Finding a great Sales Director can be very tricky. It needs effort & planning.

Finding a great Sales Director is fairly straight forward. Aren’t all Sales people the same? Just find one with a good track record!

Really?

I have worked with companies, helping them build their management teams since the early 00’s. One of the biggest challenges facing a company when hiring at a senior level is sourcing a great Sales Director. By their very nature, sales people are good at selling themselves. If they are not, then that is the first alarm bell. But someone who can sell themselves does not make them automatically, an ideal candidate for that senior position.

A common mistake is promoting or recruiting that great sales person to become the Sales Manager. Unfortunately, that’s not how this works. Because someone is a great sales person, does not automatically mean that they will become a great Sales Manager. Of course, great sales people can make great Sales Directors, but not always, and it does require them to develop additional skills. Have they done that already, or will the business ensure that they develop those necessary skills? By not asking those questions, not only, have you just lost your top performer, and have to replace them, but if you don’t provide the necessary support and management development, you’ll not have a great Sales Manager, either! Great Sales Directors/Managers are different to great sales people. But, great Sales Directors, like great sales people are not born, and can be made.

Sales is a learnable set of professional skills, just the same way that becoming an accountant is a business skill set that someone can learn.

You can download a print version of this article at the link below.

Finding that great Sales person can be a challenge

Eugene Ivory is the founder and managing partners of PSD Partners, Dublin.