In companies where people who weren't top sellers became managers, subordinate performance actually improved.
There is a study that tracked approximately 40,000 sales professionals across 131 companies in the United States. What they found was a relationship where, among those promoted, the ones with poorer sales performance before promotion saw higher sales growth from their subordinates.
Even for the same manager position, subordinates grew more under those who hadn't sold well compared to those who had been top performers.
This might sound like mere spiritualism—as if not being able to sell is somehow a virtue.
It is not. The reason lies not in the person's character or personality, but in how they sat in that chair. Moreover, the authors themselves explain this in the paper.
Let's look at this in order. First, who is the company promoting? Next, what is that selection method causing? Then, why does the opposite happen? And what is the yardstick? Data on Japanese managers also appears in the latter half. Finally, I will provide four points to look at for both those who promote and those who are promoted.
Before the Answer, Look at Who the Company is Promoting
What this study found was not that "companies are choosing people at random." Sales figures clearly predicted who would be promoted. People whose sales were double those of their colleagues were 1.14 times more likely to be promoted.
In the paper's terms, this is "14.3% higher." This is a ratio relative to the original probability, not a point difference.
And when you hear "double the sales," you might imagine a special super-salesperson, but that's not it. Within the same company and the same month, someone who was in the middle would move into the top third. It's only that much of a difference.
In other words, this is about the "slightly better-selling person" found in any company.
That person gets promoted.
What That Selection Method Was Causing
There is another number in the same data.
When a person whose sales were double before promotion became a manager, the sales of each subordinate under them dropped by an average of 7.5%.
Promoting a top seller makes subordinates sell less.
Akie Iriyama of Waseda University describes this gap as follows:
A rank-and-file employee becoming a manager is a paradigm shift equivalent to "a sushi chef changing jobs to become a school teacher."
Being good at making sushi is no basis for being good at teaching a class. It's obvious, but this is exactly what is happening inside companies.
Iriyama explains the content of a manager's job as managing their organization, requiring them to face Excel for evaluations and budget management. It is a different beast from the job of selling.
There is a Forbes article that says this in one line for the sales world:
Sales success is about "me," but sales management success is about "the team."
Even though they both have the name "sales," the subject has swapped.
Promotion is also the act of removing a person from the job they were best at.
By the way, there is another explanation for why "the promoted person's own numbers drop": regression to the mean. The view is that someone who produced top numbers just before promotion had temporary luck, and they are simply returning to their original level afterward. However, this only explains the individual's numbers, not the subordinates'. This study was measuring the subordinates.
The authors themselves admit that since the combination of manager and subordinate is not random, this measurement method is not perfect.
Why Those Who Didn't Sell Well Can Grow Subordinates More
Let's return to the first point. However, this isn't a separate discovery from the 7.5% mentioned earlier. The stronger the selling power, the more the subordinates drop. We are just looking at the same single relationship from the opposite end.
The paper states: Among newly promoted managers, subordinate performance was significantly higher under those whose previous sales performance was relatively poor.
Why? The authors explain this not by the person's qualities, but by how they were selected.
Companies decide promotions based on sales. The more strongly that is applied, the harder it is for low-sales people to rise. The fact that someone rose anyway means that something other than sales was strong enough to overcome that low performance. Otherwise, they wouldn't have sat in that chair.
In other words, it's not that not being able to sell becomes a strength as a manager. Only those who broke through the system of being cut off by sales using something other than sales remain.
So, it's not a story of "it's better not to be able to sell to be a good boss." If you promoted everyone with poor sales performance to manager, this result would not be replicated. What is working is not the low sales of the individual, but the fact that they passed through a place where the sales yardstick was strictly applied using a different yardstick.
So, what is that other yardstick?
The Identity is Likely Not What You Think
The paper identifies one indicator that predicts post-promotion success.
The number of colleagues with whom they shared sales credit in transactions.
Sales performance is usually recorded under one person's name. However, depending on the project, multiple people may handle it and share the sales. When you count "how many people were partners in projects established together," those with a higher number grew their subordinates' sales more after becoming managers.
It's not personality, not being caring, and not leadership. It's how many people they shared credit with in the past.
And the decisive part is here.
This indicator was not consistently linked to promotion decisions.
