In Sales, career progression often means advancing into leadership. But what if the best path for you isn’t always forward? Jon Bratton, Senior Director of Sales at unitQ, joins SalesTV to explore the moments when stepping back into an individual contributor role can actually accelerate long-term leadership success.

In this episode, we'll ask:

* Why do some top-performing sellers struggle when they become managers?

* What indicates when someone is truly ready to lead others?

* When does returning to an individual contributor (IC) role make sense?

* What can organizations do to support both IC and leadership career paths?

Jon’s career has included startups and global tech giants, with senior leadership roles at Microsoft, Snowflake, and Hivemind. But what sets him apart is how deliberately he’s navigated both sides of the individual contributor and leadership elements of his career path. His thoughtful approach brings clarity to a conversation often clouded by ego and assumptions.

Facts, the latest thinking, chat, and banter about the world of sales.

Come and join us for some lively discussion and debate.

This week's Guest was -

• Jon Bratton, Senior Director of Sales at unitQ

This week's Host was -

• Rob Durant, CEO of US Operations at The Institute of Sales Professionals

Transcript of SalesTV.live Mid-Day Edition 2025-04-01

Rob Durant [00:00:01]:

Good morning. Good afternoon. And good day wherever you're joining us from. Welcome to another edition of sales TV live. Today, we're talking about how some of the best sales leaders start by stepping back. We're joined by Jon Bratton, senior director of sales at UnitIQ. Jon's career has included startups and global tech giants with senior leadership roles at Microsoft, Snowflake, and Hivemind. But what sets him apart is how he's deliberately navigated both sides of the individual contributor and leadership elements of his career path.

Rob Durant [00:00:45]:

Jon, welcome.

Jon Bratton [00:00:47]:

Yes. Thank you, Rob. Yeah. Pleasure to be here. It's unit q. Just a little, correction there. But, yeah, very

Rob Durant [00:00:56]:

Oh my gosh. Did I get it wrong? I thought I had said it we practiced beforehand and everything. I am so so sorry. Jon, let's start by having you tell us a little bit more about you, your background, and what led you to where you are today.

Jon Bratton [00:01:12]:

Yeah. Great. Well, so I'm currently senior director of sales here at UnitQ. I've been in sales for about twenty years now. And in that time, I've worked from seed stage startups through to, hyperscale and even a stint at Microsoft. So I've experienced really all the different sizes and stages of a tech company and in that time I've experienced an acquisition, I've been through two IPOs and then eighteen months ago I moved my family from London to San Francisco, which is where I'm speaking to you from right now.

Rob Durant [00:01:50]:

Wow. That's no small move.

Jon Bratton [00:01:53]:

Yeah. It's been great. It's been, it's been just very exciting to get into the thick of it, and bring my family here as well to experience American life. Yeah. It's been a wonderful eighteen months. Excellent.

Rob Durant [00:02:08]:

So, Jon, let's jump right into it. What do you mean when you say some of the best sales leaders start by stepping back?

Jon Bratton [00:02:16]:

Right. Well, you know, having been in the world of sales for twenty years now, I've done numerous individual contributor roles. I've done, also at least three leadership roles and what I've found is really you know Microsoft is the outlier on my CV. All of my work history is in startups and scale ups. And, whilst I absolutely loved my time at Microsoft, the large corporate enterprise wasn't really for me longer term. So just by nature of the path that I followed, for most of my career I've been in London and the kind of thing that I've looked for have been US companies who are investing in building teams in the European region. So that's what leads me to people like UnitQ, where I was the first hire in London and brought there to build out the European region. And so with that, when you're the only person in the region, you really have to roll up your sleeves, you have to do lead gen, you have to manage customer relationships, you have to close new pipeline, and you also have to operate at quite a strategic level as well as you think about partners, marketing plans and hiring.

Jon Bratton [00:03:46]:

So there's quite frequently in my career been examples of where I've left one job as a leader and gone into another job as a individual contributor with a path to leadership. And, I've always been good with that. I mean, sales for me is just a wonderful job. I would argue it's the best job in the world. You just can't beat, going out meeting with prospects and customers and managing and building those relationships. And so I've always been very happy to sort of take my career in that direction where I go back to an individual contributor with a view to proving and demonstrating success and then, you know, earning the right to build out a team within the region around me.

