Growth Factorials

A few years ago, I worked on a sales productivity pilot with a small sales team of four members and one team leader. The goal was to improve sales productivity by experimenting and iterating the sales process. I encouraged everyone, including the team leader, to make their own sales calls from start to finish so they could learn from their experiences. Surprisingly, the team leader was reluctant. He hadn’t made end-to-end calls for the last few years. He contributed the least to the project’s success. As an individual contributor, he had excelled in the past, but as a team leader, his performance was not great.

This situation is not unusual. The skills needed to be a great sales manager are very different from those required to be a top salesperson. Many organizations overlook this when promoting their best salespeople, leading to reduced productivity for both the individual and the organization. This often results in a stagnant or declining career for many of these individuals.

A common belief among first-line managers is that they no longer need to perform the tasks they did as individual salespeople. They focus on helping their team close deals but do not work on their leads individually, causing their sales skills to deteriorate over time. Many sales managers admit they haven’t made their own sales calls in years. This weakens their ability to lead effectively.

In sales, every step of the process requires high skill levels to move leads forward effectively, not just the final step of closing deals. Effective managers coach their team throughout the entire process, from qualifying leads to closing deals. Poor managers, however, only focus on the final steps. A newly appointed sales manager may focus solely on supporting their team in closing deals, neglect coaching their team throughout the sales process, and ignore their own sales funnel. This is a sure-shot recipe to becoming a low-performing leader of a low-performing team.

This problem needs a structural solution. After experimenting with different configurations, I’ve concluded that building a layer of hybrid sales managers is essential. A hybrid sales manager is a line manager who manages a small team of two while still owning their own individual targets. Managing one person is ineffective, and managing three or more makes it difficult to balance team support and personal goals. With two team members, a manager can spend 50% of their time on personal goals and 50% on coaching their team, ensuring high productivity from day one.

I believe the first managerial layer of a sales team should be of these hybrid sales managers. This setup benefits both the individual and the organization, providing the highest leverage in driving team and organizational performance. Hybrid managers maintain their selling skills, effectively support their team, and deliver high performance individually and as a team, creating a win-win situation.

PS: A 1+2 combination works best for direct sales. For inside sales, a 1+3 or 1+4 combination might be more appropriate, but no more.