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Summary: A recent survey of employees found that the majority of sales and marketing employees question their manager’s leadership abilities.

SkillSoft recently completed a survey that questioned all levels of employees in IT, sales and marketing, customer service, finance, HR, etc. regarding the competency of their boss. This survey is interesting because it is one of the few that includes sales and marketing employees. Below are some of the more interesting findings.

65% of all employees (regardless of department) felt that their boss was a competent leader.

30% of all employees (regardless of department) felt their boss was not qualified for their job.

49% of sales and marketing employees felt their manager was a good leader.

While almost 2/3’s of all employees felt that their boss was a capable leader, less than half of sales and marketing employees gave the thumbs up to their manager’s leadership abilities. How can we explain the lower scores for sales management?

1. A good salesperson does not always translate to a good sales manager. There are many good salespeople that are promoted into management based on their sales budget attainment and not their leadership abilities. This is unfortunate because the employer loses a good salesperson and simultaneously creates management problems when the wrong person is promoted.

2. Sales positions are normally held by employees that are younger than the average age of all the employees at a company. Younger people tend to be more cynical about their manager. As we get older we become more accepting of our manager’s shortcomings and our own.

3. A sales position almost always carries with it a quota or budget. The sales manager has a budget that is the total of those for his or her salespeople. Sales managers frequently find themselves in crunch situations on their sales budget and subsequently apply pressure to individual salespeople.

Sales management can be a tough and thankless job. It looks good from the outside but once you become a sales manager you realize that you are responsible for everyone’s sales budget. Furthermore, the new sales manager quickly finds that they can only indirectly influence individual salespersons’ efforts and abilities. The next time you see your sales manager give ‘em a hug; it’s not as easy as they probably make it look.

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Tags: competency

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