Rob Durant [00:04:36]:

So what are some of the biggest misconceptions about becoming a sales leader?

Jon Bratton [00:04:44]:

Well, that is a good question. So, I mean, I can I can only speak from my experience where I I did my first leadership role within Microsoft, and that was in my early thirties? So I'd already done a a pretty decent stint in sales, before then. And I I had a really good manager before I moved into that leadership role. And I was actually quite inspired by that manager. And I therefore felt very compelled to go into leadership. And truth be told I didn't really like that leadership role too much. I wasn't ready to leave behind all of the things that I absolutely loved about sales in the first place, which is the autonomy, the direct ownership of the relationships, the the lack of routine that was always a big driver for me. You know, no two weeks are the same, very rarely two days are the same.

Jon Bratton [00:05:49]:

And instead I was sat at a desk in an office managing a team of people who are also right there. So I guess, I just wasn't really prepared for it in my own mind as to exactly what it is that I was moving into. Now, there were parts of the job that I really enjoyed, but overall, it made me realize that actually I wanted to go back into an individual contributor role. And so that's what I did after doing that for a year. And then subsequently when I've gone back into leadership roles, I have gone in really eyes wide open, completely understanding what it is and I've grown to absolutely love the leadership role now, and everything that that, brings to my working life. So I think, really before moving into a leadership position people have to really ask themselves what the driver and the motivation is. Is it because they are chasing a title or they're chasing like the power as it were, or is it because they really enjoy developing people and they've mastered their craft and they want to now contribute to the upskilling of younger generations who are coming into the workforce or coaching people who are you know climbing and quite far up in their expertise levels but just you know coaching them to to get even better.

Rob Durant [00:07:26]:

Are there risks associated with moving into a leadership role too early in one's career?

Jon Bratton [00:07:34]:

I personally believe that it is a huge benefit to have a few different managers before you go into a leadership role. As I said, I had a manager who inspired me. I've had many great managers and I've also had managers where I did not like their style And I learned more from that those experiences than I did with the people who I really liked. Because when you like the manager, everything just sort of seems to flow easier and you're just on the same wavelength and you get each other. But when you get into a situation where you're not quite on the same on that same wavelength or maybe your style does not quite match the way that that person likes to run the team and you see how they, manage you, I think that there's huge learnings in that. And it's definitely guided and directed me as a leader as to, you know, what I do and don't want to be for my team. And it's helped me spot if I'm ever starting to to display any behaviors that I think actually is would I want to be in this team that I'm managing? You know? And it helps keep myself in check.

Rob Durant [00:08:54]:

Fair enough. So why do some top performing sellers struggle when they become managers?

Jon Bratton [00:09:02]:

Well, some, a lot of the time, there's no structured path into leadership. And if you're with a larger corporation, then a lot of the time you do get that structure. But, I think it's very important to to have that path. That's not to say that it's all upon the company, the employer to give you all those skills. There's an incredible amount of resource that people can go and consume right now to help them in that journey. So for example if you're thinking about leadership, you should be reading some books about leadership. You should be listening to the podcasts that are made for sales leaders of which there are many. So you can start to understand or start to get in the sort of mind frame of a sales leader and understand what the challenges are for someone who's managing a team.

Jon Bratton [00:09:56]:

Because they're very different challenges to what an individual contributor has who's managing their own forecast and really like a small v team of people around them that might be as, like a a sales engineer or an inside salesperson. You've got a a broad team of many different, skill sets, and it's how to, get everybody working, you know, in the same sort of, formation, but also not totally robotic. So you don't give people that opportunity to do do things in their own way, to some extent while still playing by the playbook.

Rob Durant [00:10:37]:

Okay. So, what indicates when somebody is truly ready to lead others?

