Why Your Top Salesperson Shouldn't Be Your Next Sales Manager

It's a no-brainer, right? Your top salesperson is killing numbers, closing huge deals, and obviously knows how to sell. So why not make them your next sales manager?

The reasoning, despite its widespread acceptance, is fundamentally flawed.

Promoting your top performer to a manager is one of the quickest ways to lose not only one but two valuable positions: your top rep and a good leader. It's a move that usually seems like a good idea — but winds up costing more than it's worth.

Let's deconstruct exactly why.

1. Sales and Sales Management Are Not the Same Job

Selling is personal performance. It's meeting quota, closing business, and working quickly under pressure. It's usually an individual sport — the top reps are fantastic at keeping their eye on their pipeline and closing.

Sales management is the inverse. It's about getting other people to do things, building systems, solving team problems, planning for the long haul, forecasting outcomes, and coaching strugglers.

Your star performer may be incredible at closing business — but that doesn't necessarily mean they can perform weekly pipeline reviews, provide feedback to an underperforming rep, or design onboarding for new reps. In fact, they may find them boring, frustrating, or overwhelming.

And here's the brutal reality: a lot of the qualities that make a person a great salesperson — such as independence, competitiveness, and gut instinct — carry over poorly into management. They might even be a hindrance.

2. Great Sellers Frequently Can't Describe Why They're Successful

It occurs more often than many companies recognize.

Most of the best salespeople are instinctual, experienced, and have natural abilities. They perform this action instinctively. They can read a customer They understand the balance between acting and practicing patience. But they can't necessarily teach it.

When asked to coach others, they may fall back on vague advice like "Just close harder," or "You've got to feel the timing." That's not a process. That's not scalable. And it won't help a team of less experienced reps succeed.

Sales management takes a whole different muscle — the muscle of being able to teach, organize, and direct individuals who don't sell or think like you. If your top producer is not able to dissect their process into replicable steps, they can't be a team leader.

3. Keeping Them at the Top Can Break Two Roles at Once

When you remove your top rep from the field, you're losing your best money-maker. That's a big dent in your sales figures already.

And if they also implode in their new capacity as manager — which is more likely than not without training — you've now lost two critical positions: your top seller and your sales leader.

Worse still, if they get burned out or dissatisfied, you may lose them altogether. They might quit the company or resign in embarrassment, undermining morale and confidence in your decision-making as a leader.

This is one of the most expensive hidden dangers in sales leadership choices: swapping your best player out for an untrained leader leaves a void you didn't anticipate.

4. Team Dynamics Will Shift — And Often Not for the Better

When one of your star reps becomes the boss, the social dynamics of the sales team shift in an instant.

Former teammates will suddenly feel like comrades who lost a friend and gained an authority figure. Relationships become strained. Trust is broken. Favouritism — imagined or real — becomes an issue.

Even more perilous is when the new manager cannot hold people to account because they were "one of the team" a few weeks before. They might shy away from difficult conversations or overcorrect by becoming excessively strict.

Either way, performance suffers.

It's not so much about selling a talented rep — it's about selling someone who can negotiate power structures, set boundaries, and remain fair in tough situations. That's a talent most high-performing sellers never had to learn.

5. Leadership Is a Skill — Not a Reward

Managers tend to hand out management promotions as rewards. "You met your goals, so now you get to lead." But that's not how leadership is.

Real leadership requires emotional intelligence, the skills to coach, the desire to have difficult conversations, and the patience to grow others. These abilities are cultivated through experience, feedback, and training — rather than through elevated sales figures.

Without preparation, placing someone in a leadership role is like giving them a car without instructing them to drive. Without fail, there will be a crash.

Before promoting anyone into management, ask: Have they mentored others? Have they shown they can give constructive feedback? Do they want to lead, or are they just chasing a title?

If the answer is no, they're not ready — no matter how good they are at selling.

Gallup research shows that companies fail to choose the right manager 82% of the time — often because they reward performance, not potential.

6. Better Growth Paths Exist

The bad news is you don't have to lose your top salesperson or exasperate your team. There are more productive ways to reward your stars and build future leaders.

Begin by designing two different paths for growth: one for high-value reps who aspire to remain in sales and another for those who wish to become managers. Provide them with titles, greater compensation, and acknowledgement — without requiring them to change their career paths.

Second, test leadership potential early. Please put them in mentorship roles, team projects, or onboarding responsibilities. Observe how they take responsibility before giving them the whole role.

And lastly, don't be hesitant to bring in experienced managers from outside when required. Sales leadership is a career in itself — and not everybody develops into it internally.

Final Thought: Hire With Purpose, Not Sentiment

It's nice to imagine your best rep can fill in for any job. But leadership isn't about ego — it's about match.

When you promote solely on performance without considering skills or interests, you're setting everyone up to fail.

Instead, be honest and transparent with what each job requires. Train your people adequately. Provide them with opportunities to grow based on their strengths — not merely your immediate needs.

Because in the long term, a good salesperson and a good manager are two different things. And behaving as if they are will end up costing you much more than one deal.