WEAK SALES LEADERSHIP IS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN WEAK SALESPEOPLE
One weak salesperson costs you a territory. One weak sales leader costs you the whole team.
I have learnt one hard truth from years of working with executives, business owners, institutions and sales teams: many organisations do not have a salespeople problem. They have a sales leadership problem.
It is easy to blame the person in the field: not confident enough, not disciplined enough, not persuasive enough. Sometimes that is true. More often, the salesperson is only exposing what leadership failed to build.
The Job Nobody Was Trained For
I have sat in boardrooms where leaders demanded revenue but could not say who their best customers were. I have trained teams expected to meet targets without proper tools, structured follow-up or a clear value proposition. I have seen businesses invest in branding, offices, events and technology while the sales engine stayed underdeveloped. And I have watched the person meant to fix this, the sales leader, spend the month doing something else.
Sales leadership is more than setting targets. The real work is building the conditions that make performance possible, and answering, week after week, the questions a team cannot answer alone. Which objections keep appearing? What does the pipeline say? Who is coaching the team? Who is inspecting conversion?
Targets are not strategy. Targets are outcomes.
Promoted for Selling, Still Paid for Selling
In many Ghanaian companies, the Head of Sales got the job by being the best salesperson, and nobody then trained them to lead. Because the biggest client relationships are personal, and the company fears losing them, the new leader keeps the key accounts, carries a personal target and manages the team in whatever time remains. Juniors get the cold territories and little coaching.
Then comes the month-end review: figures read aloud, the bottom names questioned in front of colleagues, pressure applied when the month can no longer be rescued.
The Calendar Test
A sales leader’s real job description is in their diary. Take the last two weeks of your Head of Sales’ calendar and sort every hour into one of five uses. Three build the team.
- Coaching. In the field or on calls with salespeople, then debriefing the same day.
- Inspecting. Reviewing which deals moved, which stalled and why, deal by deal.
- Learning. Studying lost deals and recurring objections, and taking the pattern to marketing and management.
Two only feel like leadership.
- Closing. Personally selling to their own accounts.
- Reporting. Compiling figures for management.
If closing and reporting fill more of the diary than the first three, you do not have a sales leader. You have a senior salesperson with a team attached.
Four Moves This Quarter
- Run the test together. The Managing Director and the Head of Sales sort the diary side by side, without blame, and agree what next month’s diary should look like.
- Release the leader’s accounts. Over one quarter, hand the leader’s personal accounts to the team, with the leader alongside on the first visits. Pay the leader on team conversion, not personal sales.
- Book the coaching first. One field visit with every salesperson each month, followed by a ten-minute debrief the same day, scheduled before anything else enters the diary.
- Train before you promote. Next time you promote into sales management, choose for the ability to coach, not the size of the personal figure, and invest in the new leader’s first ninety days.
The Most Expensive Seat in the Building
At organisational level, the arithmetic is simple. A weak salesperson underperforms in one territory. A weak sales leader lowers the ceiling for every salesperson below them, distorts the forecast, loses the best people first, and teaches the next generation of managers to repeat what they saw. Any business that depends only on the enthusiasm of its salespeople is already vulnerable. Leadership must stop shouting at the end of the month and start building commercial discipline from the beginning of it.
So, one honest answer. What was the last thing your Head of Sales taught the team?
If you have to think about it, MGA Consulting Ghana Limited runs a Sales Leadership Diagnostic for Managing Directors: we run the Calendar Test with your sales leaders, sit in on their pipeline reviews and coaching, and build a ninety-day development plan, delivered through the MGA Training Centre, that turns your best sellers into leaders who build sellers. Start at mgaconsultingltd.com. More of The Growth Desk at michaelabbiw.com.
