(And the 7 Traits That Actually Matter)
I was working with a software company in Amsterdam three years ago when the CEO pulled me aside with a problem.
"Frank," he said, "we just promoted our top salesperson to sales manager. She crushed her quota every single quarter. Absolute legend."
"How's she doing?" I asked.
He grimaced. "Three months in, and the team's falling apart. Two reps have quit. Revenue's down 22%. She's micromanaging everyone and still trying to close her own deals instead of coaching her team."
"Let me guess," I said. "You promoted her because she was your best seller?"
He nodded.
"That's your problem right there."
This story isn't unique.
I've seen it play out in boardrooms from Boston to Bangkok, Dubai to Dublin.
A company's top salesperson gets promoted to manager, and within months, everything goes sideways.
The team underperforms. The former star becomes frustrated. Everyone wonders what went wrong.
Here's the uncomfortable truth: Being brilliant at selling and being brilliant at managing salespeople are completely different skill sets.
Promoting your top seller to manager is often one of the most expensive mistakes a business can make.
Research analysing over 50,000 sales employees found that top salespeople, when promoted to management, often caused a decline in their team's performance.
Let me explain why this happens — and more importantly, what traits you should actually look for in a sales manager.
The Peter Principle in Action (And Why It's Destroying Your Sales Team)
There's a management concept called the Peter Principle, first articulated in 1969 but still painfully relevant today.
It states: "In a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their level of incompetence."
People who excel in a given role will tend to be eventually promoted into a new role that they won't be suited for, and then remain stuck there because their apparent lack of competence keeps them from being promoted any further.
The classic example?
A company promotes its top salesperson to a sales manager role.
However, the new manager struggles with delegation, team motivation, and strategic planning.
I've watched this disaster unfold more times than I can count. The pattern is always the same:
1. Top performer exceeds quota consistently
2. Company assumes they'll be equally good at managing
3. They get promoted without proper training
4. They struggle because selling and managing require fundamentally different skills
5. Team performance drops
6. Everyone becomes miserable
The kicker? High-performing sales leaders were such a positive influence on their teams that they reported an overall average annual quota attainment of 105% compared to 54% for underperforming sales managers.
That's a 51% difference. The right manager doesn't just improve performance — they transform it.
Why Great Sellers Often Fail as Managers
Let me be blunt about why this happens.
Great salespeople succeed through personal excellence. They're individually brilliant. They build relationships, handle objections, close deals.
They succeed by being the best individual contributor they can be.
Great managers succeed through team performance. They don't close deals themselves — they develop people who close deals.
They coach, strategize, remove obstacles, and hold others accountable.
These are fundamentally different competencies.
A top salesperson might:
• Work independently and thrive on autonomy
• Focus intensely on their own pipeline
• Rely on instinct and personal relationships
• Prefer doing over explaining
• Avoid administrative tasks
• Compete to be the best
A great sales manager must:
• Lead through others and develop talent
• Focus on the entire team's pipeline
• Build scalable processes and systems
• Coach others through repetition and patience
• Handle significant administrative responsibility
• Foster collaboration over competition
See the problem? The traits that make someone an exceptional seller can actually work against them in management.
I worked with a company in Toronto whose top salesperson was a natural lone wolf.
Brilliant closer. Terrible at sharing his methods.
When promoted to manager, he couldn't understand why his team didn't "just figure it out" the way he had.
His coaching sessions consisted of "Do what I do" — which, of course, told them nothing useful.
Within six months, three of his five reps were underperforming, and two had started quietly looking for other jobs.
The 7 Traits That Actually Make a Great Sales Manager
Right, enough about what doesn't work.
Let me tell you what actually matters when identifying or developing sales managers.
After 25+ years training sales teams globally, these are the seven traits I look for:
1. Coaching Ability Over Personal Performance
The best sales managers understand that their job is to make others successful, not to be the hero themselves.
The skills that drive individual success, such as consistently hitting quota, rarely translate into effective team management.
Sales management demands leadership, coaching, and strategic thinking — skills that differ entirely from those needed for personal sales performance.
A great sales manager can watch a rep on a call, identify three specific areas for improvement, and coach them through practice until the new behaviour becomes natural.
They don't just say "do better" — they show exactly how to do better.
I worked with a sales manager in Melbourne who was never the top seller on his team.
But he was phenomenal at breaking down complex skills into teachable steps. His team consistently outperformed everyone else because he invested time making each person better.
2. Emotional Intelligence and Empathy
Sales managers deal with human beings who have bad days, personal struggles, different learning styles, and varying levels of confidence.
You need to understand who your reps are.
No two team members are built the same — they're going to be receptive to different kinds of coaching.
If you can tactfully tailor your messages and feedback to accommodate your reps as individuals, you'll put yourself in an excellent position to be the best sales manager you can be.
The manager who treats everyone identically will fail.
The manager who understands that Sarah needs detailed guidance whilst Tom needs autonomy?
That manager wins.
One of the best sales managers I've trained in Dublin had this incredible ability to read people.
She knew when someone was genuinely struggling versus when they were making excuses.
She adjusted her communication style for each person.
Her team would walk through walls for her because they knew she genuinely cared about their success.
3. Strategic Thinking and Process Orientation
Top salespeople often succeed despite broken processes. They work around obstacles through sheer talent and effort.
Great managers? They fix the processes so everyone can succeed.
There should always be some rhyme and reason to your team's sales efforts — and the best managers know it's on them to define and enforce what that will look like.
A strategic sales manager doesn't just react to problems — they anticipate them.
They build systems for lead qualification, deal progression, account management.
