Sales Leadership Behavior: Know your business

Sales Leadership Behavior 1A: Know your Business

As you know,  I’m reading Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. The first leadership behavior that the authors feel is critical for building a culture of execution is “Know your people and your business” (pg 57). 

As leaders, it’s important that we’re where the action is, that we’re directly engaged with the business.  I often find the presidents, CEOs and VPs of Sales are making decisions based on filtered or incomplete information. I don’t want to offend anyone; often I find that business leaders have surrounded themselves with “yes people.”  It makes sense — people don’t want to risk losing their jobs so they don’t bring bad news to the table. Or, they have a high need for approval and are uncomfortable talking about what’s really happening in the business.

Whatever the reason, it’s disastrous for the leader.  An owner of a telecommunication company has made a deal with his salespeople that he will visit any client or prospect whenever they want him to. He’s not there to sell; he’s there to do a Senior Executive Overview. Interestingly,  he reports that in every situation he’s come back with new business opportunities that his salespeople hadn’t seen.  Joe is committed to getting un-filtered information from their clients. 

Other times, the information is incomplete. People are doing the best that they can; however, sometimes they lack your depth in the industry and market. Other times, they don’t have a strategic mindset where they can connect the dots as quickly as you can.  For example, when I was involved in the ownership team at Micro-Tech Hearing Instruments, my leadership team was great at surfacing current client and product information. However, when we needed industry trends, the ownership had to connect with other strategic players in the industry.  To get complete information, you may need to connect directly.  

What steps are you taking to know your business?   

And, what steps are taking to know your people? We’ll talk more about this in the next post. Stay tuned. 

 

Servant Leadership Behaviors

On Friday, I attended a Winsights Executive Roundtable to learn from James Sipe, author of Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership. “Simply put,” Sipe says, “it is the leader’s commitment to serving others that matters most of all.”

I’m enthusiastic about this new book because it’s practical, walking step-by-step through the execution required for each pillar: 

• Person of Character
• Puts People First
• Skilled Communicator
• Has Foresight
• Is a Systems Thinker
• Leads with Moral Authority

As James articulates so well, leadership goes astray without the first pillar, being a Person of Character. The last pillar, Leads with Moral Authority, is earned once pillars 1 though 6 are consistently practiced.  

Often people ask, “Does servant-leadership work?”  James shared some great statistics comparing Jim Collin’s good-to-great companies against comparable servant-lead companies. The results were astounding. Over the same 10-year period, the good-to-great companies had a 17.5% pre-tax portfolio return while the servant-lead companies experienced a 24.2% return.  James calls the servant-lead companies better-than-great companies! 

What are your thoughts on servant-leadership?  Have you heard of the concept before? If not, you might enjoy these excerpts. 

Healthy Sales Cultures Rule!

I have tremendous respect for Rich Breau, president of Breau Bros Garage, a business consulting firm specializing in people, operations and strategy. In a conversation today, he mentioned that healthy cultures have two things in common. First, they know that culture starts at the top. Second, they have strong accountability. He defined strong accountability as having these characteristics: 

·      Well-defined performance standards

·      Rigor to achieve those performance standards 

·      A response for when the performance standards aren’t met 

Whether you’re a CEO, a president or a VP of Sales, these accountability characteristics apply, don’t they?  

This list reminds me of questions that another colleague, Dr. Mark McCloskey, uses in his business consulting practice when he’s getting to know the culture of a company: 

·      What really matters around here?

·      How are you doing on what really matters to you?

·      How do you know?

·      What are you going to do about how you are doing?

Great questions to ask yourself as you think through your company culture. How are you doing in creating the a high performance culture that keeping Making It Happen?

Leaders Improve Sales Execution

I had a great conversation today with Kurt Theriault from Business Efficacy about  the relationship between excuses-making/blame-gaming and execution. It was insightful because  both of our companies specialize in helping companies execute.  I lamented to Kurt that my advisors tell me that I should be more PC. However, we concurred, “Excuses kill execution.”  

Kurt talked about his work with companies that have great strategies, great training &  great insights….however, they aren’t executing.  That reminded me of a quote from Execution, “Organizations don’t execute unless the right people, individually or collectively, focus on the right details at the right time.” (pg 33).

So, do you have the right people in your sales organization? 

