Why do many successful salespeople fail to become a successful sales manager?

Answer 1

Stereotypically, good salespeople have excellent people and communication skills. They focus on the relationship. They tend to be less detail oriented and shun paperwork and clerical type duties. A good manager needs to be well rounded with a solid skill set in all areas including administrative duties. A good manager might not be a great salesperson or a great technical person or a great financial person, but they are competent in all areas. A good manager hires an excellent sales person, an excellent financial person, etc. Each of whom are better at their area of expertice than the manager. Even a sales department manager might not be the best salesperson. But they can plan and schedule and think strategically. A great salesperson will have a highly developed "sales" skill set, often acquired at the expense of developing other areas. They may have focused on their strengths, dealing with people, and ignored their weaknesses, such as numbers and math. Many companies make the mistake of promoting the best performer in the department to the position of manager when they should be looking for the best leader, the person who can handle all of the management functions the best. This led to the famous Peter Principle which states that people get promoted to their level of incompetence. In other words, you keep getting promoted because you are doing a good job. When you get to a level where you can no longer do a good job, you stop getting promoted and are left in a position you can't handle. Again, this is a stereotypical view. There are many good sales people or good technical people or good financial people that will work their way up in an organization and become very good managers. It all depends on their training and abilities.