Our Head of Sales wants to promote our top-producing field rep into the newly opened Regional Sales Manager seat based entirely on her five-year tenure and closing record. How do we evaluate whether she actually has GWC for leadership and management rather than just field sales?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Promoting your top sales producer into a managerial seat simply because of tenure and high closing rates is one of the most common and destructive mistakes in growing companies. Closing enterprise deals and managing human beings require completely different skill sets. When you promote without GWC, you frequently lose your best producer and gain an ineffective, miserable manager.

To evaluate this objectively, use the GWC framework against the specific five roles of the Regional Sales Manager seat. That seat must include LMA: Leading, Managing, and holding people Accountable.

Break down the assessment:
- Gets It: Does she truly understand what management entails? Does she grasp that her success is no longer measured by her personal commission or closed deals, but by the coaching, enablement, and performance of her team?
- Wants It: Does she genuinely want to spend her days mentoring reps, resolving pipeline issues, conducting one-on-one reviews, and enforcing CRM hygiene, or does she just want the status and compensation of a managerial title?
- Capacity to Do It: Does she possess the emotional intelligence, patience, communication skills, and time-management discipline required to lead other people?

Have the Head of Sales sit down with her and explicitly review the LMA responsibilities of the seat. Ask her what percentage of her time she expects to spend helping others win versus closing her own accounts. If there is any hesitation on Gets It, Wants It, or Capacity, she belongs in an elite enterprise closing seat, not a management seat. Keep her where she shines, compensate her handsomely for revenue, and fill the management seat with someone built to lead.