Moving Focus From Sales Leaders to the Followers
While I’m in Tanzania working with www.CheetahDevelopment.org, I’m asking trusted colleagues, clients and friends to share insights of building strong sales performance. Hope you enjoy!
Some researchers prefer to move the focus away from the leader altogether and to examine instead what makes others prepared to follow these individuals. In 1988 an important article published in the Harvard Business Review, entitled “In Praise of Followers”, began to shift attention away from the machismo of leadership to the less glamorous side of the same equation: the role of followership.
Sales Leadership and Followership
What the advocates of followership recognized was that to become an effective leader, most people first had to learn how to be good followers. With few exceptions, this is as true of the corporate world as it is of military and political leaders. Aristotle noted: “He who has never learnt to obey cannot be a good commander”.
More than ever today, business executives have to operate as both leader and follower in the daily rounds of their job. Those who study leadership begin to take more interest in the ‘psychological contract’ between leader and followers. In other words, they began to ask what makes people prepared to follow one leader and unwilling to follow another.
These ideas are now changing both the way we think about leadership and the style of our leaders. This is in tune with other social and organizational developments, including the move to more participative management and the rise of industrial democracy.
Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author, consultant, and sales strategist, who has guided hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels. He is the CEO of Top Sales Associates, Chairman of The jf Corporation and Senior Partner at the JF Consultancy, based in London and Paris.
If you haven’t downloaded Danita eBook on leadership, here’s the link for Leadership Shift.
Sales Leaders and Your Strategic Vision
While I’m in Tanzania working with www.CheetahDevelopment.org, I’m asking trusted colleagues, clients and friends to share insights of building strong sales performance. Hope you enjoy!
At a recent Leadership Workshop of business owners, I utilized footage from the documentary – A Force More Powerful – to illustrate the power of a focused and clearly communicated strategic vision. The topic was desegregation and the footage was taken from newsreels of the 1959 – 1960 Nashville Civil Rights movement.
You might wonder what the two have in common…business leadership and a civil rights movement. Through discussion we determined that the similarities were dramatic.
First, there has to be a defined, focused and clearly communicated vision.
Second, expectation of outcome, the ability to measure progress, and the purpose of each participant’s role have to be clearly explained.
Third, all people involved must buy into the vision and the possible “pain” involved, knowing there will be training and consistent support. This creates a team with a unified desire of achieving the agreed upon goal.
Whether I facilitate a leadership meeting, a strategic planning meeting, or a team building meeting…the common denominator is always the same. We as leaders need, and are dependent upon, exceptional people who care as much as we do about the outcome of our business.
To make that happen, we need to clearly communicate the purpose, meaningfulness and expected results of what they do… making sure they know that what they do matters.
In many cases, our personnel are the front line for the customer – they hear what we should know. Taking time to listen to staff about what’s working and what’s not – in addition to making sure they have the proper job-related tools, will not only help improve loyalty but will also increase the likelihood of sustainable success.
That philosophy is the “force more powerful.” - people united for a common goal, believing that what they do makes a difference. The Leader is the one who ties it all together and drives the action behind the plan.
Pam Pech is the Founder of Connecting Resources. A former teacher, with a Masters Degree in Business Administration, Pam has an extensive background in both Operations and Sales Management. As VP Sales for Valley Staffing in Phoenix, AZ and as VP Randstad Minnesota, Pam gained hands on experience with small to mid-size companies.In 2002, Pam entered the Hearing Healthcare Industry with Miracle-Ear, holding positions of Regional Business Development Manager and Sr. Director of Franchise Operations – working hands-on to provide resources to Franchisees in Sales, Operations, Recruiting and Strategic Planning – through problem resolution, resource referrals and program development.Pam’s desire is to tap into her customers’ self determined purpose – enabling the creation of a passion driven business plan which is more likely to be fully executed, profitable and sustainable.
To learn about some action steps to help implement your strategic vision, get Leadership Shift.
Instill Hopeful Realism as a Sales Leader
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Leadership paradox #1 – Instill hopeful realism. The most optimistic leaders are also the most realistic. (Leadership Shift)
One essential characteristic found in any great leader is their ability to keep facts separate from the meaning of those facts. The collapse of facts and their meaning is so automatic we don’t usually notice it. For example:
- This is really bad weather.
- The company is in trouble.
- This could be a major sale.
