A great manager is an accelerant on your earnings and career trajectory. But only if you can get enough of their time, coaching, and mentorship.

Below is the ratio of sales professionals to their managers, for the tech industry in 2024.

You can see the ratios of managers managing individual contributors as well as director level leaders who are managing first line managers. (Hit me up on LinkedIn if this needs clarification.)

A couple quick-hitter thoughts:

1. At the earliest stages (<50), there simply aren’t a ton of folks to manage, so the managers will by default only have a handful.
2. At the later stages, the operational playbook is baked. Managers aren’t responsible for a lot of things directly, so they can manage more people.  I.e.:
   • There’s a separate team supporting contracts
   • There’s a separate team responsible for training
     There’s a separate team that will do the RFPs
3. As the organization grows and tasks can be off-loaded from the managers, they can’t use this extra time to better coach and mentor their team. They are just loaded with more team members.

All this said, ZIRP is over. It’s 2024 and I expect these columns to grow taller in the future as CFOs work to gain even MORE leverage from quota carrying reps. Because managers are “overhead,” and they don’t add to quota capacity.

But if/when you find yourself working for a great one, don’t take it for granted. Not everyone is afforded that luxury.