And, are the focusing on the right sales issues?  

Finally, are the focusing on them at the right time with the client? 

Where do you need to improve execution in your sales organization?

Lack of Personal Accountability Kills Sales Execution

Excuses kill execution, even with the best sales teams with the brightest sales management leaders. 

Everyone who knows me concurs, I disdain excuses.  Everyone—husband, kids, friends, colleagues, clients.

And, advisors coach me to be less harsh, to use more PC words, i.e. externally or internally focused, etc.

I work at it.

However, when I net it out, I hate excuses.

Why?

Because excuses kill execution.

According to Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, “Execution is a systematic way of exposing reality and acting on it.” (Pg 22) Excuses do the opposite. They distort reality. People start emotionally blaming anything external to them (economy, competitors, manager, company policy, etc) rather than objectively examining what’s really going on and taking appropriate action.

That’s theoretical. Here’s practical. In the last 10 years of consulting, I’ve send the correlation between the percentage of people on the sales team who lack personal accountability and the lack of the team’s ability to exceed goals….even when there’s a great strategy.

In studying DICE+1 through my work with Dr. Mark McCloskey at Bethel University, I see why excuses are so cancerous. Here are some of my insights:

D (Dynamic Determination):  Playing the Blame-Game erodes one’s willpower to accomplish the task. Excuse making kills determination.

I (Intellectual Flexibility):  Justifying the pasts stunts creativity. If you’re content to stop your thought process at the economy, competition, etc., then you’re selling yourself out to mediocrity. Excuse making kills intellectual creativity.

C (Character Soundness):  A key virtue in virtue-based leadership is courage.  It’s more courageous to face reality saying, “In light of the new situation, I/we need to change or improve in order to get the results we want,” than the oh-poor-me alternative. Excuse making sabotages one’s character.

E (Emotional Maturity): Only a leader with clear thinking can wisely execute in light of the gray zone. (Larry Jullian talks about the gray zone in his new book, God is My Coach) Excuses clouds thinking.

+1 (Partner Up Ability): Synergy only happens when there is hope, when people see possibility. Excuses kill hope.

 

As leaders, there are four steps that we can take to nurture a culture of Personal Accountability…and execution. Which steps do you need work on? 

 

 

What is virtues-based leadership?

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Emerson

I’m reflecting on my last posting, curious how leadership is related to this photo of a lone dog-sledder breaking trail in a vast wasteland.  

I’m reminded of the core component of the 4R Leadership Model, developed by Dr. Mark McCloskey, that I’ve been interacting with in my Transformational Leadership program at Bethel University.  The core of this virtues based leadership philosophy is DICE +1.  

D=Dynamic Determination

I=Intellectual Flexibility

C=Character Soundness

E=Emotional Maturity

+1=Partner up Ability

I submit that the lone dog sledder in this picture has this core leadership trait, DICE. What do you think?

Dynamic Determination: Willingness to perservere harsh, grueling external circumstances in order to accomplish the goal.

Intellectual Flexibility: Creativity and ingenuity allows the dog sledder to be open to new ideas unexpected circumstances occur.

Character Soundness:  Decision making is guided by the seven virtues: prudence, justice, temperance, courage, faith, hope and love. 

Emotional Maturity: Makes wise decisions, remaining calm, cool and collected regardless of what’s thrown the driver’s way.

 

What parts of DICE+1 stand out to you when you look at this dog sledder? 

How does the task of this dog sledder relate to your world as CEO, president, owner, board of directions, VP of Sales? 

I look forward to hearing from you.

Is this leadership? Or, not?

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Emerson

A picture on my desk instantly and instinctively captures my attention every time I glimpse it. I haven’t been able to find the exact picture on the internet, but, it looks somewhat similar to this one. The vast, snow-banked, flat-as-far-as-you-can-see land, reminds me of my North Dakota childhood as well as the flatlands of Finland, where my relatives immigrated from when coming to the US.

The picture is footnoted with the above quote.

At times I ask, “What does this picture have to to with leadership? There’s one lone trail breaker; and no followers. Everyone knows that you have to have followers to be a leader!”

Then, this evening, I attended the Grand Opening of the Hilton Garden Inn and spoke with Stephen Schwartz, CEO of First Hospitality Group about his path to incredible success. He paused…then talked of his reputation for doing the unconventional. He’d take the risk to do something new and innovative. Eventually, others would follow his lead.

