26/08/2026
From Top Performer to People Leader: Is the Transition Harder Than We Think?
It’s a career path we see time and time again. A high-performing salesperson consistently exceeds targets, builds fantastic client relationships and becomes the person everyone looks to for advice.
Naturally, the next step often feels like leadership, but does being brilliant at sales automatically prepare someone to lead people?
We aren’t saying that top sales professionals don’t make exceptional leaders. They absolutely can and do. However, the skills that drive individual success aren’t always the same skills needed to develop a high-performing team.
Research by economists Alan Benson, Danielle Li and Kelly Shue analysed almost 39,000 sales workers across 131 companies and found that organisations were significantly more likely to promote their highest-performing salespeople into management.
Interestingly, however, higher pre-promotion sales performance was negatively associated with subsequent managerial performance.
In other words, being exceptional at selling didn’t necessarily mean someone would be exceptional at managing.
That raises a really interesting question for businesses:
Are we promoting people because they have demonstrated leadership potential, or because they have demonstrated exceptional performance in their current role?
In sales, success is often measured by personal performance; hitting targets, negotiating deals, building relationships and creating opportunities.
Leadership shifts the focus. Instead of asking, “how do I achieve my target?”, the question becomes, “how do I create an environment where my whole team can achieve theirs?”
That transition can bring a completely different set of challenges:
➡️ Coaching rather than closing.
Sometimes the best leader is the one who resists stepping in to make the sale and instead helps someone else learn how to do it.
➡️ Balancing performance with people.
Great leaders still care about results, but they also understand that motivation, development, communication and trust are what help sustain those results.
➡️ Redefining what performance means.
For many new leaders, success is no longer measured by their own sales, deals or targets. It’s measured by the success of the people around them. Learning to celebrate someone else’s win as much as your own can be a surprisingly difficult shift.
➡️ Letting go of doing everything yourself.
Top performers are often used to being the person who gets things done. Leadership requires them to step back, delegate and trust others to deliver.
With the right support, coaching and mindset, many sales professionals become outstanding leaders.
But perhaps the transition deserves more attention than simply assuming that exceptional sales performance will naturally translate into exceptional leadership.
What are your thoughts? 💭
Reference:
Benson, A., Li, D. & Shue, K. (2019), Promotions and the Peter Principle, Quarterly Journal of Economics.
