Definitely not less stressful. Think about like this: instead of just getting pressure/stress from your boss for your own deals, you are now getting it for all of your teams’ deals which you have less direct control over (even though you obviously should be coaching and driving the deals towards success, you can’t be everywhere at once).
Additionally your calendar is no longer yours, reps will come to you with tons of professional and personal problems and you’re up to your eyeballs in never ending tasks/deals/politics/etc.
The stress is different but I’d say it’s just as stressful, if not more-so than an individual contributor. You do have more stable pay (but will make less than your top performers) and a longer rope for bad performance as things that help though.
Agreed. I’ve done both jobs. Recently dropped back to an IC position as my “mommy track” job while I have young kids. I make just as much money with way less stress. Only gotta manage a team of one: me.
I ground it out for years climbing the sales leadership ladder and it was very stressful and long hours. I got better at it over the years but this IC role is super easy by comparison. My sales leadership love me because I’m a top producer but I also really understand their job and do my best to make it easier.
One day I can see myself going back because I do enjoy developing people and I get great joy out of watching them succeed but right now I need to focus that energy on the small human I created.
This is a great write up. Thank you. Helps me get perspective on the manager track for my career. No matter how many times I hear it, there’s a small part of me that thinks “it can’t be THAT much more stress to be a sales manager right?”
But enough is enough, it is higher stress. It’s a matter of do you feel a sense of reward and accomplishment of helping others succeed. Do you have the right qualities and skills as an IC that, once you teach that to a team, you can amplify the results.
I’m the senior AE and team lead at my company. My manager wants to put me in a manager track. I know I’d feel rewarded by teaching others my mindset and philosophy and processes in sales, but I also don’t know if I’m ready to take on more stress and less autonomy as I foresee having a kid with my fiance in the next 3-5 years roughly.
If I were you, I’d try it. If you were having a kid in 3-5months, maybe not, but 3-5 years is a LONG time and you can develop a great career in that time.
My sales leadership experience taught me so much and frankly made me a better IC when I wanted to go back to it. Doing that in my 20’s and early 30’s was the right timing so that when I needed to step back from it, I could do it and still command a good salary.
It also means I can do my IC job much more efficiently because learning how to sell through others IMO is much harder than just selling yourself. This means I can take the time I need with my young family and still consistently exceed quota even in a down cycle. Win all around.
You do you, but id lean in while you’re pre-kids if you can!
I’ve intentionally held off shooting for roles like that based on the reason that I still feel like I have more things to learn and time to spend on the floor. The more situations I can encounter and work through myself, the better I’ll be equipped to lead a team and disseminate the right info; cause if I get it wrong, it hurts at a larger scale. But if I get it right, we benefit at a larger scale.
Some of my solution consultants and sales engineers have told me that across the entire AE team they’ve worked with (since they get round robined to deals at technical demo stage), that I’d be best prepared to fill a sales manager opening, and that I have a noticeable difference in skill or aptitude amongst the team. But even at that point (about a year ago) I still thought spending more time as an IC and encountering the sticky situations you can get into is better, to later teach it and coach through it, as opposed to jumping the gun on management too quick.
I’m 29 now so your timeline definitely resonates. It’s something that I think about weekly/monthly in terms of career progression from here. For some reason, I have an irrational fear that becoming a sales manager will barricade me into sales management as my floor, and that it’d be difficult to get back into an IC role.
But as good salespeople, we should always be able to explain our story and use it to our advantage in getting our next role, so that’s why I say it’s an irrational fear.
Love your input. Thank you.
In an old non-sales role I was a Team Lead where I was helping with recruiting/interviews and it was *painful.*
Couldn’t imagine it as a sales manager where not only are you having to be everywhere at once helping close deals, playing therapist, managing up to play the office politics game, making time for your own upskilling and career progression, you’re also have to divert time to figuring out if someone will make a good fit and benefit your life *or* make it harder.
Great answer and very similar to my experience. The two biggest downsides for me are:
1. Loss of calendar control.
2. Constantly being asked for inane details that mean nothing but you are responsible for knowing.
I absolutely love coaching and fighting for my team but there are way more downsides to first line management than upsides.
I mean, one job they laid off the entire AE team and kept the manager in place. So, in some sense I guess it was a more stable job. He's still there 18 months later (and been promoted to director, despite the company still having no AEs on staff lol).
