You’ve got a great salesman working for you. He’s been with your business for some time and knows the company inside out. He knows all about your products and services and does a great job selling them. You have other members of the sales team who aren’t doing as well and who could learn a lot from this person. So you decide to promote him to Sales Manager. This way, he can lead the rest of the sales team, sharing his knowledge and experience with them. He can inspire them and help create a great sales department.

However, a few months after his promotion, you notice that things are not quite going to plan. Why is this? It is something that’s seen over and over again in companies where someone has been promoted because they’re good at what they do. They end up managing other people and not doing a very good of it. This is often because they have had no management training; they don’t know how to manage other people who are doing what they used to do.

Great salesmen – and many other professions – are good at the technical side of their jobs. They’re not necessarily natural people people.

So what do you do if it goes wrong?

Always start with a probationary period, to give you the chance to review the performance of your new manager

If it’s still not working out:

• Give them a full opportunity to any discuss problems with their job
• You’re under no obligation to give them their old job back, but you can discuss it, if it’s still vacant
• Consider an alternative position before dismissal; tribunals will want you to consider all alternatives before you let someone go.

Before you promote someone to management level, take the time to find out if they are really ready for it. If not, what do you need to do to make them ready to make them into great managers?

To find out more, click here to watch a short video that?s on my website.

Are your people ready for promotion?