The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million

9Developing Sales Leaders—Advantages of a “Promote from Within” Culture

“Don't promote your best salespeople to sales management.”

Ask a seasoned sales executive about developing sales managers and this statement will probably be the first words out of her mouth.

The statement certainly has merit. Of all the professional functions within an organization (e.g., marketing, product, finance, HR, and so forth), sales has the largest variance between the general characteristics that are conducive to success on the front line and the general characteristics that are conducive to success in the management ranks. Sometimes really good salespeople are selfish, egotistical, and competitive by nature. Those traits do not translate well into management.

However, will promoting the worst salespeople to sales management work?

Of course not. How could a salesperson respect the coaching from a manager who couldn't do the job himself?

What about the strategy of hiring experienced managers from the outside?

That might work for other companies, but I didn't see it working for me at HubSpot, given our unique buyer context. Sure, if I had been able to find sales managers who had successfully led teams that sold a similar value proposition to a similar buyer profile with a similar sales playbook, I might have hired them. However, that did not work out for me. Not only did I fail to find any sales managers with experience leading teams selling the value proposition of HubSpot, but also I failed to ...