The Key to Great Sales Leadership   by Ralph

in Business / Management    (submitted 2011-05-27)

Regardless of whether you are a brand new sales manager, a tenured sales manager, a small business entrepreneur, a VP of Product sales or a sales trainer, you may well find that leading salespeople can be one of the more hard sales management training tasks you face.

The reason behind this issue is that salespeople don’t like to be “led” in the traditional sense. Salespeople in general, really are an unpredictable bunch. These people like to think of themselves as fiercely self-sufficient people who need to do things on their own. They're usually extremely opinionated, and frequently combative.

And for that reason, they will only “follow” a sales leader that they think is capable, has their motivations foremost in their thoughts and more importantly of all a sales manager they trust.

The real key to great sales leadership is in building trust with your front line salespeople.

The unfortunate part is the fact that the vast majority of “leadership" books don’t actually make an effort to teach this concept. Nearly all believe it’s a given.

Just how wrong they tend to be.

Alternatively there is an art as well as a science to leadership and it also all starts off with first developing a firm foundation of trust. This is an extremely crucial principle to perfect. And it is important to the long term health of the organization.
The truth is, consider trust building with your sales team exactly like building a house. Trust is the foundation of that house. You can’t start laying down floors putting up walls til you have that foundation set first, correct?

It’s exactly the same thing with leadership and trust. A sales manager can't direct a sales team to spectacular sales heights; much less merely make sales budgets without initially developing that “trust” foundation.
There are actually three established tactics that will permit you to not merely build trust with your sales force to help you drive your company’s sales revenue:

1. Use the Law of Reciprocity.

The law of reciprocity states that if one does some thing nice for someone, then human nature requires that the receiver will really feel obligated to do something nice for you in exchange. This is particularly powerful because human instinct demands that at the specific moment that you do something decent for someone, that individual feels obligated to return the favour.

So if you routinely do nice things for your sales person, then they feel compelled to do something nice for you in exchange. That nice thing in exchange is usually increased sales. Don’t manipulate this rule; merely utilize it to your advantage. And further, don't count on the favor being returned as soon as you perform it. Be discreet. But employ the natural laws of human psychology to acquire what you desire that is success for your organization and your sales team.

2. Just let The Salesperson Take All the Credit

Men and women always perform far better if they never need to worry about who gets the credit. If perhaps a sales manager is on a call with a salesperson that makes a sale and following the call the sales manager comes back to the office and explains to everyone exactly how HE made the sale, how do you suppose that salesperson would feel?

Don’t be worried about who takes the actual credit. Sales managers get paid for precisely how effectively their sales people perform. A sales manager must never take the credit for the excellent work of his sales people

Ensuring that each and every salesperson gets the proper credit will just assist develop even more trustworthiness and will encourage them even more at the same time.

3. Don’t Tell, Advise Instead

There will probably be lots of instances in which you’ll need to tell your sales representatives, in absolute terms, what they need to do in any given circumstance.

On the other hand, the remainder of the time, stay away from spewing direct orders at all costs.

For example, instead of stating: “I need you to visit the O’Neil account and give to them the new prices.”

Change that slightly and suggest: “You may really want to think about taking the new pricing to the O’Neil account.”

The particular sales person listens to that and thinks, alright, he’s not dictating to me what to do, but he’s giving me a bit of advice and I’m going to decide whether it is right to execute. This particular method encourages and inspires, and does not manipulate.

Employ these trust building methods to lead and motivate your sales team and you will start experiencing rapid gains in your sales leadership.

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