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Thinking about moving into leadership. Most common mistakes made from those who've done this? Likes/dislikes?
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Depending on your personality and mindset but…PIPing and firing people is even worse than I thought it would be. I didn’t sleep for a while.
Also just managing people’s very intense emotions like fear and panic can be hard unless you are very good at compartmentalizing.
My biggest piece of advice is to build a wall emotionally while making it your goal to still support and break down barriers for your team.
Don’t forget HR issues and internal account disputes where you get paid either way, and your gonna piss someone off regardless of how measured you are.
Ask yourself why you are doing it. If the answer is money, getting out of selling, or anything like that - don’t. Just get another job. The main reason needs to be that you will only find more pleasure by coaching people. I mean a real burning passion that you won’t get over until you can.
And honestly if you like coaching people you can still do it as a tenured salesperson. That was why I moved to management but I probably only spend 20% of my time coaching I mostly spend it dealing with internal conflict.
Most people have commented on what’s hard, around coaching and PiPing friends etc, so I’ll focus on a few other aspects.
It’s hard to not overmanage at first, especially if you’re young. You’ll try and hop into every deal and handle it exactly how you’d do it. Treat these deals like you would as a salesperson that someone was confusing in. Give advice and watch and observe how your team sells. Don’t try and turn every person into a mini version of you.
Balance your time. You’ll figure out quickly which team members can go on cruise control and which ones need attention everyday. The person who pings you because their mouse doesn’t work, or because IT isn’t coming fast enough for their self inflicted problem. Understand who you need to coach on being a normal “worker bee” and that will help.
Understand what you need to report up the chain and how your management wants the info now. Get that understanding ASAP so that you can implement a reporting structure for your team members which saves everyone the last minute “please update your pipeline and me on a call in the next 8 minutes before my meeting” rushes.
It’s hard to not overmanage at first, especially if you’re young. You’ll try and hop into every deal and handle it exactly how you’d do it. Treat these deals like you would as a salesperson that someone was confusing in. Give advice and watch and observe how your team sells. Don’t try and turn every person into a mini version of you.
Balance your time. You’ll figure out quickly which team members can go on cruise control and which ones need attention everyday. The person who pings you because their mouse doesn’t work, or because IT isn’t coming fast enough for their self inflicted problem. Understand who you need to coach on being a normal “worker bee” and that will help.
Understand what you need to report up the chain and how your management wants the info now. Get that understanding ASAP so that you can implement a reporting structure for your team members which saves everyone the last minute “please update your pipeline and me on a call in the next 8 minutes before my meeting” rushes.
My experience with non-SaaS --> I use to spend sometime every week to review my team, their performance + I wanted to know more about what they want to do and achieve in life. This conversation helped me put some of my team members into cross functional team as they wanted to do that and proved themselves right. Of course I failed a few times as well.
You’re going to need to love coaching people and dealing with emotions. That in addition to the fact that a team of others now controls your compensation, can be an adjustment.
If you’re going into leadership just to go into leadership then don’t. I love making an impact on my teams, especially early career reps. That type of fulfillment needs to drive your motivation, sometimes moreso than compensation.
Make sure you truly love helping others and are able to have difficult discussions that are still respectful. A successful IC does not = a successful manager and many fall into traps of becoming that classic “mid level manager” we all hate bc they have no EQ or patience to learn how to manage a variety of personalities.
Dislikes: paperwork, loss of control (number-wise), less money if you were a high performing producer
Likes: Coaching
It definitely wasn't a fit for me. I left after less than a year in the role once I realized that the only part I enjoyed was teaching people. Now I am in individual contributor, I've consistently progressed in my career by moving into roles of increasing responsibility (and more money) and I mentor new reps.
Likes: Coaching
It definitely wasn't a fit for me. I left after less than a year in the role once I realized that the only part I enjoyed was teaching people. Now I am in individual contributor, I've consistently progressed in my career by moving into roles of increasing responsibility (and more money) and I mentor new reps.
Management requires different skill sets than sales. Make sure you are very clear on the expectations before accepting the role.
Realizing some people don't care as much as I do.
This is fine, as they are hitting targets, not wanting to grow etc... But damn. It was disappointing.
Also being too friendly. Don't go have drinks with subordinates. Go for A drink, but excuse yourself so they can talk shop when you're gone. It's better this way.
This is fine, as they are hitting targets, not wanting to grow etc... But damn. It was disappointing.
Also being too friendly. Don't go have drinks with subordinates. Go for A drink, but excuse yourself so they can talk shop when you're gone. It's better this way.
dealing with "non workers". I was always an overachiever and always wanted to be better.. and to realize that there are people out there who just want to do the bare minimum so they get their pay check was really shocking for me, especially in sales. It took some time to learn how to deal and work with this kind of characters, still hard for me. And how some people use the system so you can't fire them and they just suck your whole energy out off you ugh..
I've only gotten the opportunity to be paid as a leader once and it was fantastic, being able to plan out the success of a tattoo shop was fucking great. would love to do that again!
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