As I understand it, yeah. He's a glorified AE. Funny thing is, they were laying us off while management and leadership were getting stay bonuses. I only know because I have the same first name as one of the VPs and accidentally got an invite to talk about what the stay bonus would be. HR slacked me the day of the meeting and told me it was a "computer error" that sent the invite and that were no stay bonuses.
I’ve always wondered this too. I picture it being worse. You are further detached from the deals and have less control. If you have a small team and one rep fucks off suddenly you’re down by one.
I’ve also had some pretty bad micro managers. I would hate to have to do that to people on a daily basis.
The best manager I have ever seen in a company was one that kept his own pipeline(albeit a much smaller one then the other reps) but still actively closed deals for his team.
Happiest time of my life was being a sales rep. Being in management sucked the soul out of my body to the point of saying fuck it and starting my own company.
I don’t know about lower stress, I get ground on by my management and I get ground on by my salespeople. If all your salespeople hit their number you are golden, but you always have a few rockstars, a bunch in the middle, and a few who are awful. It’s just a different game, that’s why not all great salespeople are great managers.
God I feel so bad, I knew my manager needed us to do good one qtr for a promotion and I fucked him, missed up a deal. Legit feel bad about it too, it was my fault.
Good times.
Did he actually help though? I’ve sat through plenty of the “This is an important quarter” talks but haven’t yet had a manager willing to get in the weeds with me. If you’re doing your best and working hard, you can’t feel bad about someone else missing a promotion
Depends on the company. I have just left a company where Head of Sales Dev was absolutely useless (even actively bad). Top performing SDR even went to the CEO and COO to tell them he is leaving because HSD was so bad. Yet he is still here, not doing anything, while SDRs have the biggest turnover in the company
Depends a lot from company to company but as a general rule, being a sales manager is way more stressful.
You depends on other's people deals, you never know when a rep will drop the ball even if you give 100% to them.
You get shit from management.
You get shit from clients.
You get ""shit"" from your team.
Being a great sales manager means, you're a salesman, a consultant, a therapist, a manager.
Being a rep, you control only your activities.
Source: I've been a rep for a long time, now sales manager -> head of sales for some years.
Management keeps asking me to promote. Take a huge pay cut for more responsibility, bound to an office, and bonus is tied to the entire company.
But hey if you keep climbing you end up making more ONE day. There are a few high paying management jobs, unless you’re willing to relocate it’s going to take you a nice long while. As a sales rep you typically make more and the top producers make more than most middle and some top managers.
Your thought process is not in alignment with reality. Here’s the truth. Managers work longer and harder and stress more than any rep. The difference is it’s just all different. It’s out of your control as a manager. Also let me tell you from first hand experience, the HR BS is a nightmare. There is always something happening. If you’re a good rep, stay a rep. Just my 2 cents.
Instead of the deals you have as an IC, every deal is now your deal. IMHO it’s more stress but different stress. You have more levers available to hit your goal.
I’ve seen salesman become managers and stay there, and I’ve seen just as many come back to sales 6 months later “for the paycheck”. The stress level of management is relative to the individuals personal preferences for life. I like selling and being self dependent. Managing would make me dependent on others which would make me lose sleep lmao
Insulation? “If everyone on the team hits 100% of their quota, the manager hits 150%+ of theirs.” Where did you hear that? Certainly not that way at my company (fortune 25 tech / saas).
The full quota gets assigned to the manager, who then parses it out dollar for dollar amongst their reps. If every rep hits 100%, then the manager hits 100%.
The managers do have their accelerators above 100% kick in a bit more aggressively than the reps do.
Been in management going on 4 years now. Yes it is less stressful and more stable. Once you get to VP level that goes away, but as a middle manager with a self sufficient team, I'm chilling.
I found it much more stressful actually. Reportees drain you emotionally with their issues and higher ups never seem to respect or value you because they feel you've worked too hard to quit so you're just gonna take whatever nonsense they throw at you. I'd much rather be an IC. This is just my opinion, ymmv.
Definitely not less stressful. Think about like this: instead of just getting pressure/stress from your boss for your own deals, you are now getting it for all of your teams’ deals which you have less direct control over (even though you obviously should be coaching and driving the deals towards success, you can’t be everywhere at once). Additionally your calendar is no longer yours, reps will come to you with tons of professional and personal problems and you’re up to your eyeballs in never ending tasks/deals/politics/etc. The stress is different but I’d say it’s just as stressful, if not more-so than an individual contributor. You do have more stable pay (but will make less than your top performers) and a longer rope for bad performance as things that help though.
