Considering Sales Leadership? These Are 3 Hard Truths You Need to Accept

Paul Petrone

Marketing @ LinkedIn

August 8, 2023

Considering Sales Leadership? These Are 3 Hard Truths You Need to Accept

I think anyone who has ever been successful in sales has asked themselves this question:

Should I move into management?

There are benefits. You can scale your impact. You can share all you’ve learned. And you can potentially make more money.

But will it improve your life? Are you actually going to enjoy managing others, versus selling yourself?

It’s a tough question. To help answer it, we turned to legendary sales coach Lisa McLeod via her LinkedIn Learning course, Transitioning to Management for Salespeople.

What’s her prognosis?

If you want to move into sales leadership, there are some hard truths you need to accept, McLeod said. And changes you must be willing to make in response to those hard truths.

They are:

1. Most of the people you manage will be worse sellers than you were (at least at first).

To become a sales manager, you must first become a top-performing seller (if you aren't already). That's because very few companies will promote someone into sales management unless they are performing highly in their existing role.

But here’s the thing – by very definition, if you are a top-performing seller, most of the sellers you’ll move on to manage will be performing worse than you were. For many new sales managers, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

“One of the hardest lessons to learn is there are a lot of differences in skills,” McLeod said. “You were promoted because you're good. Maybe you're even great and your expectations are probably very high. This is a good thing, but you need to recognize not everyone is going to have your same level of performance.”

It can be frustrating to see someone struggle at something you were good at. But that’s exactly your job as a sales manager – help the people who are struggling improve.

How to adapt: It starts by recognizing that you weren’t always a great seller yourself. You likely struggled at one point too, and needed some grace and wisdom from one of your managers along the way.

When you are helping struggling sellers, your approach can’t be to always tell them exactly what to do. That isn’t scalable for you and, more importantly, severely limits that salesperson’s growth.

The solution – learn how to coach, McLeod said. By effectively coaching your reps, you create an environment where they own their own growth (FYI – here’s a course that’ll help teach you how to coach).

Bottom line, don’t get frustrated because someone can’t do what you can do, and don’t think the way to solve it is to make them do exactly what you would. Instead, let them grow through their struggles, and develop around their own style and strengths.

2. The job is less about motivation and enthusiasm, and more about steadiness and understanding.

In the movies, leadership is almost always defined by inspiration. The halftime speech by the grizzled coach that motivates the team to come back and win the game. The politician's speech inspiring her people to endure through some hardship. On and on.

The reality is far from that. Being inspirational is a nice bonus, but that can exhaust and frustrate your sales team if overdone.

And it's only a small part of the job.

How to adapt: Yes, as a sales manager, you should be realistically optimistic. But being consistent is even more important.

“I want you to think about some of your best bosses,” McLeod said. “They're excited, yes. They're also even-tempered and levelheaded. So your job as a leader is part pep rally, but it actually goes beyond that. Because your team is going to look to you as a calming force, as someone who knows how to handle challenges.”

There are highs and lows in any sales cycle, and lessons learned along the way. The best sales managers stay consistent and help their sellers glean those lessons, so they continue to improve.

Think less halftime speech. And more creating an environment that drives focus and continuous growth.

3. Sales managers have to do a lot more of the work many sellers hate.

How do you feel about doing admin work? Keeping Salesforce updated? Giving status reports to your manager?

Don’t like it? Well, imagine doing a lot more of that, plus a million other admin tasks you don’t do now. Like hiring, writing reviews, planning offsites, and on and on.

Salesperson is, if nothing else, an adrenaline-fueled job, with the highs-and-lows of going on sales calls and all of that. Sales manager is as well, although there’s a lot more admin work and a lot less being in the field.

If you don't understand and accept that, you'll quickly become miserable in the role.

How to adapt: This can sound de-motivating. But the truth is, a sales manager is a different job than a salesperson. And just like you had to accept some things you didn't like when you became a salesperson, you’ll have to accept some things you don't like when you become a sales manager.

“When you started your sales career, there were probably some aspects of the job that you didn't absolutely love,” McLeod said. Same if you move into sales management.

To counter that, focus on the benefit of being a sales manager. Specifically, “the opportunity to create a killer sales team... (where you can) add more value to a larger group of customers,” McLeod said.

So, find someone who does this admin work well and learn from them. Figure out a way to make it as painless as possible.

But don't lose sight of why you wanted to move into management in the first place.

Takeaway: Moving into sales management is an adjustment. To be successful at it, you must accept that.

When you first started in sales, you probably weren’t great. You likely made mistakes, had to learn tough lessons, and had a few (okay, many) painful nights.

It’s going to be the same when you move into sales management. It’s a very different job, and it’ll take awhile to get as good at it as you are, right now, as a seller.

That said, while there are adjustments you'll need to make and new skills you'll need to master, there are many skills you've built in your sales career that will benefit you as a sales manager. They include:

All of your sales knowledge and experience.
Resilience.
Grit.
Communication.
Focus.
Compassion.

And many more.

So, know you aren’t starting from scratch. You absolutely, positively can make the jump. Many have.

It comes down to if you want to and are willing to take on the challenge. If so, go forth, and go forth boldly. If not, that’s totally okay too; keep crushing that quota.

Considering Sales Leadership? These Are 3 Hard Truths You Need to Accept

1. Most of the people you manage will be worse sellers than you were (at least at first).

2. The job is less about motivation and enthusiasm, and more about steadiness and understanding.

3. Sales managers have to do a lot more of the work many sellers hate.

Takeaway: Moving into sales management is an adjustment. To be successful at it, you must accept that.

Sales is about building the right relationships.