I have been pondering leadership of late and some thoughts have come to mind.  We all have heard the adage  “Good leaders light fires within their teams versus under them.”  In almost every situation, inspiration delivers greater and longer lasting improvement when compared to motivation.  I completely agree with the adage of course, yet I think there is much more to it than just that.  

When all the right elements are present, let’s call that “kindling” and the wind is in the right direction lighting a fire within someone is not too difficult, but if, like me, you have led many different sales people over the years, you become aware of some hard facts:

In the cases where we have dry kindling and maybe even accelerants present, no worries “Light the blue touch paper and stand back!”  Great things are about to happen.

But this is reality and some of our sales folks suffer from a variety of SKDs (Soggy Kindling Disorders) such as:

Well my experience points to success in cases such as this, by bringing the two types of fire together – the “fire within” and the “fire below.”

A carefully applied fire “below” can dry out the “kindling” and help ignite the fire “within.”

Coaching is the primary example of the “fire below” and proven most successful in drying out the kindling in many a sales person.  Coaching can take many forms, some of which are listed below:

First of all what is a “retardant?” – some examples are:

In many of these situations attempts to light the fire within are often unsuccessful no matter how much energy you, as the leader, put in to it.  And when you naturally add the “fire below” the result is quite different.  The “retardants” prohibit any ignition occurring “within” and the external heat “cooks” the immovable sales person and we all know what that leads to of course.

On Monday I am heading down to the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, IL (http://autobahncc.com/) with PCA-Chicago for a full day of track time. Testing my new AIM Data Acquisition System and integrated SmartyCam (thanks Dave & Dave at Precision AutoResearch in Bensenville, IL and Tony at Midwest Eurosports). Thanks also to Joe Rizza Porsche for sponsoring the event (www.rizzaporsche.com). Video to follow and wish me luck!

As we celebrate Thanksgiving (well you do, I am British so our Thanksgiving is July 4th, noting the day we gave back that pesky western colony) I thought it especially important to thank the sales teams that do much of the "heavy lifting" when it comes to moving our companies and clients forward.

 

Without their efforts, we would be in a not so wonderful place, I trust you agree.  Sales has come a long way from what it once was and although many of us as sales leaders installed the tools, training, infrastructure and strategy to make it a true profession and enable our sales people, it is they that go out there, day in day out, working way more than the usual 40 hours per week, and make it happen.

 

With that in mind, I want to personally and publicly THANK my sales team at Manpower - The Central Area National Accounts Team!  I have had the privilege and great good fortune to lead my team for the last four years.  In that time, they have overcome much structural change in the way we do business not to mention ever more sophisticated and demanding clients and let us not forget the competition which is fierce - not better but fierce nonetheless.  In the first three years I led this team they grew revenues by more than 14% and most importantly profit by more than 25% - and these are numbers in the $100s of millions. 

 

This year they have done even better it would appear (although not completed yet as we have 2 months to go) that they have exceeded their previous levels of year over year growth by a double percentage points(confidentiality prohibits me putting forth the actual number).

 

So I want to say a very sincere and very appreciative "THANK YOU" to my TEAM: Mike, Carol, Sally, Jeremy, Heather, Paula, Julia, Keri, Craig, you have all done an amazing job and excelled in your chosen profession.  You set the bar for which others aim!  I will meet you at the "bar" after the final numbers are in to pop a cork or two!

 

Have a great Thanksgiving Holiday everyone.

 

Tony

 

In today's highly competitive sales environment it is common for Sales Teams to be instructed to call "higher' in the prospect/client organization to shorten sales cycles and get to the "value buyer/decision maker.  Those folks tend to often reside in the "C-Suite."

 

Yet many initiatives fail and when they fail they often have significant negative impact in terms of future client/prospect relationships, brand damage, sales professional turnover, lost profits and increased costs.  Many reading this will nod their head in accepting agreement.  The big question of course is "why?"

 

In the last 30 years in B2B selling I have seen a number of common mistakes in these initiatives and three of the most pervasive seem to be as follows:

 

Obviously, there is much more to this, but food for thought. 

 

I have encapsulated my years of experience building "C-Suite Approach" initiatives in a white paper "Three Tactics That Will Assure Your 'Call High' Strategy Will Work." If you would like to receive a copy of that white paper, then please click this link "Contact Tony" and enter your contact information.

 

 

 

Well it is about time don't you think?

 

This blog will be focused on insights from the field of selling and other miscellaneous ramblings!

 

Stay tuned

 

Tony