Organizational structure?

Generally speaking the national sales manager does exactly what the regional sales manager does however, the regional has several sales managers reporting to him or her. Your second question appears accurate. Most really good salesman make horrible sales managers. The reason they move up is for prestige or money perhaps both. The really smart ones stays as top salesman. That person can usually step all over his or her boss and get away with it because top management needs results not conversation. Generally speaking here she makes more money than their boss. I've not seen many people go from sales successfully in the marketing or logistics. One last thing is the rare person who can go from financial into sales. They are two separate mindsets. In most medium to large corporations there's more than sufficient room for financial person to continuing move up in an equal path with the sales department.