don’t always make the best leaders. We’ll highlight three examples of this below, so keep reading to learn more.
Managers think critically
A recent assessment by Forbes found that managers score higher on assessment of reasoning and critical thinking than frontline salespeople.
These results suggest that a manager’s most important skills differ from those of salespeople who deal with clients on a daily basis. That means you can’t expect high-performing salespeople to become high-performing managers automatically.
Managers connect with people differently
It’s also important to consider the differences between how salespeople communicate with clients and how managers communicate with team members. It’s not exactly a 1:1 comparison.
Salespeople build strong people skills, just like managers. But the communication skills that a salesperson has are built around the goal of getting people to buy a product. A manager, on the other hand, needs to be good at encouraging and motivating salespeople and delivering tough news without demotivating them.
The bottom line is that managers also need different communication skills than frontline salespeople. It’s not a safe assumption that an extremely people-savvy salesperson will be just as good at communicating as a leader in your company.
Managers focus on data
Salespeople commonly make decisions based on gut instinct. They have to because the art of sales is the art of dealing with people and all of the various personalities and motivations they can have.
Managers can’t make decisions based on gut instinct. They have to follow what the data tells them and make decisions that reflect that. This difference shows why salespeople may not always be prepared to make management-level decisions.
What To Do About It?
Now that we’ve shown why salespeople don’t always make the best leaders, you’re probably asking what to do about it. There are two main ways to move forward.
One option is to hire outside talent to come in and manage your sales teams. That can sometimes be effective, but whoever you hire will be no relationships with any of your team members and could end up being a poor fit for your culture.
A better solution is often to help your salespeople develop the skills they need to become great leaders. You can do that by partnering with a company like The Cattalyst, that offers sales training and development designed to turn salespeople into great leaders.
The Cattalyst Can Help!
If you’d like to promote from within and develop the leadership capabilities of your top-performing salespeople, then consider reaching out to the Cattalyst today.
Our training and development coaching can help to increase sales conversions, reduce attrition, and help you retain more of the leaders that you develop. It could be just what you need to start seeing the superior performance that you’ve been looking for.
