Promoting a Sales Representative to Sales Leadership – Good or Bad idea?

Promoting a Sales Representative to Sales Leadership – Good or Bad idea?

Time and again, organizations promote their top salespeople to sales-leadership roles. As is often the case, the superstar sales rep becomes a mediocre sales manager, resulting in a wash or net negative ROI for the company. I’m guilty of it myself: rewarding hardworking reps that consistently performed only to find out that I did them and the company a disservice by promoting them. Those responsible for advocating on behalf of the newly promoted sales manager tend to spend an inordinate amount of time developing, supporting, and intervening to provide proof that the right decision to promote was made and to get the sales manager on the right path. In many instances, that support doesn’t even exist because the assumption is the superstar rep should by default be a superstar manager by passing on the best practices that worked in the previous role and creating multipliers with direct reports. That approach sets up the employee for failure and is irresponsible.

However, there’s a better way to promote sales reps to managers, increasing the chances that the decision was the right decision, and one that will pay dividends down the road. Just because a rep is crushing goals, doesn’t mean they are slated for promotion to manager. Think about it: does it make sense to take your top producing rep out of the field?

Instead, the price for admission into management should be consistent sales performance, where the rep meets or exceeds goals for a minimum amount of time that accounts for anomalies like seasonality. The next criteria should be reps who follow process, and, after implementing for a reasonable period, offer actionable improvement recommendations. That cohort of reps can be further screened to have positive mental attitudes, leadership capabilities as demonstrated when they are in groups during sales meetings, supportive tendencies towards coworkers, and to be people who follow company marching orders as well as sincerely believe in the mission. Generally, these characteristics, alongside the hard-working proof of sales performance, add up to the best management candidates.