Fuentes Fridays #0031

Here is your end-of-the-week insight into what I see going on in the business world, what I’m thinking about, and what I’m learning about. Forward anything that you feel inspired to share.

What I’m Hearing From Sales Leaders/Professionals

This week, I spoke to several leaders about the difference between being nice and being kind. As we dug into their team’s performance, we started to uncover that they were being nice in their coaching conversations and not kind.

What’s the difference?

Well, nice leaders don’t really get to the root of the opportunities. They often soft-pedal their coaching and advice. Kind leaders tell the unvarnished truth, coach directly, and hold their team accountable. They understand that in order to get better, people need to be coached honestly.

They also understand that good (kind) coaching is not just about today but also the future success of the sales professional regardless of whether they stay or move on to another organization. To understand why they leaned nice vs. kind, I dug into what processes and standards they had implemented/communicated to their team.

What I found was that there were ideas of processes and standards, but not much was memorialized. Thus, the team could not be sure what was truly expected and non-negotiable. So, I challenged the leaders to write down their vision of good for their prospects’ sales journeys.

Doing this would allow them to begin to set the standard and thus allow them to be kind in their coaching. In other words, they would be able to inspect what they expect. I advise all sales leaders, even those that have playbooks, to go through this exercise every few quarters to ensure that the standards to which they are holding our team make sense.

For those that don’t have playbooks, it doesn’t need to be a big production. Think about the buyer and the ideal experience they should receive from your team. Then, think about what information or assistance you need to receive from your buyer to ensure a win. Then, see how those things align.

If you want to discuss nice vs. kind leadership or buyers’ journeys, feel free to email or dm me!

What Made Me Laugh

No tweet has ever captured the difference between 27-year-old me and 47-year-old me better than this one! This tweet also reminded me of the time I offered my son girl advice, and he responded, “What do you know? You’ve only ever gotten one girl, and that was mom.” Anyway, one day he will know that I Used to Be Young.

This Week’s 40/20

For every 40 hours of work, I believe you should spend 20 (additional) hours mastering your craft. This is how I spent some of my 20 hours this week.

It’s about to get cold. While I will still grill a lot, I am definitely thinking about cooking a lot of comfort food. There are a few meals in the comfort food genre I want to perfect, and one of the biggest is meatballs. I found this tweet with some tips. I have not tried them yet, but will report back when I do. Does anyone have a great comfort food recipe they want to share? If so, send it to me, and I will try it and the post about it here.

Potpourri for 800

Potpourri (shoutout to Jeopardy!) is a category that covers a variety of topics.

I am an MJ and then everyone else kind of guy. This past week I picked back up Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable. The book can be a little over the top, but then again, he is writing about his experiences with some of the greatest athletes of all time, including Jordan and Kobe. It does give some great advice, including this nugget. “Bottom line if you want success of any kind: you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable.”

Quote for My Son

Every day, I leave my son a note with a quote. This was my favorite from this past week:

Many of you know that my son plays QB. It is a very tough position where someone has to make sense of constant chaos. I found the following quote by Napoleon Bonaparte that I shared with him. I think it has applicability to life in general: “The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.”

You can get weekly helpful information for sales professionals by following my company’s Maestro Mastery blog here.

Let me know what you think about this week’s edition of Fuentes Fridays. Which section was your favorite? How can I make this better? Shoot me a message on LinkedIn @willfuentes.