In all the above cases, people speak and listen like they know what the statement means but the statements themselves are actually more of an interpretation of the facts than the facts. And for the most part those interpretations are based on what has happened in the past, or more precisely, our interpretation about what has happened in the past. Facts are simply facts and they don’t mean anything. It is what we bring to the facts that gives us our actions.
In the example in Leadership Shift the tractor is stuck in the mud. Or more precisely, the tractor wheels are ¾ covered by mud, and
when you press on the accelerator, all they do is spin. Bring to those facts what you are committed to. In our tractor example, I am committed to completing the work today. That will give you a way of creating actions that deal with the brutal reality of the facts. If I am committed to plowing the field today and the tractor is stuck in the mud, I am going to go see if I can borrow my neighbor’s tractor. This will allow me to complete the work today, and get my own tractor unstuck using the borrowed tractor before I return my neighbor’s tractor.
Winston Churchill during WW II had a special office that was simply to supply him with the brutal reality, the true facts of the war. He knew that people around him would candy-coat things, obscure the details and add interpretation to what was going on and he knew that his actions coming from those interpretations, rather than coming from the facts, would not win the war. Powerful leaders separate the fact from the meaning and interpretation people add to the fact. Powerful leaders bring what they are committed to to the facts and create breakthrough ways of getting things accomplished.
Pure facts, brutal reality without adding meaning give leaders the opportunity to create based on those facts and what that leader is committed to.
Patrick Maloney is President of Data Print Distribution. DPD provide its corporate clients with powerful communications that ensures their success. Executing client marketing ,training and event programs through a host of services including fulfillment, direct mail and graphic production is done with an intense focus and accountability for client’s intended outcomes. He is a graduate of the University of Dallas. Mr. Maloney lives in the Twin Cities with his wife, Christine and two children.
Emotional or Rational Intelligence for Sales Leadership?
While I’m in Tanzania working with www.CheetahDevelopment.org, I’m asking trusted colleagues, clients and friends to share insights of building strong sales performance. Hope you enjoy!
In his ground-breaking 1996 book, “Emotional Intelligence”, the American psychologist Daniel Goleman explored the issue of personal and professional effectiveness. He argued that in a business world too often obsessed by cold analysis, the emotional climate is more important to the success of a leader than previously recognized.
At senior levels, ‘emotional intelligence’ rather than ‘rational intelligence’ marks out the true leader: “The qualities of leadership and the quality of the heart are largely the same”. This may explain why someone like Branson, who twice failed his elementary mathematics exam, can make a better leader than someone with a degree from Harvard Business School. Branson’s ‘emotional intelligence’ – his ‘people radar’ – is more keenly developed.
According to Goleman, studies of outstanding performers in organizations show that about two thirds of the abilities that set star performers apart in the leadership stakes are based on emotional intelligence. Only a third of the skills that matter relate to raw intelligence (as measured by IQ) and technical expertise.
“Our emotions are hardwired into our being,” Goleman explained. “The very architecture of the brain gives feelings priority over thought.” There is a sign in Harvard’s rat lab that says: “Rats under carefully controlled conditions will do any damned thing they please.” The same is true of human beings. Leaders ignore emotions at their perils.
Most important of all, the role of leaders in developing the next generation has too often been neglected. If we are to grow as a society, this must be the priority for the future. As Sir Adrian Cadbury, the former Head of Cadbury Schweppes, has observed: “Good leaders grow people, bad leaders stunt them; good leaders serve their followers, bad leaders enslave them”
Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author, consultant, and sales strategist, who has guided hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels. He is the CEO of Top Sales Associates, Chairman of The jf Corporation and Senior Partner at the JF Consultancy, based in London and Paris.
He also posts his highly popular daily blog for dedicated business professionals HERE.
To learn more about the importance of EQ in building high performance sales teams, you’re invited to get Leadership Shift, Paradoxical Wisdom for Transformational Leaders in These Times of Change.
Hope is Not a Strategy For Sales Recruiting
While I’m in Tanzania working with www.CheetahDevelopment.org, I’m asking trusted colleagues, clients and friends to share insights of building strong sales performance. Hope you enjoy!
When hiring salespeople it’s not about “hope,” it’s about “guts”.
I remember hiring two salespeople for a high tech firm back in the 90’s. The process consisted of soliciting resumes, interviewing the best prospects and making offers. I told the leadership team back home that one of the new hires was sure to be a star but I didn’t know which one. In retrospect, instead of employing a solid hiring strategy I “hoped” one of the new hires would be successful…they both failed. Lesson learned; hope is for the lottery not the hiring process!
