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Focus on leadership: The challenges of moving up the sales leadership ladder – part one ‘Moving from Managing Self to Managing Others’

The word ‘Leadership’ is a catch-all title that is used to talk about the various skills used in motivating people and achieving results. However it is clear that leading a small sales team takes a completely different set of skills to being a sales director. For example, in both cases communication is key, but a sales team manager can rely on his or her ability to communicate one to one, or in small groups, whereas a sales director has to develop ways of communicating on a much larger scale to everyone in the whole sales function – he has to make sure communication works across the piece, including when he is not directly involved.

Ram Charan has brought out a book called The Leadership Pipeline – How to build the leadership powered company. This is one of the best books we’ve come across in describing how the challenges of the leadership role change as you move up the ranks. We believe it has a great deal of relevance to sales leadership

In this article we will concentrate on the first step into sales management Passage One: Moving from Managing Self to Managing Others

Ram Charan says: ‘New, young employees usually spend their first few years with an organisation as individual contributors. Whether they're in sales, accounting, engineering, or marketing, their skill requirements are primarily technical or professional. They contribute by doing the assigned work within given time frames and in ways that meet objectives. By sharpening and broadening their individual skills, they make increased contributions and are then considered "promotable" by organisations……..When people become skilled individual contributors who produce good results-especially when they demonstrate an ability to collaborate with others-they usually receive additional responsibilities. When they demonstrate an ability to handle these responsibilities and adhere to the company's values, they are often promoted to first-line manager.

When this happens, they are at ‘Passage One’. Though this might seem like an easy, natural leadership passage, it's often one where people trip. The highest-performing people, especially, are reluctant to change; they want to keep doing the activities that made them successful. As a result, people make the job transition from individual contributor to manager without making a behavioural or value-based transition. In effect, they become managers without accepting the requirements…. First-time managers need to learn how to reallocate their time so that they not only complete their assigned work but also help others perform effectively. They cannot allocate all of their time to putting out fires, seizing opportunities, and handling tasks themselves. They must shift from "doing" work to getting work done through others……the pressure to spend less time on individual work and more time on managing will increase at each passage, and if people don't start making changes in how they allocate their time from the beginning, they're bound to become liabilities as they move up. It's a major reason why pipelines clog and leaders fail.

The most difficult change for managers to make at Passage One, however, involves values. Specifically, they need to learn to value managerial work rather than just tolerate it. They must believe that making time for others, planning, coaching, and the like are necessary tasks and are their responsibility. More than that, they must view this ‘other-directed’ work as mission-critical to their success. ……… While changes in skills and time applications can be seen and measured, changes in values are more difficult to assess. Someone may appear as though he's making the changes demanded by this leadership turn but in fact be adhering to individual-contributor values. Value changes will only take place if upper management reinforces the need to shift beliefs and if people find they're successful at their new jobs after a value shift.'

Orbit comment: We believe this is very relevant to many individuals making the transition from sales person to sales manager. Many sales people are promoted simply because of their individual sales performance, and often given very little training to make this transition. They are really expected to sink or swim. As well as the individual heart-ache this creates, it also is very disruptive and de-motivating to the sales people below them

Being a good sales person by no means guarantees that you will be a good manager.

Young managers can often:

• Use inappropriate role models – with no training, managers can often unconsciously take on styles from figures of authority from their past, especially in stressful situations.
• Try and clone themselves. ‘I’ve been successful working in this way, so should you’. By telling their staff what to do and dictating that it is ‘my way or the highway’, new managers can often stifle creativity.
• Get irritated with low performers and have no means of coaching them out of their situation. The manager is sure he could do better than the sales person and is quick to make that clear. This can create a downward spiral made worse by lack of confidence on both sides.
• Be tempted to just take over the opportunity, and fire fight – this may achieve the sales result in the end but does little to develop the sales person involved
• Gain very little satisfaction from other people’s success, take credit for things their team have accomplished – try and retain their role as the ‘sales star’

Its easy to see that this is not a formula for success! On the other hand, if sales managers are able to achieve this transition and support their teams fully, it can be an immensely satisfying role and will have a major effect on sales team productivity and morale.

All of this really underlines the importance of support to first line managers – because as Ram Charan says, if people don’t make this values shift at this they're bound to become liabilities as they move up the ladder.

• What kind of skills do they need to make a success of their role? Having sales skills forms a good foundation but they also need to skills to pass on these skills to others
• What attitudes and mind-sets do they need? (the values and behavioural shift that Ram Charan talked about)
• Final what support structures do they need? This might include good sales management information, good appraisal structures. We suggest it should also include regular one-to-ones with their own manager to assist them in making the required transition.

We will talk about the focus of their manager in our next edition…

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