Companies look at the amount of sales. They don't look at who they established it with. The authors write that if you want to maximize only the quality of managers, results could be better if you placed more weight on collaboration experience than on sales.
However, It Breaks the Moment You Put This into Personnel Evaluation
I think this is the most honest part of this paper.
The authors put a brake on their own discovery in a footnote:
If firms began to weight collaboration experience heavily in promotion decisions, workers could add fake collaborators by sharing sales credit.
They could just pretend they sold it together. That alone would raise the indicator.
In other words, this number could remain an honest number because no one was using it for evaluation. The moment it becomes an evaluation item, it starts measuring "manipulation that looks like collaboration experience" rather than "collaboration experience."
Indicators break when it is known they are being measured.
Companies Are Doing This Knowingly
So, why do companies promote top sellers despite knowing the cost? Clues appear in the latter half of the paper.
What the authors found was evidence that companies were adjusting the tug-of-war between "motivating people" and "choosing suitable people" themselves.
First: The heavier the responsibility of the management post, the less they emphasize sales performance in promotion decisions. For chairs with a large scope of responsibility, companies stop promoting "people who sold."
Second: The more strongly sales performance is rewarded as a commission, the less sales performance is used as material for promotion.
Flipped around, it means this: In companies where commissions are weak, you have to dangle promotion as a carrot to get people to work hard at their current job. Choosing by sales is not because they lack an eye for people, but because the selection method itself is part of the reward system.
Companies buy the cost of mismatch knowingly. Whether that is a deal worth the price is something the authors do not conclude.
Japanese Managers Sit on Top While Still Holding the Field
So far, this has been data on US sales positions. Before applying it directly to Japan, there is one major difference.
There is a survey conducted by the Sanno Institute of Management among managers of listed companies. It showed the following:
Of the 828 managers of listed companies who answered the survey, 99.5% held concurrent positions as players and managers.
And when business hours were weighted and averaged, 50.1% of a manager's job was work as a player. Half is still in the field. Furthermore, about half of the managers holding concurrent positions answered that "activities as a player interfere with management duties."
The US data was about "when promoted, that person moves away from the job they were best at."
Japanese managers do not move away completely.
The evaluation and budget management mentioned by Iriyama do not come in place of the selling job. They are placed on top while still holding the selling job.
The job they were best at becomes half, and they can only do half of the job they aren't used to. Whether the US data applies directly to Japan is unknown from this survey. What is known is that they only have half of their business hours to learn the part they aren't used to.
It is often said that "managers in Japan do not grow." Since they only have half of their business hours to grow, it can be said to be natural.
Four Things to Look at When a Promotion Offer Comes
When an offer comes, or when you are on the side of promoting someone, narrow down the items to look at to four based on the above materials.
1. Was that performance achieved alone?
Under people whose sales were double before promotion, each subordinate's sales dropped by an average of 7.5%. What predicted growth was not the amount of sales, but the number of partners they shared sales with. Count how many of those partners there are in previous projects. It's the number of people, not the number of cases. Numbers achieved alone do not tell you that.
2. Is that post heavy or light in responsibility?
What the paper found was a tendency for companies to stop choosing by sales performance for posts with a larger scope of responsibility. Flipped around, even for the same "promotion," what the company is looking at differs depending on the weight of responsibility. Therefore, it makes sense to check the scope before accepting. "To what extent can I decide for myself in this department?"
3. Is the company strong on commissions?
Companies with stronger commissions emphasized sales performance less in promotion decisions. Flipped around, in offers from companies with weak commissions, the meaning of evaluation and the meaning of a carrot are easily mixed. Before accepting, check what percentage of your salary moves based on results.
4. After rising, what percentage remains in the field?
Almost all Japanese managers hold concurrent positions, and half of their business hours are still in the field. Instead of asking "Is it a concurrent position?", ask "What percentage of business hours is player duties?" With this one question, you can tell what and how much is sitting on that chair.
Iriyama also says this about promotion offers:
You should think of it as actually being a demotion.
This is not a story about turning down a promotion. It's a story about being able to evaluate it as a career change to a different occupation.
People who didn't sell well grew their subordinates not because they didn't sell well. It was because they sat in that chair using a yardstick other than sales.
And companies are not looking at that yardstick. Because they aren't looking, that yardstick can still be honest.
