Yes, a business owner can manage sales themselves — if they take on the daily work of a head of sales: assign tasks, insist they are carried out and work through what went wrong. Knowing the product and trusting a strong salesperson is not enough. When the owner only listens to the senior salesperson, some of the management work remains nobody’s responsibility, even though both are busy with sales.
We had a client — a trading company that imports goods itself and sells them through its own stores on online marketplaces. After the commercial director left, the owner decided to get a little more involved and manage sales through a senior salesperson until a new head of sales was in place. A young, very strong salesperson took the senior role. As a temporary choice, it made sense: he already knew the work and could sell.
But no new head of sales was hired in two years. The owner based his forecasts on the senior salesperson, who could not set tasks for others and insist on their completion. The sales plan was missed. The company came to us when it was already in trouble.
Later, the owner himself admitted that he had based his forecasts on someone who was too optimistic. This detail explains why I start the discussion about promoting the best salesperson with the owner’s decision. There was a real basis for that trust. It simply extended beyond the employee’s proven ability.
His ability to sell did not answer the question about everyone else
I think it is a mistake to treat someone’s personal sales as proof that they can get their colleagues to do the work. In this story, the distinction is clear: he knew how to sell, but could not set tasks and insist on their completion. Age explains nothing here. The work left undone is enough to draw a conclusion.
When a salesperson is promoted, what is expected of them changes. Previously, their own actions showed what they had done to make a sale. Now you need to see what task another salesperson received from them, whether it was completed, and what the head of sales did when someone refused or failed to do it. The appointed senior salesperson’s own results do not answer these questions.
This puts the owner in an uncomfortable position: they have to judge a capable employee they know on work in which that employee has yet to prove their ability. Appointing someone before they have proved themselves is acceptable. But the owner then takes on the responsibility for teaching them and reviewing their first management decisions. If this work is missing, the word “senior” closes a question that should have been left open: who makes sure the others do the work?
At the trading company, the salesperson’s optimism became the basis for the owner’s forecasts. In my view, this was what kept the temporary arrangement going: the owner was already relying on him when estimating future results, even though he could not manage the team. Acknowledging that limitation meant revising the owner’s own expectations too. Firing someone for being optimistic is too simple a conclusion to draw from this story. First, stop expecting his confidence to prove that the whole department is doing its job.
The owner suggested meetings. Follow-through remained in doubt
There is a less obvious detail in the same story. The owner had already suggested short daily meetings, but there was no certainty they were taking place. There was no one to check that the instruction was carried out. So the owner had given a useful instruction; it had not become a consistent practice.
I would not start with a new sales meeting schedule here. First, find out what happened to the earlier instruction. Who was it given to? Who was supposed to hold the meeting? Who was supposed to notice that it had not happened? The answer determines what to do: assign someone to carry it out, give them time, or hold them to account for failing to follow the instruction. Another suggestion to meet will leave the same gap.
And the fact that a meeting took place does not settle the matter either. If the senior salesperson merely gathered updates for the owner, the owner still has to manage the team based on those updates. If he decided what the salespeople should do today and accepted the completed work by the set deadline, there is now something by which to judge his management work. Meeting minutes are useful only to the extent that they show this difference.
That is why I suggest checking the answer “I’ll handle it myself” against the owner’s calendar. Where is the time for assigning tasks to employees and reviewing whether they have been completed? What other work has the owner put aside to do this? Gaps between other commitments are not enough if the team’s tasks require daily involvement. This is the cost of the chosen way of managing, even when there is no separate salary for a head of sales.
A temporary arrangement needs an end date
I suggest setting up a temporary arrangement with a date for deciding what happens next. By that date, it should be clear whether the senior salesperson has learnt to lead, the owner will continue to do it themselves, or someone else is needed. The date is for the owner’s decision. There is no point promising that a suitable candidate will definitely be found by then.
The basis for that choice is already there in the current work. Take a task assigned by the senior salesperson whose deadline has passed. Who reviewed the result and decided what to do next? If it was the owner again, the appointment has not yet relieved them of that duty. If the senior salesperson independently reviewed how the task was carried out, ask to see the decision he made. This provides evidence of a skill that his own sales did not demonstrate.
There is a limit to this assessment: the absence of immediate growth does not prove that the senior salesperson has not learnt to lead. What you see first is how he works with people. Equally, a good month alone is no reason to extend the temporary appointment: you need to establish whether he is now doing the management work that the appointment was meant to bring about. Lowering the standard for that work because it is hard to find someone is dangerous — customers do not wait for a vacancy to be filled.
At RENTROP, turnkey sales management means there is someone to set daily requirements for the team and insist they are met, including during a change of head of sales. If you are stuck in an arrangement where you manage sales yourself through a senior salesperson, we will use a free sales review to work through which duties have stayed with you and who to hand them over to.
An owner is entitled to manage sales themselves for as long as they see fit. But after two years, it is time to call that choice permanent and hold themselves to account for getting the work done: the word “temporary” does not do the daily work of a head of sales.