Sales Leadership Insights From Actual Sales Leaders

Nothing good in business happens until someone sells something. Sales professionals have one big thing they need to do... add to the bottom line by bringing in new quality customers. If they succeed, they provide employment for others... but the world of sales has changed, and the balance of power is now firmly with the customer.

Salespeople need to adapt if they are to survive and thrive... if we don’t like change, we’re going to like irrelevance even less.

So what can sales leaders do to adapt and succeed in in the rapidly changing world of sales? I was privileged to be able to interview three leaders who all have a valuable perspective on blending timeless truths with a modernised approach. Watch this video and read the transcript below.

Tony:  What's exciting about the way that professional selling is changing?

Graham: I think it’s exciting that we’ve moved away now from those old vendor push days, where the lone wolf sales guy was out in the territory. I was taught in my first week of sales 28 years ago that it was all about always be closing, so pushing the buyer to buy something when they’re not ready. I think buyers now demand that they deal with a specialist, and someone that can actually take them through the buying journey and help them, teach them.

Cian: The advent of the Internet has meant that the information dichotomy which is existed, where we as the salespeople had all of the information, that’s changed. Now customers have access to heaps of information about our products, which is great, but also information about us as a business, us as individuals. What that’s doing is that’s actually elevating the profession of sales, because if you’re applying those chunky sales techniques of old, you get found out. What it’s doing is it’s forcing people to lift their level or disappear, and it’s doing the same thing to businesses, and I think that’s wonderful.

Tony: Brigid, you manage a team I think of 16 sellers yourself. What do you think is exciting for people and the opportunity they’ve got to change the way they’re selling?

Brigid: It’s the technology, and not for technology’s sake. What it actually does is it frees up the sales professional to do their best work, to be their authentic self and to add value.

Tony: For people in business and then for people in sales management and then for the individual salesperson, what’s your advice to them?

Cian: The advice I would give to businesses is start becoming easier to do business with. There’s a lot of businesses that are internally focused, and they have processes that make sense for them and what they’re trying to achieve, but it doesn’t necessarily make sense for their customers. We need to be much more either responsive to our customers’ needs and then reverse engineer that back into our businesses. The second point I would say is stop gating your content. Start giving away your IP for free, because what that will do is establish your credibility and your authority. Surprise your customers, delight them a little bit, and you’ll be amazed at the value they return back to you.

 Tony: Brigid, for sales managers?

Brigid: My advice to you would be it’s not about you. Yes, your job is to inspire, yes, your job is to motivate, but these days it’s actually to empower the sales professional.

Tony: And Graham, for the individual seller?

Graham: You’ve got to start with the buyer of course. Buyers now have access to more information than ever before, they’re highly demanding, they’re knowledgeable, so as a sales professional you have to become a specialist: you need to be digitally driven, socially connected, highly mobile and specialised. Buyers demand to deal with someone that can give them commercial insights, so salespeople really have to step up their game and become more of a teacher so that the buyer values that engagement. When salespeople can do that, they will be effective; if they can’t do that, then they’re going to struggle in this modern era.

Tony: When we think about compensation and motivation with a sales team, I’d really love to get your perspective on that. I might actually start with Brigid, given that you manage quite a large sales team.

Brigid: What I’m finding is that when you actually focus on the value you’re bringing to the customer and getting to understand what that value really means for them, you can actually see the shift in the salesperson that “It’s not about the money; it’s the value that I’m bringing to this sale.” I think that’s also the case, because increasingly there’s more than one person involved in the sale, so why should the salesperson be the one who gets compensated? So I think it’s about teamwork, and I think it’s about focus on the customer.

Cian:  One of the things that we hear a lot when we talk to end customers is around the importance of account management. If we look at compensating people in terms of the second and subsequent sales – referrals, cross-sales, upsells, all of those things which are an earned right after the first sale – rather than putting the whole focus on the first sale, so rather think about what’s the best outcome for the customer and then reverse engineer that into our compensation model, I think that’s a much more healthy way to engage. Definitely a better outcome for our customers, but actually long term a better outcome for our business as well.

Tony: The thing I’m hearing here is if we give salespeople a sense of purpose in what they do, rather than just lazily throw money at them to try and help them get the results, then that’s a far better approach.

Graham: If you look at what the savvy vendors are now doing globally, they’re starting to move more towards those team-based compensation packages, and rewarding really good people with equity in the company, which creates that alignment that you need. So I think yeah, the days of just quota attainment and compensation around commission only, those days are moving rapidly away.

Cian: Yeah. The most enjoyment I had was when I was working towards a team number, because then you get to celebrate together, you get to pull together as a team to focus on a goal. That’s a much healthier way for a business to work.

Tony: Beyond being coin operated and having a sense of purpose, what motivates people to do difficult daily things in sales? 

Brigid: I think it starts with the recruitment process, in terms of attracting the right talent. One of the things that I always look for is a real curiosity in business. Because my sales team really focuses on so many different industries, I look for the people that just want to understand the economics and the mechanics of the organisations that they’ll be selling to.

 Cian: Selling a product or a solution is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end in itself is the outcome that your customer gets or their customer’s customer gets. By focusing on that, I think that’s a really, really great way to keep your true north, from a compass perspective, and keep your motivation on a daily basis.

Tony: You’ve all got decades of experience in professional selling. What’s your parting words, what’s your advice to people?

Brigid: As much as everything is changing, it’s all about the customer and about the customer’s customer, and not so much about what you’re selling but about the success of the customer.

Cian: A lot of the deals that we work on, we don’t win them by 50% or lose them by 50%. There’s lots of small things that we can do to be a little bit better, a little bit more prepared, a little bit more researched. Focus on the two percenters, recognise that sales is a marathon, it’s not a sprint. Earn the right to have the next conversation; don’t feel the need to sell in every conversation you have.

Graham: I agree. Sales for me used to be always about closing – close, close close. Now I believe it’s all about opening. As buyers, B2C and B2B, we’re much better at blocking nowadays, and I think a salesperson has to be really adept at being able to get the buyer’s attention. I’ve heard you say it, Tony: opening with the right narrative, being able to carry that narrative forward, so you’ve got to be a specialist.

Tony: Brigid, Graham, Cian – thanks for your time and your insights! We’ve talked about the fact that sales is transforming, and we’ve talked about the importance of having the right people in the right roles, and the importance of having the right processes. But how do you future-proof your own sales career, and how do you future-proof and protect your own business? To me, there’s two vitally important things. The first is all of us need to make sure that we’ve got the right value narrative, a narrative that leads with why conversations matter for those people that we’re wanting to talk to. The second thing that we need to do is we need to embrace technology, we need to create a strong personal brand online, because our potential customers will research us. So make sure that you have the right value narrative, and make sure that you’ve got the right digital presence.

I discuss sales leadership in my book, COMBO Prospecting, published by HarperCollins and The American Management Association (AMACOM) and you can purchase it here on Amazon. 

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Photo from Sally Eden and Ryan Say who filmed and produced a sales leadership interview series that I hosted in December