Who Do You Pick to Lead Your Sales Team?

Promoting your top-performing salesperson to lead your sales team might seem like a natural transition. The assumption is that they can keep doing what they do best, and mold others to be top producers as well. Jerry Land, packaging sales recruiter, explains why that might not always be the best fit. Here are some reasons why:

• Not everyone who excels at a given task is equipped to teach it. This is especially true in sales. A lot of successful salespeople say it’s just intuitive, and they feel natural selling. Of course, there are some tips and strategies, but sometimes it’s hard for successful individuals to identify them, and convey them to others.
• A sales manager must now be educated about how the sales team fits into the company’s bigger picture. Land explains, “Oftentimes, those involved directly with sales are much more narrowly focused than individuals in management.” This is not something most salespeople have any experience with. They would have to understand how “the nuances of the company would affect each other, both in a pure numbers sense of sales figures as well as aspects of your organization that are not so easily calculated.”
• You’ll be losing your highest-performing salesperson. Of course, the goal that this person’s leadership skills will get the rest of the team performing at the same level. However, even if your sales manager keeps some larger accounts, that person will not be producing at the same capacity. If the individual does not succeed at the task of churning out high-producing salespeople, your department could suffer a big loss.

For more information, see the full article from Industrial Distribution.