One day, success was about what you could personally deliver. The next, you're responsible for an entire team — and nobody warned you the rules had completely changed.
Targets still matter. Results still matter. But now your success depends on other people — and very little about being a high-performing individual contributor prepares you for that shift.
OH SHIT, I'M THE SALES MANAGER is the practical guide to your first 90 days as a sales leader. Built from two decades of real experience leading sales teams, it skips the theory and gets straight to what actually happens after the promotion: the panic, the awkward conversations, the mistakes, and the lessons nobody tells you until you're living them.
It started with a McDonald's breakfast.
The whole team. Sausage and egg McMuffins. Hash browns. Coffee. Sitting together in the back before the doors opened on what was shaping up to be one of the biggest Saturdays we'd seen in months.
We'd earned it.
The team were getting praised across the region for their numbers. The area manager had called out the store on the Monday call — not to ask questions, to give credit. The energy in the team was exactly where you want it to be going into a big trading day.
The previous few weeks had been exceptional. Instead of protecting what we'd built, I decided to improve it.
Superpowered by sausage and egg McMuffin energy, I thought we were capable of much more.
That's the thing about momentum. Once everything is working, you stop protecting success and start chasing perfection.
A few days earlier, riding that wave of confidence, I had come up with what I thought was a brilliant idea.
Every sale had to be signed off by me before it could be processed.
No exceptions.
If every consultant checked in with me before completing a transaction, I could make sure every opportunity had been maximised — add-ons offered, accessories discussed, nothing missed. And if a deal was slipping away, I could step in and save it.
In my head, it sounded like elite leadership.
For the first couple of days, it even appeared to work. The store was quieter during the week. Customer volume was lower. Every box was ticked. The numbers looked fantastic.
I genuinely thought I had cracked the code.
Then Saturday arrived.
We walked straight out onto the shop floor off the back of that breakfast, full of energy, full of belief, ready for whatever the high street was about to throw at us.
The moment the doors opened, the volume hit us like a tidal wave.
Consultants started joining the line waiting for my sign-off. One contract. Then another. Then another. The queue got longer. Customers sat waiting. Consultants grew frustrated. The entire store slowed down.
The system that looked brilliant on a quiet Tuesday completely collapsed under real pressure.
Then came the moment I will never forget.
One of my consultants had done everything right. Built rapport. Asked great questions. Handled objections. Presented the right solution. Closed the sale. The customer was ready to buy.
There was just one problem.
They needed my sign-off.
The consultant joined the line. The customer sat patiently waiting. Five minutes. Ten minutes. I was buried in somebody else's transaction.
The customer started checking their watch. Then looking towards the door. Then back at the consultant.
Eventually they stood up.
"No worries. I'll come back another day."
They didn't.
The following day was my day off. I kept one eye on the daily sales messages.
What I saw hit me like a punch in the stomach. The quality metrics had completely fallen apart — content pack and video minutes attachment, accessory sales, commercial performance, all of it gone.
The moment I wasn't there, performance disappeared.
I hadn't built capability. I had built compliance.
