The #1 Risk of Premature Sales Promotions

Risk of Premature Sales Promotions
The temptation as a sales leader or sales manager is strong. You have a top solution seller on your sales team. Your vision is to have your “A player” take on the management and development of the sales team to reward them and to allow you to focus more on sales strategy, major accounts, and creating more predictable and visible long-term revenue growth.

You can just imagine how sales results could soar as your average performers follow the best practices of their new sales manager and go on to break all previous sales records.

But stop dreaming – it is not going to happen if you promote without thoughtful consideration and preparation. And if you promote for the wrong reasons, you increase the risk of losing your top solution seller AND decreasing the performance of your entire sales team. The whole growth curve could collapse.

Here’s the Problem
Premature sales promotions hurt everyone.  Typically, top sales performers are great at selling complex solutions. They know how to identify and attract target customers and rigorously qualify the most promising leads. They know how to make positive initial contact and establish a trusted advisor relationship. They know how to diagnose a customer’s most pressing problems accurately and provide a creative, unique and value-added solution to help. And they know how to effectively negotiate with buyers and close big deals. In short, they are expert at solution selling, not necessarily at leading, managing, and coaching a sales team.

Typically top sales performers are used to working independently and toward their own sales goals within areas that are under their control and influence. They typically follow a proven sales process and methodology that works for them, but, similar to Michael Jordan being a great player and a bad coach, many are ineffective at passing that process along to others. They may have been part of a winning sales team but never had to sort out sales territories, craft sales compensation plans, or manage team conflict. And they have never had to coach and manage the sales performance of others.

This is not to say that high performing salespeople cannot become high performing sales managers. It just means that you have to assess sales leadership capabilities, pick your candidate for sales manager carefully, provide them with the proven sales management training they will need to lead, manage, and coach other and transition them slowly into the new position.

The Good News
The good news is that much of what your top performer may not yet know how to do can be learned and reinforced. Choose the salesperson with the right attitudes in place to build and manage a team well. This person should be willing to learn how to read people, communicate clearly, trust and be trusted, coach and guide others, and establish clear and achievable standards and goals that the team can adopt.

The Bottom Line
Premature sales promotions cause nothing but problems.  Any investment in developing your sales manager will be well spent. When you have a top performing team, led by a sales manager who has “been there and done that” and who has the sales leadership skills required to lead a sales team effectively, you may well reach those sales revenues you dreamed about.

To learn more about high performing sales leaders, download How to Optimize Your Sales Force in the Face of Increased Performance Pressure