Beyond the "Natural": Why Sales Leadership Is a Skill You Must Learn
By Shawn Hamilton, M.S., DBA(c) Shawn Hamilton is a leading sales leadership advisor and doctoral researcher at the University of Houston, specializing in Sales Leadership.
Beyond the "Natural": Why Sales Leadership Is a Skill You Must Learn
In the world of sales, we love the myth of the "natural."
We talk about the "born salesperson" or the "natural leader"—that individual with an innate, almost magical charisma who can close any deal and inspire any team. This belief is deeply embedded in sales culture, and it’s a dangerous one.
Why? Because it leads to the single most common, and most costly, mistake in organizational design: promoting the top salesperson into sales management.
The logic seems sound. "They're a star performer. Let's make them a manager and they'll create a whole team of stars." The result is almost always failure. The company loses its best individual producer and gains an ineffective, overwhelmed manager.
The problem is that the skills that make a great seller (individual drive, competitive focus, objection handling) are often antithetical to the skills of a great leader (patience, team-building, coaching, strategic delegation).
The Evidence: Leadership is a Competency, Not a Trait
This isn't just an opinion; it's a finding backed by decades of academic research. The most effective sales leaders are not "born"; they are developed.
Research in the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management has worked to deconstruct sales leadership from a vague personality trait into a set of definable competencies. For example, scholars Deeter-Schmelz, Kennedy, and Gooner (2002) developed a framework to identify the specific skills effective leaders possess. These include crucial, learnable abilities like:
Coaching & Mentoring: The ability to diagnose skill gaps and develop talent in others.
Strategic Thinking: The capacity to see the bigger picture beyond the current quarter's quota.
Team-Building: The skill of fostering collaboration and psychological safety.
Business Management: The acumen to manage a P&L, forecast accurately, and allocate resources.
The crucial insight is this: If these competencies can be identified, they can be taught. Sales leadership is a distinct profession with its own set of skills, and like any profession, it requires training, practice, and mastery.
Stop Managing, Start Leading
When a "natural" seller is promoted, they tend to "manage" by default. They obsess over activities (call logs, emails sent) because that's what they could control as a rep. They often become a "super-rep," jumping on calls to "save the deal" themselves, thereby robbing their team of learning opportunities.
This is managing complexity, not leading change.
A true sales leader, by contrast, understands their job is not to be the best seller on the team, but to build the best sales team. They focus on coaching behaviors, not just tracking activities. They build a scalable process, not a team dependent on their personal heroics. This is a learned skill, and it is the single greatest lever for revenue growth.
Actionable Takeaways
Moving your organization beyond the "natural-born leader" myth requires a systematic shift. Here are three places to start:
Rethink Your Promotion Process. Stop promoting top sellers as a reward. Instead, create a formal leadership track. Look for candidates who demonstrate the competencies of leadership, such as mentoring junior reps or contributing to process improvement, not just a high quota attainment.
Audit Your Current Leadership. Look at your current sales managers. Are they truly leading, or are they just "super-reps" managing CRM hygiene? Identify the competency gaps—are they weak in coaching? Strategic planning?—and build a development plan.
Invest in Formal Development. Since sales leadership is a learnable skill, invest in teaching it. Use competency-based frameworks (like those found in academic research) to create a formal training and mentorship program for your new and existing sales managers.
Stop waiting for "natural" leaders to appear. Start building them.
References
Deeter-Schmelz, D. R., Kennedy, K. N., & Gooner, R. A. (2002). A framework for identifying sales leadership competencies. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 22(1), 19–30.
