What Does It Mean to be a Sales Leader?
3 things I wish I knew earlier in my career.
For years I struggled to figure out what I needed to know, do, and be to be the most impactful leader — particularly making the transition from an individual producer to a team leader. This thread is really about what I needed to know.
I needed to understand these core concepts before I could do what was actually needed and be the leader I wanted to be.
To be an effective sales leader, there are three things you need to understand:
Context
The type of organization you’re in
How to define the role sales plays in your organization
Understanding Context
Your job is to be the conduit of cross-functional relationships — meaning, you need to fight for your salespeople but also enable communication between departments (fulfillment, operations, HR) to get what you and your team need to be done and help departments hit their goals.
Do this with grace and kindness. How you communicate with your team matters. For example, “Yes, and…” is a much better response than, “Yes, but…”
The balance between managing internal relationships and clearing the way for your producers to get deals done is key, and the key is knowing how to manage and interact with people.
Are you focused just on your team, or are you also connecting with other peers in your organization to help enable deals?
Understanding the Type of Organization You’re In
Are you in a sales-forward or a marketing-forward organization?
Sales is defined as human-to-human interaction that creates business and therefore revenue for the company. Hence, sales forward is defined as an organization hinged around growth from sales.
Understanding what type of organization you’re in is critical to your ability to have an impact on your team and company.
Understanding How to Define the Role of Sales
Once you understand the first two concepts (context and type), you can help define, or redefine, the role your sales team plays in the overall direction of the business.
We are more than just revenue. Your sales leadership can impact your organization by setting an example both internally through culture (i.e. accountability and teamwork) and externally by setting customers up for success as the sales team brings in new relationships to the company.
Imagine a world where sales and operations march hand in hand, quarterly metrics are consistently crushed, and you as a sale leader spend more time developing your team and helping close big opportunities than navigating the myriad of unmet expectations of other departments.
This happens when you understand the context, type, and the role of sales in your organization.
Lead on…