Later that year, I attended a seminar by author and business thinker David Maister (www.davidmaister.com). He described three types of employees; Dynamos, Cruisers and Losers. Dynamos always push to get to the next level, Cruisers are solid citizens content with the status quo and Losers are…well losers. When he asked the audience what percentage of employees fell into those categories, the consensus was (15, 75, 10). Then, he said something I will never forget, “I wouldn’t work for a company like that because it’s never going anywhere!”
That got me thinking! How much money do most sales teams leave on the table and how the heck do you build a team of Dynamos?!? Here’s what I decided–It takes time, commitment and hard work. Don’t settle for the best of a second rate batch of candidates. Don’t give in to the pressure to fill an opening ASAP. Don’t keep the Losers around because they have something in the pipeline.
Then, follow a proven hiring process that starts with identifying the exact skills required to sell your products/services and then assess your candidate’s grasp of those skills. I highly value Sales Growth Specialists’ process. If you haven’t got her new eBook, Measuring Sales DNA, download it now.
Third, if you don’t get how to make the process work for your company, hire a consultant that does.
Now, think about your sales team. What is your percentage of Dynamos, Cruisers and Losers? Have you hired on hope? Do you have a loser or two on the team? This is where “guts” come in. Do you have the “guts” to build the best possible sales team? Do you have the “guts” to replace your Cruisers and Losers with Dynamos? How do you think your team of Dynamos would stack up against the competition’s mix of (15, 75, 10)?
Ron Froehling is the Vice President of Technology and Sales for Custom Search, Inc a Twin Cities based executive search firm. Over the last 25 years, Ron has been a business owner and executive with several successful IT Services firms including Milestone Systems, Techforce, Ron Michaels Consulting and BORN Information Services.
Ron served in several executive-level positions with BORN including Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, where he drove BORN’s national sales programs and national brand positioning and Vice President of Branch Development, where he was responsible for developing BORN’s expansion strategy and efforts in new markets.
Wise Words for Sales Managers
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“Management isn’t rocket science”… or so said my fourteen year old son this weekend.
My oldest son has a job keeping a lovely yard for a neighbor. He’s diligent and he’s proud of his work; something we all hope for in our kids.
Yesterday, he was feeling discouraged by the daunting task ahead of him. He told me it was going to take FOREVER to finish the job. “There are a bazillion sticks in the yard. I have to pick them up and deal with them before I can even think about mowing.” He grumbled. Then he had his stroke of genius.
He decided to enlist the help of his younger brother. His younger sister was packing for camp so she’d be no use.
What unfolded was a classic case of good management. The exchange went something like this:
Jack: “William, come here I want to talk to you.” William, age 10, eagerly approached his older brother.
Jack: “Would you like to help me today?”
William: “What do I have to do?”
Jack: “Pick sticks up so I can mow the neighbor’s yard. What do you think?”
William: “How long will it take?”
Jack: “Until the job is completed and done well. But if we work hard it shouldn’t take a long time.”
William: “Okay, I’ll help. Do I get paid? “
Jack: “Yes, but I’m not going to tell you how much until we’re finished. “
I found this really interesting and waited to hear William demanding further information regarding his compensation before he agreed to help.
Instead, William said “Okay – when do we start?”
Moments later they were headed through the backyard to begin the work. Jack was making sure William had ear protection on before they left our yard and explaining as they walked, “You’ll be working one part of the yard while I mow the other. You need to protect your ears from the mower.”
When they returned home I asked how it went. William told me, “It was a little boring, but I did a good job”
Later, I asked Jack how William did working for him. “He did pretty well. I had to re-direct him a few times but he did a good job. I let him know he was a good manager.”
He said, “Mom, management isn’t rocket science. You just have to communicate.”
Jack reinforced the principles that are tried and true for building successful teams.
- Get the right people involved.
- Deliver a clear concise message on the scope of work.
- Develop trust in your team members. They will work with you toward a goal if they feel they can trust you.
- Make sure everyone is equipped with the tools to complete the work.
- Monitor the situation without micro-managing.
- Redirect unproductive staff with clear instruction,
- Follow up with sincere appreciation and good compensation.
In this case, William really didn’t care how much he was getting paid. He was honored to be asked to participate. He trusted his older brother and was willing to work hard for him.
