One of the most common mistakes in sales organizations is also one of the easiest to understand: a salesperson consistently exceeds quota, becomes one of the top performers on the team, and eventually gets promoted into management.
It seems logical. They know how to sell. They understand the product, customers and sales process. They have proven they can deliver a number. Surely they can teach others to do the same.
Except that managing yourself exceptionally well and managing a team are two completely different jobs.
The skills that make someone a great Account Executive are not necessarily the skills that make someone a great sales manager. In fact, some of the characteristics that made them successful as an AE can become limitations when they move into leadership.
An AE is primarily responsible for their own performance. Their pipeline, their opportunities, their forecast, their customers and their number are largely within their sphere of responsibility. A manager inherits a much bigger and more complicated system. Suddenly, performance depends on multiple people with different personalities, skill levels, motivations, experience and problems.
That’s not simply a bigger version of the same job. It’s a different job.
The Best AE and the Best Manager Are Not the Same Person
Think about what makes a salesperson successful.
They may be highly competitive, extremely driven, self-disciplined and obsessed with hitting their number. They may be excellent at controlling their pipeline, managing their time and pushing deals forward. They may know exactly what works for them and repeat it consistently.
Those qualities can make someone an exceptional AE.
But management requires a different mindset.
A manager has to understand why one salesperson is struggling while another is performing. They need to coach rather than simply tell people what to do. They need to recognise that the approach that worked for them may not work for everyone else. They have to hire, develop people, manage performance, resolve conflicts, forecast accurately and create an environment where an entire team can perform consistently.
Most importantly, they have to stop measuring their own success by what they personally accomplish.
That’s a difficult transition for someone who has spent years being rewarded for exactly the opposite.
The Number vs. the System
The fundamental shift is simple to describe but difficult to make.
As an AE, your question is largely: “How do I hit my number?”
As a manager, the question becomes: “How do I get an entire team to consistently hit theirs?”
That’s a number-versus-system game.
Your own ability to close a large deal doesn’t necessarily help you manage a rep who can’t generate enough pipeline. Your ability to run a great discovery call doesn’t automatically teach you how to coach someone else through theirs. And knowing exactly how you personally succeed doesn’t mean you know how to identify what another salesperson needs to change.
A manager’s job is not to become the team’s best salesperson.
It is to build a system in which other salespeople can become better.
That requires patience, coaching ability, observation, communication, accountability and a willingness to let someone else figure things out instead of stepping in and doing the job for them.
Don’t Make the Promotion the Test
This is where I think companies can do much better.
The best companies, although they are rare, don’t necessarily promote a high-performing AE and then wait to see what happens. They test, train and coach people before giving them the title.
Early in my career, I worked with a VP of Sales who had an interesting habit. Almost every month, he would create a situation where someone on the team was made responsible for handling the team for a week or sometimes several weeks.
At the time, none of us really paid much attention to what he was doing. It just seemed like he was giving different people additional responsibility.
I only understood the thinking behind it when I was leaving the company and we had a casual conversation. He told me that he was deliberately creating these situations to see who could actually handle the responsibility of leading people.
That was his way of testing future managers without prematurely making them managers.
It was a simple idea, but a smart one.
Instead of using the promotion itself as the test, he created opportunities for people to demonstrate whether they were capable of handling leadership responsibilities. He could observe how they dealt with different personalities, whether they could influence others, whether they were willing to listen and whether they could handle responsibility without relying on authority.
That’s very different from saying, “You’re our top AE, so congratulations, you’re now a manager.”
A Wrong Promotion Can Cost More Than a Bad Hire
The consequences of getting this wrong aren’t limited to the person being promoted.
A poor management promotion can disrupt a team that was previously performing well. The manager may struggle to coach the team, high performers may become frustrated, weaker performers may receive inadequate support and the team’s energy can gradually deteriorate.
The impact may not show up immediately either.
A team can continue operating on momentum for a quarter before the cracks start appearing in pipeline quality, forecasting, conversion rates or attainment. By the time the numbers clearly show that something has gone wrong, the impact may already have carried into the following quarter.
That’s why a management promotion shouldn’t be treated as simply a reward for past performance.
The company isn’t only deciding what to give the individual. It is deciding who will influence the performance of an entire team.
Treat Leadership as a Transition, Not a Promotion
There is nothing wrong with giving your best AEs an opportunity to become managers. In many cases, they can become excellent leaders.
But they need to make the transition deliberately.
Give them opportunities to mentor newer reps. Let them run team meetings. Ask them to coach someone through a difficult opportunity. Give them responsibility for a small project or a temporary leadership assignment. Observe how they respond when someone doesn’t follow their advice. See whether they can give feedback without alienating people. Most importantly, see whether they are willing to learn a completely different job.
Because that’s what sales management really is.
A different job.
The best AE in your organization may become your best sales manager. They may also become your worst one. Quota attainment alone won’t tell you which outcome you’re going to get.
The responsibility of a sales leader is to understand that difference before making the promotion.
Don’t wait until someone has the title to find out whether they can lead.
Test the transition. Coach the transition. Prepare for the transition.
Because promoting someone into management isn’t simply recognising what they have already accomplished.
It’s betting on what they can accomplish through other people.