It’s common to come across a job advert where a company is looking for a project manager, but it turns out to be for a salesperson. Sometimes it even says “sales project manager”. Indeed, there are times when a salesperson needs to have project management skills as well, but not usually. Why companies call salespeople project managers is a deep mystery.
The two essential, specific jobs of a project manager are work planning and work control. Many tools are used for this purpose, perhaps the most prominent of which, specific to projects, is the Gantt chart.
Sometimes even stranger job adverts can be found – e.g. for “project manager-consultant” or “business systems analyst-project manager” or “logistics project manager”, even though none of the activities involve any projects.
It is strange why companies are so afraid to say the word “salesperson” and instead say “project manager”, even though such a “project manager” is not only not involved in anything even remotely resembling a project, but usually does not even understand the term itself.
It is strange why companies are so afraid to say the word “salesperson” and instead say “project manager”, even though such a “project manager” is not only not involved in anything even remotely resembling a project, but usually does not even understand the term itself.
Project management is a complex area, one of the more complex in management – it requires not only an understanding of how different departments interact, how different people work together as a team, but also knowledge of planning and controlling actions, as well as the authority to make high-level decisions and to foresee the indirect consequences of those decisions. When it is said that someone is a project manager (not in quotation marks), this is what is meant – that it is a manager who leads projects.
In reality, that’s the function of a project manager – he or she is just as much a co-manager in the company as the production manager, the finance manager, the customer service manager or the supply manager. It’s just that a project manager is not in charge of a process, but of a project – an activity with an end point that he or she organizes, implements, completes and then moves on to the next activity. Because projects have a beginning, an end and are unique, a very large part of the job is planning, using quite sophisticated tools such as PERT and Gantt charts.
When a mere salesperson is called a project manager, it is very naïve. This kind of name-calling reminds us of the fashion of calling salespeople (very often even cashiers) “managers”, which spread in Russia 20 years ago, but fortunately did not take hold in Lithuania. Meanwhile, in Russia, salespeople are still sometimes called that.
On the other hand, in Lithuania there is a trend to call salespeople who have nothing to do with management “managers”. So, the kind of “project manager” that is often sought is something like this. A manager who is neither a project manager nor a manager, but simply a salesperson.
When a company writes in its job adverts that it needs a project manager for an activity that doesn’t even smell like a project, this is a sign that the company has no project management skills whatsoever.
Let’s call salespeople salespeople. The sales process is not a simple one, and there is no need to add to the confusion by mixing it with project management. Words, and especially terms, have to mean what they are supposed to mean, so the right terminology is very important.
Pratura teikia procesų gerinimo paslaugas įvairiose srityse - projektų valdymo, tiekimo, pardavimų, gamybos, klientų aptarnavimo ir kt..
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