Jack followed through. He thanked William for his hard work and then handing him some bills saying, “Here, I was going to pay you $3.00 but you did such a good job, you earned $5.00!”
Thank you for the reminder boys!
Kate Reschenberg has worked in the competitive business of technical sales for over 17 years. She has managed sales territories, sales people and a busy household for most of her career. She’s passionate about delivering proven methods for success to sales people and their managers. Kate has recently joined Datatrend Technologies in business development.
Kate enjoys just about any activity with her family, especially downhill skiing. Kate is raising three school-aged children along with her husband, Tom, a private chef.
The Link Between Engagement and Sales Results
While I’m in Tanzania working with www.CheetahDevelopment.org, I’m asking trusted colleagues, clients and friends to share insights of building strong sales performance. Hope you enjoy!
Successful business leaders and sales managers understand the power of a culture and values in which everyone understands how their work contributes to the company’s achievements and bottom line sales results. These leaders lead for 
the benefit of the company, openly sharing credit for success with their teams.
Business and sales leaders who lead from this position are poised to create a working environment that nurtures an engaged workforce – one that willingly gives emotionally and intellectually to accomplish the company’s work. The extra effort engaged employees make often takes performance beyond the duties of their job description. They are actively engaged, truly thinking about their work rather than simply going through the motions. This level of engagement is necessary for breeding “ah-ha” moments about how to improve a process or a product or reduce costs.
Engagement is a simple concept with a payoff in greater financial performance, increased employee retention and increased productivity. The Corporate Leadership Council research confirms this relationship in a worldwide survey: Increased employee engagement can lead to improved performance, resulting in a 42 percent increase in a company’s financial performance. These results attest to a need most of us have—to be part of something great, something more than any person could achieve alone.
At its highest level, engagement means reaching employees’ hearts as well as their minds. It begins with communicating the big picture to the entire organization—helping each person, department, and business unit see how their work contributes to achieving the company’s goals. Leaders can help managers and their front-line employees grasp their importance through thoughtful, steady communication in various ways.
Lesson: A puzzle is not complete—a goal not achieved—even if it’s missing just one piece.
Questions: How do you communicate the big picture to your team? Do your employees understand how their work contributes to the organization?
Hillary Feder is a leader in people performance management. Her core belief is that people transform business. Using a personalized approach and collaborative style, Hillary focuses on creating emotional connections between employees, clients and their companies. The net results of such engagement are increased employee productivity, lower client acquisition costs and higher profit margins.
Hillary has been providing strategic process and product to company leaders, human resource and marketing professionals for 21 years. Her clients are organizations that believe that strong connections create vital results.
If you haven’t done so already, you’re invited to get Leadership Shift, Paradoxical Wisdom for Transformational Leaders in These Times of Change.
Five Drivers for Improving Your Sales Teams
While I’m in Tanzania working with www.CheetahDevelopment.org, I’m asking trusted colleagues, clients and friends to share insights of building strong sales performance. Hope you enjoy!
- Strategy
- Lean operations
- Balanced culture
- Customer responsiveness
- Leadership
Strategy sets direction and gives focus to improving the sales focus and business results. It must however be deployed throughout the organization to be effective.
Processes need to be mapped and analyzed in a methodical way; projects must be managed; problem symptoms traced to root causes; data must be collected before decisions are taken; trends in customer preferences detached and fed back; improvement activity of any kind reported on and coordinated; improvement action measured. Just about everything should be done to a discipline.
A balanced culture means effective, creative management of people. Customers are served by people; processes are managed by people. Only people can deliver quality improvement. For them to work well they must be empowered, given direction, measured, and reviewed and success recognized.
Customer responsiveness keeps the organization focused on customer needs, reactions and changing requirements.
Finally, leadership ensures that everyone is enthused and supported to work on the strategy, improve processes, serve customers and become active team players.
So immediately we can recognize that the most important factor, which ultimately determines an organization’s potential for success, is leadership.
Jonathan Farrington is a globally recognized business coach, mentor, author, consultant, and sales strategist, who has guided hundreds of companies and thousands of individuals around the world towards optimum performance levels. He is the CEO of Top Sales Associates, Chairman of The jf Corporation and Senior Partner at the JF Consultancy, based in London and Paris.
He also posts his highly popular daily blog for dedicated business professionals HERE.
