You’re a great salesperson, you know it and you enjoy it. Regularly exceeding targets and you have been for what seems like forever. Maybe it feels a little too easy or even boring.
Time for you to step up to management? Be careful what you wish for.
At the moment you are responsible for your own performance, not your colleagues, not the overall team, yours, furthermore, if you ever find yourself struggling you’ve got your manager to call on for help.
A good manager will shield you from all the crap that they may be getting from above. Their role is to clear the path to make sales as easy as possible for the sales team, keeping you motivated and focused enough to smash targets, often creating the atmosphere you enjoy.
If sales managers are very lucky they will have hierarchy that fully understand about the importance of a good sales culture and clears the way for them but far far too often this isn’t the case. Sales management can often feel as though you are continually locking horns with the leadership: Budgets, resources, commissions, staffing levels, targets, defending individual salespeople when it’s needed, taking it on the chin for the team if they under-perform while giving the team all the credit when they over-perform. The list goes on…
Oh, and then there is the 9-5 day job, the bits you see. Managing and motivating “the good the bad and the ugly” of the sales team to continuously perform, day in, day out, month in month out.
Do you really want the sleepless nights?
Don’t get me wrong, I love management especially SALES management and if you are good at it it is hugely rewarding (not always financially as often good salespeople earn considerably more than their managers) but, if you work for a great sales manager the role is nothing like as easy as he/she is making it appear.
We’ve helped a lot of salespeople make the transition into management but even with great training it’s worth understanding just how different the roles are.
Good luck if you decide to take the plunge.
