May 21 2007
The Acid Test For Sales Leaders
Pick up a typical company annual report and what words do you find? Verbs like analyse, forecast, plan, assess and schedule, are used in pursuit of organisations that are efficient, productive and predictable. What set of people are required? Obviously, people who are efficient, effective, proficient, competent, productive and co-operative.
However, I believe we need to go beyond – we need to be inspired, motivated, creators, who are enthusiastic and able to consistently deliver against our key objectives. We should be developing individuals who are not afraid to challenge paradigms, who are prepared to go that extra yard in search of excellence and who understand that success is 80% attitude and only 20% aptitude.
For a group of people to remain consciously competent at optimum performance levels, they require frequent injections of stimulation, motivational guidance, prompting and directing, otherwise they can easily lapse into becoming unconsciously competent or worse, unconsciously incompetent.
The primary objective of a professional Sales Leader has to be:
“To achieve consistently superior results, through the performance of every key individual.”
The Acid Test: When thinking about your own sales force,
- Do you understand their motivators – what is driving them?
- Do you have visibility of their numbers – year to date, forecast vs. required performance?
- Activity levels – are they working hard and smart enough?
- Engagement – are they talking to the right level in their prospects/accounts?
- Messaging – are they capable of delivering an appropriate message at the right level?
- Qualification – are they only spending time on deals where they can compete and ultimately that they can win?
- Closing – are they constructing successful campaigns and closing business?
Over at Leadership Turn this week, the topic is “inspirational leadership” - inspiring leader or uninspiring manager?
If you haven’t already done so, may I urge you to visit Top 10 Sales Articles where the panel have chosen a particulary good set of articles this week.
You should also know that this week’s featured expert is the extremely talented and hugely experienced Terri Roulette McCartney and you can visit her site here
That’s it until Friday - have a great week. JF
