It sounds simple, and maybe that’s why it’s profound. The best advice I have heard about being a manager, especially when managing people in sales, is to remember that the people you manage are not you.

The advice comes from Dave Kahle, a consultant who specializes in distributor sales.

“It’s natural for managers to expect their salespeople to have the same mind-set, drive, ambition and intensity they do because that’s the manager’s frame of reference,” he says.

His advice to distributors who manage salespeople is simple: “Your salespeople are not you. They don’t have your drive. They don’t have your intensity, your energy. If they did, they’d be in your spot and not you.”

Many managers were once in sales themselves and assume people who work for them will act the same way they did when they were in their shoes.

“The job of a sales manager is to help them become who they are and not necessarily impose your perspective on them,” he says.

There’s a major difference between being a salesperson and being a sales manager. A salesperson does it himself. A sales manager does it through other people.

“Many people who can do it very well themselves can’t do it through other people,” says Kahle.

A mistake managers sometimes make is failing to provide regular feedback to employees. As the article “How am I doing?” shows, 54 percent of the distributor salespeople who responded to a recent survey say their managers are poor/adequate in conducting regular performance reviews. If distributors don’t provide regular feedback to employees — either in the form of performance review meetings or through effective compensation systems that reward appropriate behavior — then it should come as no surprise if salespeople tend to founder.

Another common mistake managers make is when they think it’s their job to solve all of the company’s problems.

In our story called “The answer to all your problems,” Chuck Holmes suggests three questions to ask before attempting to solve any problem. Doing so will dramatically reduce the number of problems managers have to deal with. He also includes a three-step model for dealing with the problems that are left.