I wondered if that is akin to my solo dog-sledder? Someone who dares to the risk and initiative to “cut the course” through the snow (or to “blaze the trail” as my coach, Jim Early), says.

I’m interested in your insights? What does this quote have to do with leadership? How does this picture speak to leadership? Or, doesn’t it?

I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Animal Farm and Modern Leadership

Even though I read Animal Farm by George Orwell over 30 years ago, it still haunts me. And, at the oddest times, scenes from Animal Farm invade my thinking. Does that happen to anyone else besides me?!?

In the StarTribune Opinions Exchange on April 5th, David Lebedoff, author of The Same Man: George Orwell & Evelyn Waugh in Love and War,writes about the Orwell’s predictions of economic collapse based on moral failure.

Lebedoff asserts that the Modern Age (which he detested) has a major distinguishing factor that separates 21st Century people from all previous ages-people no longer believe in life after death. Even though Orwell was an atheist, he asserted that this long-term-view-of-life worldview impacted people’s immediate decisions. It caused many to stop and reflect on their actions… from a moral sense.

In the Modern Age, without this long-term-view-of-life guidance, human’s are more prone to live for today. A reigning thought process might be “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.” In the article, Lebeoff says, “If you go around once, then the main thing is to have fun.” He goes on to state, “Materialism, hedonism and Stairmasters are what people do until the clock stops ticking.”

So, what does this have to do with our life as president, CEOs, owners and sales leaders? Earlier this week, we looked at Zenger and Folkman’s research published in The Extraordinary Leader. Character is foundational for the leader. Without character as the center of a leaders life; the trust needed to lead people through tumultuous times will be missing. And, as leaders in today’s economic climate, we need trust, or we’ll be one of the many business statistics.

How does your worldview effect how you lead? How might a long-term-view-of-life worldview impact your leadership?

What’s a Fatal Flaw for the Sales Management Leader?

Assigned reading for this quarter’s class in my Master’s in Transformational Leadership program at Bethel University is The Extraordinary Leader by Zenger and Folkman. Have you read this book yet? If not, I highly recommend!

One of their key research findings is that character is core to leadership. You can all sorts in incredible talents and skill, including the ability to drive results and to communicate well. However, lacking character is a Fatal Flaw that will destroy any leader, whether a president, CEO or sales management leader.

This topic is apropos since I’m actively involved in helping two separate companies in separate industries, medical device and manufacturing, hire VP of sales. Yes, the skills identified in Yes You Can: 67 Tips to Raise Sales Results in a Recession, are important; but, they are useless with character.

So, how is character defined? Here are some of the way that authors indicate that character gets defined (page 56 of Extraordinary Leader). I invite you to rank yourself on each of these attributes.

Making decisions with the company in mind; not their personal interests.

Keeping commitments. They walk the talk.

Committed to continuous improvement; they are constantly learning how to improve their game.

Receptive to feedback; in fact, they actively seek feedback from others to help them grow.

Approachable by everyone, regardless of rank or position.

Treating everyone the same; no preferential treatment.

Treating everyone with respect and dignity, regardless.

Assuming others have good intentions; trusting others.

Works collaboratively with others.

Tenacious; being determined even in the midst of difficult obstacles.

Emotionally resilience; adjusts rapidly to changing circumstances.

So, how do you rank yourself? Where are you strong? Where do you need to continue developing and strengthening your core, your character?

The Paradoxical Commandments & Wise Leadership

A couple of years ago, I sat next to a man who told a fascinating story about how he developed his core philosophy on leading. I immediately resonated with his philosophy because I think he addresses the most difficult part of leadership, whether is it’s leadership of a company or of a sales team, (at least for me!) to…love them anyway.

Wise leadership is founded on strong relationships with those around us. In fact, Marcus Buckingham in The One Thing You Need to Know about Great Managing, Great Leading and Sustained Individual Success, says that the greatest manager truly care (love) their staff.

So, how do rate yourself?

Who are the people that are difficult to care for? What does that say about you?

When is it difficult to care for others? What does that say about you?

Take the challenge and read The Paradoxical Commandments by Kent M. Keith:

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.

Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.

Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, 2001

www.paradoxicalcommandments.com

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