Rules of the Game A few years ago, Randy Leeds, president and owner of Thermo-Tite Windows, in Port Chester, N.Y., decided to shed his sales manager duties. To replace himself, Leeds selected Ray Van Buren, a salesman who Leeds knew had prior experience owning a business and with whom he planned to work closely. “Most salespeople can’t make the transition to management,” says Leeds, who started out selling for the company 16 years ago and ultimately became its owner and president. “I couldn’t take every phone call. I said: Who can I trust?” His candidate, having once owned a business, “understood profit and loss.”

Leeds considered hiring someone from outside. But not for long. His reasoning? Hiring someone from outside would make for a difficult transition of one or two years. The salespeople would have less difficulty handling one of their own.

“We have a veteran salesforce,” Leeds says. “Most have been here 10-plus years.” Nonetheless, he says, “certain guys freaked out a little bit. They came to me and said: ‘How is this going to affect me?’”

Leeds told the new sales manager that he wouldn’t have to work as much on weekends, and he put him on salary, with an annual bonus if he hit sales and profit targets. “I told him that it’s not a 9 to 5 job. It brings a lot of responsibility.”

A key part of the educational process has been to learn the relationships between sales, administration, and production. In this case, the biggest obstacle to overcome is enforcing the rules. “The biggest challenge has been making him tougher,” Leeds says. “He’s a nice person, a natural negotiator, and a peacemaker. I’ve been teaching him to draw the line in the sand, and make it his line. Letting him know he can say: ‘You’re fired!’ Or, ‘If you don’t do what I want, you’re not getting these leads.’ And then sticking to it. A manager has to be consistent. And the toughest thing to teach is consistency.”