Podcast: Download (Duration: 5:29 — 5.9MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
You sure you want to promote your top salesperson?
In our 4th post in the Reality About Leadership Personality series this month, this week we look at those in Sales. Certain personality traits make great sales skills and thus sales people, but those same skills can make an awful sales manager. But, this type of promotion happens all the type in Corporate America and it usually results in the newly promoted Sales Leader being frustrated, producing poor sales results, and quitting, but not before they tick off an entire sales team. Why? The traits that make great sales people perform at their individual best are not readily transferable to managers who will develop a strong sales team. To prevent this from happening in your office, ask the following five questions BEFORE you promote your top salesperson into management and then take a peak at the eBook I created for you. This eBook will help you make a smoother transition for those great in sales whom you want to be great managers of sales teams and it will help them to become better leaders! That is the power of How Entertainers Can Become Better Leaders.
1. Does this person perform better on their own or in a group?
If you answered on their own, teaching them to be part of a team may be tougher than you think.
2. Does this person crave recognition for their own results?
If you answered yes, increase individual rewards for sales managers before taking away their personal rewards for exceeding sales quotas.
3. How skilled is this salesperson at handling details and paperwork?
If your answer is they couldn’t organize their way out of a paper bag with a ruler and compass, consider how much paperwork is involved in management of a team. Performance reviews, documentation, and administrative needs may suffer on the team without giving this person some serious support.
4. Does this person know how to listen to the needs of others?
Often, the Entertainer preference who is great in sales, talks more than listens. Leaders need to listen to the teams they lead. This may be an area to develop before promotion.
5. Can he or she tell you what they do to reach their own sales results?
Motivated by “get appreciated”, a stereotypical Entertainer preference has no idea how they do what they do to meet this appreciation need. Thus, they struggle to teach other sales people how to excel in sales if they don’t know what they did to be good salespeople in the first place. Help them figure it out or leave them to make great results on their own.
Not sure what an Entertainer IS or why you should read the eBook accessible in this post? Entertainer is a descriptive label for those personality traits that are enthusiastic, charismatic, engaging, and when under stress perhaps a bit overly dramatic. The Entertainers, as are all personalities, still able to lead, they just do it differently. If you wish to learn which personality you self-identify with, here’s a quick free online personality quiz that is the tip of the iceberg, but will familiarize you with these and other terms we use when describing leadership personalities.
I’m Monica Wofford and that’s your Monday Moment. Have a great week, an even better Monday, and of course, stay contagious!