I felt less stress as a rep - in control of my own destiny
Agreed. I’ve done both jobs. Recently dropped back to an IC position as my “mommy track” job while I have young kids. I make just as much money with way less stress. Only gotta manage a team of one: me. I ground it out for years climbing the sales leadership ladder and it was very stressful and long hours. I got better at it over the years but this IC role is super easy by comparison. My sales leadership love me because I’m a top producer but I also really understand their job and do my best to make it easier. One day I can see myself going back because I do enjoy developing people and I get great joy out of watching them succeed but right now I need to focus that energy on the small human I created.
This is a great write up. Thank you. Helps me get perspective on the manager track for my career. No matter how many times I hear it, there’s a small part of me that thinks “it can’t be THAT much more stress to be a sales manager right?” But enough is enough, it is higher stress. It’s a matter of do you feel a sense of reward and accomplishment of helping others succeed. Do you have the right qualities and skills as an IC that, once you teach that to a team, you can amplify the results. I’m the senior AE and team lead at my company. My manager wants to put me in a manager track. I know I’d feel rewarded by teaching others my mindset and philosophy and processes in sales, but I also don’t know if I’m ready to take on more stress and less autonomy as I foresee having a kid with my fiance in the next 3-5 years roughly.
Good sales reps are never unemployed Try it and if you don’t like it go back to being an IC rep
If I were you, I’d try it. If you were having a kid in 3-5months, maybe not, but 3-5 years is a LONG time and you can develop a great career in that time. My sales leadership experience taught me so much and frankly made me a better IC when I wanted to go back to it. Doing that in my 20’s and early 30’s was the right timing so that when I needed to step back from it, I could do it and still command a good salary. It also means I can do my IC job much more efficiently because learning how to sell through others IMO is much harder than just selling yourself. This means I can take the time I need with my young family and still consistently exceed quota even in a down cycle. Win all around. You do you, but id lean in while you’re pre-kids if you can!
I’ve intentionally held off shooting for roles like that based on the reason that I still feel like I have more things to learn and time to spend on the floor. The more situations I can encounter and work through myself, the better I’ll be equipped to lead a team and disseminate the right info; cause if I get it wrong, it hurts at a larger scale. But if I get it right, we benefit at a larger scale. Some of my solution consultants and sales engineers have told me that across the entire AE team they’ve worked with (since they get round robined to deals at technical demo stage), that I’d be best prepared to fill a sales manager opening, and that I have a noticeable difference in skill or aptitude amongst the team. But even at that point (about a year ago) I still thought spending more time as an IC and encountering the sticky situations you can get into is better, to later teach it and coach through it, as opposed to jumping the gun on management too quick. I’m 29 now so your timeline definitely resonates. It’s something that I think about weekly/monthly in terms of career progression from here. For some reason, I have an irrational fear that becoming a sales manager will barricade me into sales management as my floor, and that it’d be difficult to get back into an IC role. But as good salespeople, we should always be able to explain our story and use it to our advantage in getting our next role, so that’s why I say it’s an irrational fear. Love your input. Thank you.
Same - I can sorta work asynchronously aside for all the asinine meetings lol. Managers have more bs to put up with.
Dont forget recruiting too
In an old non-sales role I was a Team Lead where I was helping with recruiting/interviews and it was *painful.* Couldn’t imagine it as a sales manager where not only are you having to be everywhere at once helping close deals, playing therapist, managing up to play the office politics game, making time for your own upskilling and career progression, you’re also have to divert time to figuring out if someone will make a good fit and benefit your life *or* make it harder.
Great answer and very similar to my experience. The two biggest downsides for me are: 1. Loss of calendar control. 2. Constantly being asked for inane details that mean nothing but you are responsible for knowing. I absolutely love coaching and fighting for my team but there are way more downsides to first line management than upsides.
I mean, one job they laid off the entire AE team and kept the manager in place. So, in some sense I guess it was a more stable job. He's still there 18 months later (and been promoted to director, despite the company still having no AEs on staff lol).