Jon Bratton [00:10:48]:

So I think that there is a natural energy, from people. You can tell that really when when people walk in the room in the morning, have they got the kind of energy and spirit that lifts people? I think that's a really big part of it. People, lots of the time, start, almost sort of mentoring and and being a leader without being in that role. So examples of that would be when there's new starters on the team or there's new SDRs joining the organization, and they're very active in helping them ramp up, and making them productive. And then I think that it's just that natural desire to really want to then go and help people and coach people. I think they're they're the they're the key things. And then there are some quite sort of what you'd say standard or generic things I guess around just being very good with numbers, high level of organization, someone who's very structured in their work and isn't just guided by their inbox every day. Like, they know what they want to achieve, and they they they clear a path for themselves to do that.

Jon Bratton [00:12:09]:

And I think all of those things are very important because when you've got a team of people who, more often than not, some of them are working remotely, it's a whole new experience having to manage and develop those people. So there's there's a a level of EQ and a level of maturity that's required for that.

Rob Durant [00:12:31]:

That makes sense. I think the question a lot of people in the audience are asking right now, asking themselves is, how can I tell if I'm better suited to stay in an individual contributor role instead of moving into management? And is that a bad thing if I do?

Jon Bratton [00:12:53]:

So sales is a unique job. I know lots of people who have been in individual contributor roles all their career and many are also older than I am and they have no desire to ever go into leadership and they work through different senior sales roles where they'll manage strategic account relationships, maybe go on to manage one or two large accounts. There are other people who like to go and you know follow the technology trends, the earnings of an individual contributor can quite frequently be more than than their first line manager or the the the manager above them. So I think it's really just asking yourself what what does success look like? For me and it's not something that I just knew from the start it's through making some it's through making some decisions and putting myself into some uncomfortable positions where I totally understand that for me success is waking up in the morning and just being really happy and excited about what I do. And then what I found is anytime I've been in that position doors open and good things happen. So for example at UnitQ when I joined nearly three years ago I was the only person in London, and I was there to build out the European region. And, about seven months into the role, I was asked to manage the entire sales team who, most of which were in, North America. And whilst I was very, very pleased to get that job and jumped at the opportunity, I was never necessarily like, I wasn't pursuing that.

Jon Bratton [00:14:47]:

I was just doing good work and enjoying what I did, and and I don't think you can fake that, you certainly can't fake that for a long period of time. And that's what I mean about like getting up and being happy and motivated and enjoying what you do. Not only will you just be more successful, make more money, close more sales, but, you will you will find doors open and opportunities come to you that maybe you didn't even expect. So I think there's there's some element of that in it, but I'm definitely not saying that you shouldn't have a plan. I'm just saying that whatever even if you have a plan to become a leader, if you're not actually doing something that you enjoy there and then day to day, I think your opportunity to go into leadership within that organization is significantly hindered. So I would really just think long and hard about what it is that you love about sales. You know, as I said for me it was autonomy and being out on the road and meeting different customers, having different conversations, solving problems every day. And then as I've matured, and I've had a taste of leadership and I've then gone on to develop that, now for me it's an absolute joy to lead and manage a team but they're two very different things.

Jon Bratton [00:16:11]:

So I think that it's also okay to still not quite know like should I stay in sales and as an individual contributor or should I go into leadership and if you've got if you're surrounded by good people, a good manager where you can talk about these things there may well be opportunities for you to take on some additional responsibilities from time to time within the team and dip your toe in the water, test it out, see how you like it, maybe lead a recruitment process for another AE that's going to come in because you don't think about all these things. Hiring people is extremely hard and if you've never done that before then you need to be involved in that kind of process to understand really how do you test for all of the things that makes a salesperson highly effective. These are all things where all the books or all the podcasts in the world can only do so much for you, you need experience but a great mentor there side by side with you will, really, really help you.

Rob Durant [00:17:22]:

So if I am not sure whether or not leadership is right for me, but opportunity presents itself, and I take that chance. Can returning to an individual contributor role hurt my credibility or future promotion potential?

