Pachacuti

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Player/Coach Roles

Dealing with a Player/Coach situation right now. The CEO says "Everyone is in Sales" and puts that into practice with a few in-house accounts being managed by C-level people (1-2 each), Sr VP managing some house and near-to-close and recently closed accounts, and a crew of sales minions going after various in-house accounts (which have lots of room to grow) and new logos.

I personally believe Player/Coach situations don't really work out. Mostly because you will always selfishly prioritize your deals over your team's deals.

What's the Community's thoughts?

Do player/coach situations work?

Attached poll

Yes, its a great option (Tell us why in comments) No, you can't serve both your team and yourself Sometimes (explain why in comments)

*Voting in this poll no longer yields commission.

👑 Sales Strategy

🧢 Sales Management

16 comments

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antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

Bravado's Resident Asshole

I have had this happen as well. My manager ran this play very well and was pretty selfless for the most part. However, when it comes to scaling and true management system, this is a small business mindset and will only go so far.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

This. It just can't scale at size.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

I definitely agree with this.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Technically yes it can work. It's up to the company to enforce the rules of the game.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Agreed with this as well. The problem is when there are rules and they are not enforced.

ruca1213

Contributor

Regional Sales Director

What would you say the rules should be?

LordOfWar

Tycoon

Blow it up

It can work, but I think one side will always be favoured over the other. There will never be true balance and if so, it will just be shit/shit.

1nbatopshotfan

Politicker

Sales

I’m in this role now. You need a mature sales team that you just collect reporting data on. It’s very hard to coach to ramp while serving my own book. I’m also incentivized to only hunt big deals and don’t take any inbound etc to keep it fair.

DevSomeBiz

Valued Contributor

Senior B2B Sales Guy.

The most efficient form of government is a benevolent dictator. In the same way, the best way for someone to transition from IC to management is to carry a bag while they are starting to run a team.

Also, I am selfishly promoting this model because I want to transition to that sort of role some day!

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

Never heard of this, and it seems interesting.

I feel like your C-Suite will need to be amazing at delegating to still do their day-to-day, meet the needs of the client, and still keep everyone happy (Plus themselves to not get burn't out). Plus leadership will still need to support other deals with Exec Alignment.

I think its supper interesting and think its cool to try out, let us know how it goes!

Notmyrealname

Politicker

As long as they're incentivised on a team target rather than they're own target it could work out, or an I missing something?

HeavenstoBetsy

Opinionated

BDR

team over individual and this can work

SoulSales

Commercial Account Executive

As an an AE who’s had my last two managers own a quota, I would vote against it. Both times were in a start up (<100 employees). Most recently my manager was supposed to allocate 50% of bandwidth to selling and the other 50% as a manager. This was a train wreck for onboarding… it resulted in a burnt out manager who wasn’t giving any new hires the proper attention and training.

If it’s 1-2 accounts I could see that potentially working.

MarineSolarDreaming

Good Citizen

Technical Sales

Game Theory, right?

The team succeeds, everyone wins. Or, an individual could capitalize an advantage at the expense of others.

Operating under the assumption both parties prosper flips the odds favorable and increases likelihood of mutually assured success.

It is ultimately a gamble though. Can the party win, or is there only really room for 1 winner?

Panda4489

Politicker

Head of Some Shit

It's chaotic. But if the sales cycles are slow it's 100% do-able

Corpslovechild

Politicker

Inbound Sales Manager

Feed your team, not yourself.

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Pachacuti

Player/Coach Roles

Do player/coach situations work?

16 comments

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