Every firm has their sales rockstars, even firms with marginal products or services. Pareto’s Principle is proving itself yet again… except in this scenario, it’s only a fantasy of a company’s senior management that 20 percent of their sales staff would be sales rockstars. The actual ratio of these rare individuals is likely south of five percent of the company’s sales staff. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, it becomes apparent to all involved how critical these special sellers are to the success of the company. After witnessing the consistent big wins of the rockstar’s selling, the natural reaction by senior management is to promote the rockstar into a management role. That way, the rockstar can share their selling genius with their team and deliver even bigger numbers. It’s a brilliant strategy –high-fives to everyone! 

At least until the reality of taking a superior salesperson and making them a sales manager hits senior management squarely in the face. They’ve now condemned a vital revenue contributor to being mired in the muck of managing people. It’s as if the executives making these decisions forget what their jobs are like. If they’d reflect on how much of their week is spent piddling around with administrative tasks and the stupid stuff people do at work, they’d never make this move.

Player-Coach

In a stroke of brilliance, other companies may promote their top sellers into player-coach roles as their first dip into the management pool. It seems that this awesome strategy is hatched as a hedge against missing the top seller’s revenue. Somehow, our rockstar is going to find time to do their current job, as well as managing and mentoring two to three other people. Here’s the spoiler of how well this works: It doesn’t. 

The common title given to these player-coach roles is ‘Team Lead.’ One reason why great sellers are so successful is that they run their territory like it’s their own business. The revenue goal they’re trying to achieve is high, and it’s going to be hard to find that success. There’s a sense of urgency every day that progress must be made. Operating at this high level leaves practically no spare time in their schedules. 

The people reporting to the team lead could certainly benefit from learning the super seller’s stories sale,s strategies and tactics, but this takes time and a plan. The plan turns out to be an  every man for himself approach to making goals. Even if the super seller wanted to spend time with their team, they now have to parse off some of their personal allotment to approve their team’s expenses and other human-resource-related stuff.

In Defense of Senior Management

Sometimes the rockstar seller wants to move into a management role. Sometimes it’s for the right reasons, sometimes it’s not. The right reason might be that a person genuinely feels a passion for helping others. The wrong reason is when a salesperson feels a self-imposed pressure to make a career move. 

There’s nothing wrong with moving up in an organization, or not. I personally wrestled with this decision for years. At age 35, I often wondered if selling was what I’d be doing at 50. 

There was the social pressure of seeing my good personal friends and friends at clients get promoted. This question of promotion and what to do about it really weighed on me for many years. Here’s the great news: It’s okay to be a sales guy at 50! The even better news? The ridiculous pressures we put on ourselves start to subside as we finally learn what’s important in life. I used to think it was just me, but many of my peers have shared similar stories.

The Secret Potion to Make Great Sales Managers

The headline is just a teaser — there is no secret potion. Superstar managers are like superstar school teachers. They love teaching. When you’re talking about a school teacher, you can tell she’s a superstar because her students love her class. She makes tough subjects understandable to her students, .there’s no class favorite, everyone is held accountable. You’ll find that most of the students, even the typical underperformers, raise their game. You can see and feel the difference when you walk into the classroom.

A top manager understands the challenges for his team members to meet their individual goals. He shields them from certain corporate time-wasting activities and noise. He holds everyone accountable and to a high standard. He replaces team members who show no willingness to improve or who consistently underperform. He fosters a sense of belonging, almost like a family. Because of this, team members willingly share and collaborate on what’s working for them and what is not working. Perhaps most importantly, top managers root out negativity. When left unchecked, negativity can spread like a deadly virus through a team and kills any chance of the players making their goals.

Helping Managers Succeed

Whether you have a rockstar, superstar, or top-gun salesperson desiring to move into sales management or a non-sales candidate, proper education is key to their success. So many companies make the assumption that people will figure out how to be managers on their own. 

Yes, some will figure it out, but many will not. 

But we’re not just talking about an individual salesperson who is allowed to stay at the company even though they’ve never hit their goal. We’re talking about a person who could be negatively influencing up to eight other people. This could be disastrous to the company and impact its ability to achieve its overall goal. It can be equally disastrous on all the people reporting to a poor manager, too.

Reality Check

In the furious-paced world of sales, being strategic goes out the window by the second month of the year. That strategy had included the education of all managers, but there’s no time now. Sales are slow, and the quarter is rapidly coming to a close. Crack the whip and do whatever you have to do to close business. If we miss our numbers, Wall Street will crush our stock.

This is what it’s like at most publicly traded companies within the sales organization. Most firms recognize they should invest in management education, but the demand to deliver eclipses any education plan. Tight budgets and relentless growth targets drop education to the bottom of most companies’ strategic plans. It’s one of the reasons so many organizations are littered with underperforming salespeople and equally poor managers.

Mentoring – The Greatest Management Skill

Learning from a rockstar seller can change the trajectory of all the other sellers in their sphere of influence. But like anything else in life, the receiver of the information must be looking for it. The best sales education I got in my career was during annual sales kickoff events. Listening to my peers discuss deals they closed the previous year and asking questions during organized events provided me immeasurable help. Informal conversations, often at the bar, proved to be even more valuable to morphing my sales strategy and tactics.  

Sales managers can create a similar atmosphere of story-sharing throughout the year. The important function for the manager is to seek out the stories of success that reside throughout the organization and get them to the team. Don’t assume your senior guys don’t need constant mentoring, too. 

Some well-intended firms see the success of their rockstars and want all their other salespeople to do the same things and sell the same way. Newsflash: it doesn’t work that way. Salespeople just need to know the stories, strategies, and tactics of superstar sellers. Each seller’s sales approach is different, and that’s perfectly fine. A salesperson who is hungry to learn and who desires to continually evolve and raise their game will thrive in this environment.