If you haven’t done so already, you’re invited to get Leadership Shift, Paradoxical Wisdom for Transformational Leaders in These Times of Change.
Culture is Foundational for High Performance Sales
While I’m in Tanzania working with www.CheetahDevelopment.org, I’m asking trusted colleagues, clients and friends to share insights of building strong sales performance. Hope you enjoy!
Corporate culture is given by conditions within a organization, including the sales team. These conditions are in the background. You can’t see these conditions directly, you can only see them by their effect. For example, gravity is a condition in the world. You can’t see gravity but you can see its effects on organizations there are 4 conditions that give the corporate culture. They are:
- Shared ownership of the future
- Dialogue
- Dealing with brutal reality
- Being organized for accomplishment
It may be of interest to look at your overall organization as well as your sales team and rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 in each of these areas. For example, on a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your business and sales team in the area of dialogue? Is there clear, open authentic communication on issues? Do discussions create new opportunities and new solutions for your company? Or do people hold back their comments and thoughts in order to appease the leader or go with the group, being ever ready to say, “I knew this wouldn’t work at a later point.”
How ever you would rate your business or sales team in each of the 4 categories, the key here is really what you are doing as a business and sales leader to expand those conditions within your organization. You can’t ever work directly on those conditions. They are in the background, in the unspoken. Nor is it really effective to try to change people’s thinking. An organization with a very low level of dialogue could have a meeting about the need to communicate more what is on their mind and likely things would lapse back into their current state.
However, don’t despair. Even though you cannot work directly on those conditions in your business or sales team, or change people’s thinking about them, you can’t design practices that will expand those conditions. A practice is an observable repeated behavior that is engaged in. So for example, if I was going to design a practice to expand dialogue within my sales team it might be something along the lines of: “every week at the sales meeting the last 15 minutes we have dialogue focused on what works and doesn’t work in our current sales and marketing process.” The purpose would be to get people communicating. The purpose isn’t to fix anything; the purpose of this practice isn’t to get everyone to agree to something. Rather it is simply to teach them how to be in communication about business issues in a way that isn’t blaming anyone, criticizing or complaining. People can learn to work together as a group and think through challenges and dialogue through challenges. This expanded condition of dialogue will exist in everything and anything that that organization now does.
Practices are observable recurring behavior you engage in. Most practices just sort of happened in organizations. Sometimes they are more deliberate like in an operations manual, but most of the other practices are more a matter of habit than design. Designing practices in a way that is a match for the primary context of the organization (call it Vision, Possibility, The Future, whatever you will) is a more powerful way to transform an organization than trying to change people’s thinking. When people change their practices, eventually their thinking will change.
Patrick Maloney is President of Data Print Distribution. DPD provide its corporate clients with powerful communications that ensures their success. Executing client marketing, training and event programs through a host of services including fulfillment, direct mail and graphic production is done with an intense focus and accountability for client’s intended outcomes. He is a graduate of the University of Dallas. Mr. Maloney lives in the Twin Cities with his wife, Christine and two children.
To learn more about the importance of culture in building a high performance sales team, you’re invited to get Leadership Shift, Paradoxical Wisdom for Transformational Leaders in These Times of Change.
Sales Managers Coach & Cultivate Sales Talent
Companies that invest in cultivating their salespeople develop higher performing sales team. That is a key finding of the 2010 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study. In 70 percent of world-class sales organizations, managers spend time coaching the sales staff, versus 18 percent in other sales organizations. Moreover, 94 percent of these leading organizations directly 
engage executives in the sales process, providing further support to the sales team.
In the Leadership Shift, I take this world class approach to developing sales competencies one step further. When performance assessments are used in tangent with sales coaching and training programs, sales performance is boosted even more. Assessments help us to pinpoint performance gaps at each stage of the sales process. The Sales Force Impact Analysis from Objective Management Group, an diagnostic tool I use, provides a comprehensive assessment that sheds light on the unique mix of strengths and weaknesses in each salesperson as well in as in the sales processes and systems.
The days of hiring sales people based on personality assessments alone are behind us. Behavioral assessments that go “wider and deeper” are helping us to decode the Sales Gene (link to ebook) and develop sales people that excel in our unique sales environment. World-class sales organizations are “four times more likely to spend time coaching their teams in behaviors that drive results,” according to the Miller Heiman study.
So, if you haven’t already, download Measuring Sales DNA: Knowing which salesperson will succeed or fail requires an understanding of selling mindsets.
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