Player-Coaches Don't Work

When you turn your sales managers into player-coaches, two things happen: mediocre sales leadership and frustrated reps. Here's why...

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If you prefer to read - here is the transcript:

I was talking to a sales executive the other day, relatively new in their position, and they told me that they needed to boost sales. And they figured the best way to do that was to take all the sales managers across the country that they had and turn them into player coaches - give them a quota and a territory, as well as their reps because, hey, they're paying for these resources anyways - they may as well have a quota. I immediately put my hands up and said, nope, it's not going to work. And they said, come on, why not? I said, because you're going to run into a number of problems.

A. You'll get a mediocre sales rep and a mediocre manager, right? They're doing two jobs, so they're half as good at either of them, half as effective at either of them.

Two. You create a system of competition inside the territory. The sales reps start to not trust the sales manager as much because they're not a manager. They're a colleague. So they don't pay attention. They don't take them seriously. They don't really understand what the role and responsibility is there.

You know, you also run into the problem that every player coach that I know tends to like to play more than they like to coach. And so when given the choice, they sell more than they coach. And when put into a position where they might be doing a four legged sales call with one of their sales reps, they will take over. And then there'll be a fight about who owns the deal and what the commission is, and your sales reps will stop wanting to take them along.

The better way to create more productivity in the sales territory is to solve the issue through compensation. You tell me, how much more do you want this territory to sell - $1 million? Well, rather than giving that to the sales manager as $1 million target on top of their sales manager duties, take that million dollars, divide it by the number of reps there, and then create a spiff, a bonus. Create an accelerator that when those reps hit that accelerated amount, they get more commission or more bonus or whatever it is that you were going to pay the sales manager on top of their salary. It's a much better way, a much more profitable way to solve the issue of driving more revenue in a territory.

Player coaches never work. The very best sales leaders, the very best sales coaches need to be in that position 100% of their day.