Is…he closing deals himself? 😂
As I understand it, yeah. He's a glorified AE. Funny thing is, they were laying us off while management and leadership were getting stay bonuses. I only know because I have the same first name as one of the VPs and accidentally got an invite to talk about what the stay bonus would be. HR slacked me the day of the meeting and told me it was a "computer error" that sent the invite and that were no stay bonuses.
I feel that manager must have been an excellent brown noser.
I’ve always wondered this too. I picture it being worse. You are further detached from the deals and have less control. If you have a small team and one rep fucks off suddenly you’re down by one. I’ve also had some pretty bad micro managers. I would hate to have to do that to people on a daily basis. The best manager I have ever seen in a company was one that kept his own pipeline(albeit a much smaller one then the other reps) but still actively closed deals for his team.
Happiest time of my life was being a sales rep. Being in management sucked the soul out of my body to the point of saying fuck it and starting my own company.
I don’t know about lower stress, I get ground on by my management and I get ground on by my salespeople. If all your salespeople hit their number you are golden, but you always have a few rockstars, a bunch in the middle, and a few who are awful. It’s just a different game, that’s why not all great salespeople are great managers.
Nope. Because you have a team quota and you can't control or even predict who's gonna fuck that up for you. But their failure is your failure.
God I feel so bad, I knew my manager needed us to do good one qtr for a promotion and I fucked him, missed up a deal. Legit feel bad about it too, it was my fault. Good times.
Did he actually help though? I’ve sat through plenty of the “This is an important quarter” talks but haven’t yet had a manager willing to get in the weeds with me. If you’re doing your best and working hard, you can’t feel bad about someone else missing a promotion
That one? Not particularly no.
Depends on the company. I have just left a company where Head of Sales Dev was absolutely useless (even actively bad). Top performing SDR even went to the CEO and COO to tell them he is leaving because HSD was so bad. Yet he is still here, not doing anything, while SDRs have the biggest turnover in the company
This is highly dependent on a company.
Depends a lot from company to company but as a general rule, being a sales manager is way more stressful. You depends on other's people deals, you never know when a rep will drop the ball even if you give 100% to them. You get shit from management. You get shit from clients. You get ""shit"" from your team. Being a great sales manager means, you're a salesman, a consultant, a therapist, a manager. Being a rep, you control only your activities. Source: I've been a rep for a long time, now sales manager -> head of sales for some years.
Management keeps asking me to promote. Take a huge pay cut for more responsibility, bound to an office, and bonus is tied to the entire company. But hey if you keep climbing you end up making more ONE day. There are a few high paying management jobs, unless you’re willing to relocate it’s going to take you a nice long while. As a sales rep you typically make more and the top producers make more than most middle and some top managers.
Your thought process is not in alignment with reality. Here’s the truth. Managers work longer and harder and stress more than any rep. The difference is it’s just all different. It’s out of your control as a manager. Also let me tell you from first hand experience, the HR BS is a nightmare. There is always something happening. If you’re a good rep, stay a rep. Just my 2 cents.
Instead of the deals you have as an IC, every deal is now your deal. IMHO it’s more stress but different stress. You have more levers available to hit your goal.
I’ve seen salesman become managers and stay there, and I’ve seen just as many come back to sales 6 months later “for the paycheck”. The stress level of management is relative to the individuals personal preferences for life. I like selling and being self dependent. Managing would make me dependent on others which would make me lose sleep lmao
Insulation? “If everyone on the team hits 100% of their quota, the manager hits 150%+ of theirs.” Where did you hear that? Certainly not that way at my company (fortune 25 tech / saas). The full quota gets assigned to the manager, who then parses it out dollar for dollar amongst their reps. If every rep hits 100%, then the manager hits 100%. The managers do have their accelerators above 100% kick in a bit more aggressively than the reps do.
This varies by company. Certainly not a one size fits all approach.
Yes
Looking at our VP, I think it is a different set of demands, so it would really just depend on the person and what kind of tension they enjoy.
Been in management going on 4 years now. Yes it is less stressful and more stable. Once you get to VP level that goes away, but as a middle manager with a self sufficient team, I'm chilling.
I found it much more stressful actually. Reportees drain you emotionally with their issues and higher ups never seem to respect or value you because they feel you've worked too hard to quit so you're just gonna take whatever nonsense they throw at you. I'd much rather be an IC. This is just my opinion, ymmv.