Our top salesperson was promoted to Vice President of Sales, but as our team grew past six reps, they stopped coaching and tried to close every deal themselves. How do we step a founder-era rainmaker down from a leadership seat without losing them as an individual producer?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is the classic producer-manager dilemma. Being great at closing large enterprise accounts requires an entirely different skill set than recruiting, training, holding salespeople accountable, and managing a repeatable pipeline.

Evaluate them using the EOS tool GWC (Get It, Want It, Capacity to Do It). They clearly wanted the title, prestige, and compensation that came with a leadership role. However, their behavior demonstrates they lack the Capacity to lead, manage, and hold people accountable (LMA). When under pressure, they default to what they love and understand: hunting and closing deals.

Have a candid conversation outside your regular Level 10 Meeting. Explain that the business now requires an executive whose full-time focus is building systems, coaching reps, and tracking conversion ratios. Show them the Accountability Chart and outline how their current seat creates a bottleneck that limits total revenue.

Create a dedicated top-tier individual contributor seat, such as Director of Strategic Accounts. Structure the compensation plan so they can earn as much as, or more than, members of the leadership team based on gross margin generated from their own pipeline. Frame this change not as a demotion, but as realigning their daily focus with their unique abilities. If their ego cannot stomach stepping off the leadership team, you must prepare to part ways entirely, because keeping an incapable manager over your sales team will drive your best reps to quit.