Building a Sales Leadership Dream Team

The path from successful sales professional to effective sales leader is not always a straightforward one.

While excelling in individual sales performance is a valuable asset, the skills required to lead and inspire a team can be vastly different.

Vicky Nisbet , a senior AVP for Salesforce with over 30 years of experience, has navigated this transition with remarkable success, and her insights offer a roadmap for aspiring sales leaders.

Vicky's journey to sales leadership began with a strong foundation in sales, but she quickly realized that the move to a leadership role would require a significant shift in mindset and approach. "I think quite often you end up getting successful salespeople who sort of do their number quote, a quote, I want to be promoted, and they sort of fly up the ladder and go from individual contributor to leader very, very quickly," she explains. "And I think that impedes their ability to really lead to the best of their ability."

The Importance of Varied Sales Experience Vicky believes that the best sales leaders come from a diverse background, with experience in multiple markets, customer sizes, and sales scenarios.

"I feel that the best leaders come from a real varied background, with some good years of bag carrying," she says. "I think you need to have dealt with several objections, even to the point of procurement people.

I know it's a really weird one, but unless you've been up in front that you know the nice guy, the bad cop, the detailed person, the person who is nice to you and then is not the person who ignores you. I mean, there are many multitudes of people that you sell to, and if you haven't got the experience of all those different environments, then how can you really help and support and lead people to be successful?"

This varied experience not only provides a deeper understanding of the sales process but also equips leaders with the necessary empathy and perspective to guide their teams effectively. "I probably was selling about five or six years as an individual contributor, and then I got into sales leadership, and I was relatively young. I was under 30 at the time, and it almost immediately had to lead people who were older than me and quite a lot older than me," Vicky recalls. "And it was a difficult challenge.

I think I would have handled the situation probably better if I'd have been had a bit more experience, but it sort of threw me in at the deep end, that actually I've got to be able to establish really strong relationships and respect from the people who work for me, so that they will follow me when I ask them to." Earning Respect and Building Authentic Relationships Vicky's emphasis on establishing strong relationships and earning respect from her team is a crucial aspect of her leadership approach.

She recognizes that leading a team, especially one with more experienced members, requires more than just technical expertise or a successful sales record. "It's all okay being a leader when all when all times are good. But as we know, not all times are good. We have some very high pressure situations.

We're all quota driven. There are times the year which are harder than the others, and so we need to be able to lead with authenticity and strength, so that when those high pressure times hit, our people will follow our people believe in us to enable them to carry on through the fight, if you like, and still deliver the number whilst protecting everything they need to protect their well, being, their mindset, all the good things that come with being sort of a conscientious employer."

Vicky's approach to building authentic relationships with her team is rooted in her own experiences with both good and bad leaders.

"I quite openly share with my leaders that I went through an exercise where I sort of listed all the things I admire about a leader and all the things I didn't admire about certain leaders, and then decided from that joint list the kind of leader I wanted to be, because you do need some tough things that sometimes in your career, but you you know generally, you want to pick somebody who's inspirational that generates respect, that has the sort of values and the ethics that you want to emulate."

By reflecting on her own experiences and actively shaping the type of leader she aspires to be, Vicky has developed a leadership style that is both effective and genuine.

"It's all about really giving that depth and that strength to really being the best version of yourself, because we can all lead, but it's how good, how strong, how long, and how do I sort of lift and support and protect all the people that are with me? So I'm really doing them".

We hosted Vicky LIVE on The Daily Sales LinkedIn channel and you can watch the full interview here (trust us it is PACKED with amazing insights, tactics and thoughts on sales leaderships):

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