Jon Bratton [00:17:41]:

Well, I say no. Absolutely. It it won't hurt. I I did it myself after that initial year at Microsoft, I moved back into an individual contributor role and then I've been in to leadership you know another three times since so it definitely doesn't hurt or hinder any chances of career progression later on, absolutely not. Great sales people are very very hard to identify in the market and if you are able to demonstrate your your skills with a desire to move into leadership then people will hire you and they'll have that in mind and you can even talk about assistance on that path as the company that you're with grows and scales. And scenarios may be slightly different if you're within a large corporate versus a start up, but I think, the principle of it doesn't doesn't change. You know, it's it's a maturity thing to understand what you should actually do right now. Success is rarely linear.

Rob Durant [00:18:52]:

I like that. You mentioned assistance. What can organizations do to support both the individual contributor and those on leadership career paths?

Jon Bratton [00:19:07]:

Structured enablement is, is critical really at any organization that you're with. So I would always look for that both in the individual contributor role and for paths to leadership. And even in the smaller companies, it doesn't take a full time sales enablement team to be able to offer these enablement paths. There are lots of ways to do it, ISP is a great example but there you know there are others where you can have outside organizations and bodies provide really solid frameworks for you to work towards and follow and test your skills and abilities as you go. So the enablement programs are certainly a big part of it, but the the people within the business are so key they must encourage and give teams the opportunity and time to do their enablement and not just treat it as a sort of do it whenever you can thing it really should have its specific time in the in the calendar, and it should be given the care and attention it needs where you should get feedback on all of the things that you're doing, and understand what you're doing well and where you need to put some additional focus.

Rob Durant [00:20:42]:

So, last question that I have is how can leaders maintain credibility if they've been away from frontline selling for too long?

Jon Bratton [00:20:56]:

So that is, again, one of the reasons why I do like selling, because it when you've been in the trenches, when you've carried a bag and you know the sales cycle, you've experienced it, you've lived it, you've gone through all the objections, you've gone through the legal review process, then I think that you have lots of credibility as a leader within the business that you're in. But that's not always possible, you know people don't don't always have the opportunity to do that and they follow like they will go into a leadership role within a business, and I think that it's the methodologies and the processes that are followed. For example lots of people use MEDDPIC which is just fantastic, but it it's something that when it's used properly and correctly, you can be very thorough in your deal reviews with your team without needing to have tons of experience within that business yourself because it's just the classic, you know, have you got a champion? Have you identified and quantified the pain? Have you qualified the routes to budget, and then you're really just enabling good conversations with the reps that you manage which makes them think. So it's not the advice that you're giving, giving. It's the questions that you're answering with asking, which is, creating the the thoughts and helping the reps identify the gaps in their deals, and I think that's really key for credibility. Awesome.

Rob Durant [00:22:40]:

Jon, if you were to emphasize the one thing you would want our audience to take away from today's episode, what would that one thing be?

Jon Bratton [00:22:50]:

Yeah I would say just making the point again around success doesn't have to be linear you know it's not job titles or base salaries and if you're only chasing those things then you're going to get into periods of time where you're struggling in your career and that always spills over into your personal life. If you love what you do every day then money and success they will come to you and doors will open and my biggest breaks have happened when I've just been doing work that I am really passionate about and I love you know every day get up excited about what I'm doing and when you're in that mode really the the world's your oyster so I would I would always just keep reflecting on what it is that makes you happy, what it is you enjoy about the job, and follow your your head as well as your heart when it comes to what you want to be spending a significant proportion of your life doing, on a daily basis.

Rob Durant [00:23:54]:

Fantastic. Jon, this has been great. How can people learn more? Where can they get in touch with you?

Jon Bratton [00:24:00]:

So, yes, I'm on LinkedIn. You'll certainly find me there. And also you feel free to email me. I'm Jon, j o n, at unit q dot com. I'll be pleased to hear from anyone.

Rob Durant [00:24:11]:

Excellent. We now have a newsletter. Don't miss an episode. Get show highlights, beyond the show insights, and reminders of upcoming episodes. You can scan the QR code on screen or visit us at sales tv dot live and click on newsletter. This has been another edition of sales TV live. On behalf of everyone at everyone at sales TV, To our guest Jon and to our audience, thank you for being an active part in today's conversation, and we'll see you again next time. Bye all.

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