How To Avoid Making Rash Promises When Moving Up The Career Ladder

 Many new managers admit, when attending management training, that it is easy to be tempted to make rash promises when you are promoted to a management position. Making such promises early on has proven to be the undoing of many new managers.


A successful area sales manager has been promoted to sales chief. Along with many of his former co-workers he considered the allocation of sales areas in his company to be comparatively "meaningless." On his first day as sales chief he held a meeting with his sales team and announced that he was soon going to start reorganising the sales areas.

However, what he was completely unaware of is that his company is due to merge with one of its competitors within six months and for that reason the management had intentionally been delaying this badly needed reorganisation.

The formal publication therefore becomes an implausibility and the disappointment of the sales team is immense: “Once someone becomes the boss they don’t care about their former colleagues and their problems: it’s always the same.”

Jurgen Gerhardus, Managing Director of the VA Academy of Management and Sales shows how to circumvent false starts in a new position, irrespective of whether it is in your old business or a new one:

Ensure that you have a clear picture of the potential and restrictions of your new position before getting carried away and making any announcements. If you want to redistribute sales areas you must make sure you have the authority to do so. Do not promise or announce anything unless you are completely sure that you have received the green light from above.

Refuse to give in to the temptation of committing yourself to a specific style of management. This temptation is particularly great if you have been annoyed by the authoritarian management style of your predecessor. It is risky to make rash promises such as:

“If you ever have a problem my door is always open.”

“You know that I have come from your ranks and that I don’t think much of unilateral decisions.”

If you are overly accommodating with your former colleagues you will soon find that you are probably overwhelmed with work that they should in fact be doing. If your style of management is overly democratic this could also lead to you having to tolerate wrong decisions if these were made on a majority basis.

Do not let individual salespeople dictate too much. This is an issue that many newly appointed managers admit to on management training courses. Salespeople who were always sent off with a flea in their ear from your predecessor see your promotion as a good chance to change things. One such example is a salesperson who always complained that other salespeople had better areas than him. Find out as much information about your predecessor’s decisions before promising them a new area!

In case you were appointed because there are plans for radical and unpleasant changes such as scaling down the sales team, avoid any masquerade. It is easier to pretend that you don’t know anything about the plans in the first few days. But this type of behaviour only leads to you losing the trust and loyalty of your salespeople when the truth comes out! Do not gloss over things in order to survive the first few days without injury.

Tell your salespeople that there are going to be changes and that you will be discussing these with each of them individually at a given time.

If you want to make an inaugural speech to your sales team bear in mind the following three tips:

The first thing to do is to sell yourself and your qualifications to your sales team. Tell them what you have done in the past, the areas you have specialised in and the specialist knowledge that you have acquired. In short: let them know how you can contribute to the success of the company, the sales department and therefore their own success. However be careful not to lay it on too thick! Most people do not like people to blow their own trumpet.

Establish things you have in common: industry contacts, similar branch peaks and troughs, etc.

Make the salespeople warm to you by acknowledging their past performance: “You have managed to consistently extend your market share over the past few years.”

You will also make your salespeople warm to you if you let them know that you could use their help: “Can you please help me to get the hang of things, particularly in the first few days.” This will also give them a sense a value which is important to many sales people as taught on good management training courses. 

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