In businesses turning over less than £10 million per annum, it’s not uncommon for the Managing Director and the Sales Director to be the same person. For companies of all sizes, this may seem to be an efficient and cost-effective way to manage two sets of responsibility. Both roles involve overseeing growth and boosting profits, so it seems natural that if someone is good at one role, they’ll be able to manage both – right?

Unfortunately, not always.

Getting Perspective

One of the biggest drawbacks of allowing the Managing Director to be responsible for sales leadership is that it’s impossible for someone to get the right perspective when they’re looking in two very different areas. When the person in charge has to divide their attention between shaping the strategic vision and managing the sales team, important priorities can get sacrificed.

At the end of the day your company is looking to achieve a level of growth and this requires leadership from the person in charge of running the company. But there are still people in your organisation need the day to day activities managed in a task orientated way. While these two objectives have a direct correlation it can be challenging for any Managing Director to fulfill both well.

One is talking leading, which involves providing direction, vision and creating the right company culture for people to succeed. The other is more about managing the tasks, the targets and the objectives on a day to day basis. These may overlap, but they are not identical, and it’s difficult to maintain the perspective needed to be a leader to both areas at the same time. Allowing someone else to take over sales management of many tasks can be crucial for allowing the MD to keep his or her sights on the company’s business goals.

The Importance of Objectivity

It is hard to be totally objective if one key aspect of managing a company is to deal with strategy and direction and the other is more about tasks and targets. There are obvious strategic advantages to having a Managing Director with experience in a particular field, given their insight and industry expertise. But that background is a double-edged sword if they’re busy doing the tasks rather than managing others who can do this.

Strong leaders recognise when they shouldn’t do it all – and just because they can oversee sales and the big picture, for example, doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t appoint someone else to focus on one of those on their behalf.

The Danger Of Bias

Combined MD/Sales Leaders may also display bias justifying some types of behaviour from some employees (being late, missing targets, etc.), that they’d be less likely to excuse from staff in other departments. This understandably breeds frustration or resentment from other staff, and can lead to big problems with morale and teamwork. It can emanate from the MD having a background which has more empathy for one department than another.

It’s natural to have some bias towards our own areas of expertise, but a good MD needs to be able to set that aside to steer the direction of the business as a whole. Not everyone can do this, and dividing the roles is often the best way to avoid issues.

The Need To See Further

Even when there are no obvious issues, MDs benefit from having other leaders around. It’s difficult to challenge yourself to go further when you’re not sure what lies beyond, and it’s correlatively easy to fall into complacency when you don’t know how much further the business could be going. A sales manager can also be a leader and will need direction and encouragement to be allowed to fulfill this.

Other leaders can provide a fresh set of ideas, possibilities and perspectives – assets even the best MDs can’t generate on their own. This can be done through delegating and everyone understanding what the leadership and management tasks of the company are in relation to meeting the business and sales goals. MDs still worried about the cost of hiring someone for a role they could oversee would do well to factor some of the potential risks into their planning.