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Every salesperson fancies himself a sales trainer, a sales manager, a sales ‘guru’ of sorts.   I am, I guess, not different in this regard.   Part of this desire is innate; the same skills that lead us to want to enter sales (i.e. wanting to connect, wanting to help) make us want to help other salespeople.   Part of the desire is ego; there are times that salespeople get too little recognition and times when they get too much.  Ego comes in.

Everyone in business should do pure sales for a year or two on the way to their chosen career.   Understanding the perspectives from the front line workers, the customers, and how it feels to engage in company policy  is vital to keeping a humble attitude.  Famously, the engineers of Ford never drove a Japanese car until the late 1980’s.  Once they understood what it felt like to drive a Japanese car, they stopped thinking it was the press that had turned on them and understood that they had to make changes to their own cars.  More front line time could have kept the American industry competitive longer.

Great Salespeople Don’t Always Make Good Managers

One killer mistake that organizations make is take awesome sales people out of their environment and make them into Managers and Trainers. Compensation programs should be designed such that this perverse incentive doesn’t exist. The jobs are radically different.  Being a good salesman has different elements than being a manager.  Success in one is not necessarily success in the other (but in most cases managers should have had some direct sales experience).  Some of the qualities that make a salesperson great are in fact things you DON’T want. 

A maverick personality is great when it’s him in the field, but when he’s trying to lead other people to success, and can’t accommodate different personality types, it hurts the organization by subtracting a good player…and adding a bad manager. 

Drawing out a famous example:  Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan.   PJ was one of those “scrappy” guys.  On the roster for a couple of Knicks championship teams, but was not a star NBA’er–or even a starter.  He had to wring every ounce out of his body; he was severely limited offensively, and hung around the NBA through tenacity on defense.  (Not a small feat.)  By popular logic, then, this guy shouldn’t be a coach.  He was never a superstar, and there were many better players to choose from to become a coach.

By consensus logic, Michael Jordan should have been taken out of the field early on and made into a coach of some sort.  Both ideas are dead wrong.  A superstar salesperson should always be paid better than almost every sales manager.  The skillsets are radically different; a salesperson doesn’t need to have as much administrative acumen, doesn’t need to focus as much on recruiting, doesn’t need to focus as much on

Being a salesperson should be a DESTINATION career–not a waypoint..   Companies should carve paths, complete with ideal compensation and recognition that make that possible.  What makes salespeople chose management roles is the recognition of excellence that the title confers.   There is a lot of need for e  In lieu of that, recognize them in OTHER ways.  I.E.  have them record their strategies on an MP3 (real simple) and play it for new hires.   Set them up as an authority, but also ensure that the company culture keeps people from siphoning off his/her energy.

Recognize performance and customer satisfaction.  Compensate what makes money, long term.  The best salespeople should have much higher compensation than most sales managers.  The Best salespeople are more valuable, and must be treated like that.   Like Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson.  Both were the best at what they did.  Phil’s Job was to ensure that the best player in basketball wasn’t bogged down by the other team.  Michael’s job was to cause chaos on the basketball court and make it impossible to double team anyone else.  And Michael made 30 million a year to Phil’s 3 at the end of his career. 

What did Phil have?  He had MJ’s trust.  MJ trusted Phil to take him out of games when they got rough.  MJ trusted Phil with matchups and gameplan strategy.  He knew when to let Paxson or Kerr hit 3’s, and Phil knew when to slow it down, and call for Michael on an isolation.  He managed the minutes and made sure that MJ was useful as often as possible.  Phil left, went to the Lakers, and turned an underachieving team with Shaq and Kobe into a mini dynasty, and then came back AGAIN to post one of the most successful coaching seasons

MJ then went into management–and despite being one of the “arguably best ever to play the game,” he didn’t have much success with the either the Wizards or Bobcats.  The skill that he had didn’t translate into coaching or management.  

Recognition is needed for salespeople.

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