The Ability To Do and The Ability To Manage Are Different

Accepting promotions for which you are not qualified before learning the skills needed to do the job may make you feel important in the beginning but it can also lead to failure.

Here is the story of George, who rose from Sales Representative and who is now a top Senior Sales Representative in his company. The other sales representatives were constantly asking him how he did it. At the daily briefings, everyone waited for him to tell how he did it the day before. They were envious of his abilities to close sales nearly every day and those assigned to work under Goerge were looking forward to learning from him. As a Senior Sales Representative, he has 4 Sales Representatives working under him and George often assured them he would do everything in his power to help them achieve the kind of success he had enjoyed. Before the morning briefing, he would select one of them each day with whom he would make calls. This way, he could evaluate their performance in real-life situations, which would enable him to determine how best to help them. Initially, the 4 representatives were hesistant as they were afraid George will criticize their performance but George assured them his main intention is to help them close more sales. As a team leader, George told them, he makes money when they make money.

As George continued to encourage and help them to improve their areas of weakness, as a result, his group performed remarkably well. Although his personal performance fell off a bit because he was spending part of his time going on calls with his representatives, his group’s performance was nearly 3 times that of the next closest group in his company. Both his income and his stature with the company grew tremendously. He made more money in half a year as a Senior Representative than when he would have made in an entire year when he was Sales Representative (even though he was the top sales rep)

After a year as a Top Senior Sales Representative, George got a call from his Regional Manager for a meeting. However, he was surprised to find both the Regional Manager and the company’s Vice President at the meeting. He has expected his review to be conducted by the Regional Manager, to whom he directly reported, but here was the company’s Vice President sitting in on his review. His first thought was to wonder what he’d done wrong.

The meeting began with a glowing review of his accomplishments, both as a Sales representative and as a Senior Sales Representative and then the Vice President dropped a bombshell on him. “George, we have offered the Sale Manager here a transfer to a larger market and he has accepted. That leaves his position in the market open. Based on your outstanding performnce, we want to talk with you about the Sales Manager’s job.

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“I appreciate your vote of confidence”, George responded, “but what does the job entails?” “As you know, we are expanding here,” the VP replied. “We now have five teams with 4 representatives and a Senior rep in each team, that’s 25 people. We would like to double that within the next year. The job would be to interview and hire the new recruits, supervise and assist a full-time trainer and supervise all the Senior Reps. It would also involve being responsible for all the paperwork and reports from your office, and making sure they are prepared accurately and timely. We will provide a secretary to handle the telephone and help with the paperwork. Of course, if you accept the job, we will be available to guide you while you’re getting a grasp on the way things work and we will always be available if you run into problems. We realize that you‘ve only been with the company a short time, but you’ve done such a great job that we want to offer you this opportunity to grow with us and move into management.”

“Well, I’m pretty happy as a Senior Rep and I’m making more money than I ‘ve ever made,” George said. “What kind of opportunities will I have if I accept the job?”

At this point the Regional Manager spoke up. “As Sales Manager, you won’t have to make calls like you do as a rep or Senior rep. You’ll be hiring people, training them, working with your Senior reps and in general making sure everything in your department runs smoothly. You won’t have to go out to close sales unless you need to fill in for a Senior rep occasionally. The way you will be compensated is by getting overrides on what everyone under you produce, which includes all the reps and Senior reps. If you do well as a Sales Manager, as you have as a Rep and Senior rep, you could easily double what you’re making now”.

George accepted the Sales Manager position and arrived at the office to begin his new job with the same enthusiasm and energy that had served him so well in the past, but this time he quickly discovered that the ability to do and the ability to manage are very different.

The first morning, 2 of his Senior Reps quit with no notice, apparently upset by the fact that they were overlooked for promotion. The secretary turned in her resignation as well, but at least she agreed to a two-week notice. She’d found another job paying more and had agreed to take it.

Before he could sit down behind his desk, George already had a handful of problems and the sudden realization that he knew nothing about managing. Although he tried everything he could think of, the situation only got worse. His education did not include organizational skills, people skills, communication skill, and managing techniques. Sure, he was good at persuading people and closing sales when he was the Sales Rep and Senior Rep but trying to get 25 people to work together was something else entirely.

Instead of increasing the size of his team from 25 to 50 employees, within a month, he was down to just 15 people and many of the rest were considering quitting. He’d hired a new secretary, who was answering the phones, but his advertisement in the Help Wanted section of the newspaper was only producing an occasional call. After 2 weeks of interviews, he only had six new recruits for the next training class. No matter what he did, things just kept getting worse.

Eventually, he started going out to look for sales at night to try to improve the performance of his department. But this only created more dissatisfaction among his Reps because they thought he was taking business away from them. As he neared his next 6 weeks evaluation, George knew he had failed. He also knew he did not have the skills to repair the damage he had done. He could hardly believe how difficult it was to supervise an entire sales force, especially after doing so well with the four people he‘d supervised as a Senior Sales rep.

It’s important to note here that, although he didn’t realize it at that time, George had taken over the Sales manager’s job with a huge disadvantage over his shoulders. His district had just lost its best Sales Manager when the company moved him into management. The top management of the company had evidently not thought this through, which tells us that even smart, successful people sometimes make silly mistakes.

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When George was Senior rep, he wasn’t in management. He was more of an extremely productive co-worker than a manager. His willingness to make calls with his reps and work individually with each of them endeared him to them and made them feel like he was one of them. When he became Sale Manager, however, he was suddenly placed in a different role. He could no longer make calls with everyone and he didn’t know how to communicate this fact in a way that gained him respect.

Although he didn’t know it at the time, George was learning some valuable lessons. Management is getting things done through other people. Leadership is not jumping in front of a crowd and yelling “Follow me”. It’s being the kind of person others want to follow. His limited knowledge of management prevented him from understanding these basic principles of management, and in total frustration, he tendered his resignation from the company.

To sum it all up, the ability to do things yourself and the skill to manage others to do them is very different. We need to know our strengths and weaknesses. And accepting a promotion for which you are not qualified before learning the skills required to do the job can eventually lead you to failure.

That’s all for now friends, See you all in my next article.