They create playbooks for common scenarios.
I watched a sales manager in Stockholm transform her team by implementing a simple qualification framework.
Instead of reps chasing any opportunity that moved, they focused on prospects who fit specific criteria. Win rate jumped 28% in three months.
Frank's Quick Tip: If you're evaluating someone for sales management, ask them to explain how they'd improve your current sales process. Great individual contributors will say "I'd just work harder." Great manager candidates will identify specific process improvements.
4. Communication and Active Listening
46% of buyers agree that "active listening" is the number one skill they expect from sales professionals; meanwhile, managers rank "active listening" as the seventh skill they look for in an applicant.
That's a problem. Because sales managers who can't listen can't coach effectively.
The best sales managers ask more questions than they answer.
They listen to understand, not to respond. They're genuinely curious about what's blocking their team.
Effective managers know how to hear every side without playing favourites and make sure that disputes get resolved constructively — minimising friction, maintaining high morale, and ultimately making their teams run smoother.
One sales manager I worked with in Singapore started every one-on-one by asking "What's going well, and where do you need help?"
Then he actually listened. His reps told him about obstacles he never would have known existed. He removed those obstacles. Performance improved.
5. Accountability Without Micromanagement
This is a delicate balance, and it's where many new managers fail spectacularly.
Great sales managers hold people accountable to commitments without hovering over every activity.
They trust but verify.
They measure outcomes, not just activities.
The manager who checks CRM entries obsessively but never asks "How can I help you close this deal?" has it backwards.
The manager who sets clear expectations, tracks results, and intervenes when patterns emerge? That's effective accountability.
I saw a brilliant example in Manchester.
A sales manager told his team: "I don't care when you work or how many calls you make.
I care that you have 20 qualified opportunities in your pipeline every month and that you're moving deals through our stages at the expected velocity. If you're hitting those numbers, I trust your process. If you're not, we're going to dig into why together."
His team had the highest satisfaction scores and the lowest turnover in the company.
6. Willingness to Make Tough Decisions
If your leader starts avoiding tough decisions or conversations, it's a sign they're not confident in their ability to handle the responsibility.
Great sales managers don't avoid difficult conversations. They have them quickly, directly, and compassionately.
They fire underperformers who won't improve. They tell top performers hard truths about blind spots. They push back on unrealistic demands from leadership.
I watched a sales manager in Frankfurt do something that took genuine courage: He told the executive team their aggressive Q4 target was mathematically impossible given current pipeline and historical conversion rates.
He showed the data. He proposed an alternative. They adjusted the target.
His team respected him enormously because he protected them from unrealistic expectations whilst still driving high performance.
7. Continuous Learning and Adaptability
70% of US-based sales managers agreed that managers' capability to adapt to change is more important now compared to five years ago.
Markets change. Competitors adapt. Buyer behaviour evolves. Great sales managers evolve with them.
48% of leaders are asking for more training to become better coaches themselves.
In other words, sales managers themselves understand the importance of learning new skills and honing their existing ones.
The manager who says "this is how we've always done it" is already obsolete.
The manager who constantly seeks new approaches, learns from failures, and adapts strategies? That manager stays relevant.
One of my favourite sales managers — a woman I trained in Vancouver — spent an hour every Friday reading about sales methodology, competitive intelligence, and market trends.
She tested new approaches constantly. Her team always had the latest strategies whilst competitors were still using outdated techniques.
The Bottom Line
Your top salesperson probably isn't your best candidate for sales manager. They might be. But don't assume.
Many organisations assume their top seller will excel as a manager.
However, the skills that drive individual success, such as consistently hitting quota, rarely translate into effective team management.
Instead of automatically promoting your best seller, look for these seven traits: coaching ability, emotional intelligence, strategic thinking, communication skills, balanced accountability, decisiveness, and adaptability.
Sometimes your best manager candidate is the person who was a solid B+ performer as a seller but has natural leadership ability.
Sometimes it's someone from outside your sales team entirely who has the right management competencies.
The cost of getting this wrong is enormous.
Poor sales management can cost a company up to £2.7 million annually.
The cost of getting it right?
A team that consistently overperforms, reps who stay longer, and revenue that grows predictably.
I've trained thousands of sales professionals across every continent. The pattern is always the same: Teams with great managers thrive.
Teams with poor managers struggle regardless of how talented the individual reps are.
So before you promote your next top seller to manager, ask yourself: Do they have the seven traits that actually matter?
Or are you just rewarding past performance with a role they're not suited for?
Your team's future performance — and your revenue — depend on getting this decision right.
Ready to Build High-Performing Sales Leadership?
I've spent 25+ years working with organisations globally to identify, develop, and train sales managers who actually drive results — not just managers who were good at selling.
If you need help ensuring your managers have the skills they actually need — not just the sales numbers that got them promoted — let's talk.
I can help your organisation through:
• Sales management assessment and development programmes
• Leadership training for newly promoted managers
• Customised coaching systems for your sales teams
• High-impact keynote presentations on sales leadership
• Strategic sales process optimisation
Contact me today:
• Email: [email protected]
• Phone: +44 7711 672888 or USA +1 407 588 9714
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/frankfurness
• Website: www.frankfurness.com
Because promoting the wrong person to sales manager doesn't just cost you one good salesperson — it costs you an entire team's potential.
Frank Furness is an internationally recognised speaker, AI consultant, and sales expert who has trained teams in 70 countries, helping organisations generate over £1 billion in additional revenue. Based in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, Frank specialises in developing high-performing sales leaders and transforming sales team performance through practical, results focused training.
