|
Welcome to our third article in the series “You Can Always Sell More: How To Improve Any Sales Force!” In this third article we will discuss how to strengthen the skills and focus of your sales leadership. There are five Central Leadership Values critical to all sales leaders. What can you do to incorporate more of these five attributes into your leadership style? The First Central Leadership Value - Being A “Leader” Instead Of Just The “Lead Doer” There are really only three positions in an organization: Doers - A “doer” is anyone who has no direct, or indirect, reports. Doing Managers - A “doing manager” is someone responsible for some type of personal production while also leading others. A sales manager who carries territory is a “doing manager.” Managing Managers - A “managing manger’s” job is to make sure all of their people have the training, resources, and shared vision necessary to achieve their goals. Over 75% of sales managers are “doing managers.” The most common reason is their sales force is too small to warrant a full time leader. An accepted standard is a team with less than six reps does not need a full time manager freeing up that manager’s time to direct selling. The Second Central Leadership Value - Being balanced as a Coach, Disciplinarian, And Number Cruncher Your success as a sales leader will be based on your ability to balance your skills as a coach, disciplinarian, and number cruncher. There is a simple test you can take (or administer to others) to identify your personal bias. Write down in bulleted form all the responsibilities of a sales manager. Next assign to each answer one of three bias: - Coaching bias - Your focus is to coach and lead each team member - Number Crunching bias - Your focus is to keep score and to numerically monitor each team member’s progress. - Disciplinarian bias - Your focus is to maintain the discipline, deadlines and consistency of each team member. Total the number of responsibilities assigned to each bias to identify your own leadership bias. There is no one best “bias” to have. Your bias is best defined by what others are missing. The Third Central Leadership Value - Having Empathy, Loyalty and Trust In Your Sales team The third value involves your ability as a leader to be open and empathetic. Your people will not care to learn until they learn you care. You cannot successfully lead until each team member believes you are on their side and truly care about their personal success. A successful sales leader offers more than suggestions, critiques and ideas...she also offers support and affirmations. Salespeople receive more than enough negative comments from their customers and others within their company. This is not suggesting you just become a positive “pumper” avoiding anything negative. The key is to make sure your overall communications are positive to keep your team motivated. You cannot effectively lead a team until they decide they want you as their leader. The Fourth Central Leadership Value - Being A “Leadership Visionary” Visionary leadership requires you to combine staying proactively focused while also maintaining a “future focus” in your conversations and planning. How much time last week did you spend initiating proactive actions? Most sales managers are only reactive “transaction managers.” The majority of their time is spent solving reactive transaction based problems such as special pricing, order expediting or invoicing. Though all team members need to be proactive, the reality is most are almost completely reactive in their selling efforts. Thinking Multiple Moves Ahead, The Second Critical Component Of Being A Visionary Leader How many moves ahead do you communicate as a leader of your sales team? The majority of sales people only utilize a “next best move” strategy to manage their territory. Your goal as a sales leader is to help your team see and think more moves ahead than they do now. You can’t change the past as a manager but you can impact the future as a leader. The Fifth Central Leadership Value - Believing In The Structures Of Selling The fifth central leadership value is your belief in the structures of selling. The majority of sales reps are intuitive by nature. They see selling as an art instead of a science and believe that since each customer and buying situation is unique so should every sales call also be unique. How structured and consistent are the members of your team? Helping your people understand and apply the steps and structures of selling can significantly increase their consistency and also improve their competitive advantage. In our fourth article we will discuss how to evaluate your sales leadership team and design an improvement plan to help them lead your entire sales force to even greater success. Want even more ideas? Then read my book “You Can Always Sell More - How To Improve Any Sales Force.” This 300+ page book outlines the entire process described in these articles. Call 800-526-0074 or go to GreatSalesSkills.com. I congratulate you for your interest in continuing to work through these articles as you strengthen the skills and competitive advantage of your sales team. May you enjoy the process. Reprint with permission “You Can Always Sell More – How To Improve Any Sales Force” ISBN #0-471-73915-4 John Wiley & Sons. Copyright 2008 Jim Pancero, Inc.
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 4119 Comments (0)
|
||||||||||
Subscribe to this comment's feed
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Sales Articles
| Communications |
| Compensation |
| Industry Specific |
| Lifestyle |
Sales Articles
| Marketing |
| Networking |
| Productivity |
| Relationships |
Sales Articles
| Sales Advice |
| Sales Leadership |
| Sales Mindset |
| Sales 2.0 |
