The next step is leadership development before headcount growth. Companies hire salespeople and assume leads will emerge on their own. Some do. At least, not without a structure built to produce it.
Dean Elali, founder of OSP, has spent years building a sales organization that works with Fortune 100 companies including AT&T, NRG, Xfinity, Vivint Home Security, and Verizon. His view on this is straightforward: a team of that size without developing a leader together with the number of heads creates something that cannot support its own weight.
Do Skip It
Growth creates pressure to fill seats. A manager who needs ten more reps this month will hire ten reps this month. Training new leaders takes longer and shows results later, so they lose out on faster tasks.
There is also a false assumption behind the skip: that the best players will be good managers. Selling well and developing others are different skills. A rep who hits every number alone can still fail to teach others how to do it.
When a company promotes on sales numbers alone, it often ends up with a manager who can’t coach, a team that stops improving, and turnover that eats up whatever recruits are saved.
What Happens When It’s Passed
Costs appear in a specific order.
New hires plateau early. Without a manager to coach them, reps learn the job through trial and error. Some get there. Many have stopped before.
Turnover is constant. Direct sales already have a natural turnover. Skipping leadership development increases, because representatives who do not see the way tend to leave the offer.
Businesses stop growing. A team led by one strong individual can only expand to the extent that it can be managed personally. Teams with a few developed leaders can open new territories, take on new partners, and grow without the founder touching every deal.
Dean Elali pointed to this last point as the real difference between companies that are growing and those that are just hiring. The OSP model views leadership development as something that allows the business to expand into new markets and new corporate partnerships, not as an extra step once the core team is set.
What Good Leadership Development Really Is
It is not a one-time workshop. A few things separate the actual development from the view.
A Structured Path, No Open Promises
People need to look at what their next role requires, not just what growth is “possible.” A path with clear steps, like running a small team before running a large one, gives new leaders a chance to build skills before being given responsibility.
Shadowing Before Authority
New leaders need to sit next to experienced ones before they get their own team. Watch how real managers deal with missed quotas, difficult clients, or reps who want to quit teaching you what a training manual can’t.
Feedback Happens Often, Not Just in Reviews
Teams that develop leaders well tend to have short, frequent check-ins rather than lengthy quarterly reviews. Small corrections early on prevent big problems later.
Exposure to the Whole Business, Not Just the Sales Floor
Reps who have only ever seen their own region struggle to lead if they are responsible for others. OSP’s approach includes exposure to both the field and the operational side of the business, as those selected for roles beyond sales must understand both.
A practical starting point
Companies that have gone through this step are not stuck. Fixing it isn’t complicated, but it does require discipline.
Starting by identifying two or three people who have done informal leadership, the other reps go to the question. Assign defined roles instead of keeping responsibilities informal. Pair every new hire with someone more advanced, not just a manager of some level. And measure managers on what the team produces over time, not just on the sales numbers themselves.
No one changed the rent. It changes what hiring the building into. Companies that develop leaders along with growth end up with a structure that can expand. One that doesn’t end up rebuilding the same team every year.