Being a sales leader is a lot like being a parent. Yeah? Okay. I feel that way because, as a parent, you wanna see your team succeed. We get frustrated when we show them something over and over and over again, and they still don't quite seem to get it. Or when you see that they're getting in their own way that they don't wanna listen to you, like, that's the most frustrating thing for me.
And then there's that gut punch that you have as a parent or a sales leader
You know, that fear that your shortcomings might become the ones to be passed along to them. And the thing that's worse than that is not really knowing what those shortcomings might be.
But we have to keep going, hoping that we're going to make a positive impact and somehow break these negative cycles. Maybe you coached your team, trained them, and given them everything you can think of to help them succeed. But then, when you listen to their calls or read their emails, you have to wonder, is this all falling on deaf ears and blind eyes? Am I making an impact at all?
Why do some members of the team seem to get it? While others can't get out of their own way.
When a sales leader (parent) feels a loss of control:
In the meantime, all of your leading and lagging KPIs are starting to trail in the wrong direction. Your boss is putting pressure on you to make something happen. But you know, and I know, you don't control what happens because you can't force them to do the things that they need to do that you want them to do.
I don't know about you, but all of that stress has made me wonder more than once, "Why did I sign up for this again?" I can't tell you how many meltdown text messages I've received or hiccup-induced sobbing I've heard over the phone from clients who have reached this breaking point, whether they're new sales managers or even VDRs up to CROs.
Sales Leaders are a special kind of crazy
I mean, if this were easy, everyone would do it. But we're a special kind of crazy, aren't we? Driven, determined, hopeful, at least? I know I get Christmas morning happy whenever clients message me about how they went from on plan to top performers or how a manager had made their team the number one team for multiple years in a row in the company after struggling for years.
That's why I'm so excited to share my secrets with you. Secrets that have been backed by behavioral research and data from over two point three million sales professionals, secrets that I've tested on myself, and with sales teams.
I love doing this work --to see the potential in others realized. I'm just addicted to seeing things grow, which is coincidental since I'm wearing my floral necklace, and today is the first day of spring. Now's the time for growth.
When a sales leader feels heartbroken:
But it would break my heart, though. When I would check back in with some individuals I'd worked with for months, I would talk with them and find out that they had regressed into the old habits that had not served them very well before. It's heartbreaking when they go back to their old habits.
And I learned that one of the reasons for this was that sometimes it was their manager. Sometimes it was their company culture. It was often the training or lack thereof that they got, and it didn't support their new way of thinking and their new habits. So they either became a thorn in the side of their manager or company or regressed to their old ways, leaving the company altogether, which defeated the whole purpose. It was almost as if they were trying to diet while surrounded by cake, beer, and nachos, and it just didn't exactly support their new habits.
But then one day:
One of my coaching clients, let's call him John because that was his name. John was on a performance plan. He came to me completely desperate to make a lot of big changes. And after about eight weeks of coaching, his changes were starting to show up in his pipeline and his deals. His manager, David, emailed me and knew he wanted to know two things. What did you do to John? And then how do I do that with the rest of my team? You see, David was recently promoted to sales manager. Does that sound familiar to anyone else here? Top rep turned sales manager?
He also wanted to put his Latin American team on the map. Literally, on the map.
He wanted to open an office there and run the division. But right now, it was just him and his six sales reps. His biggest concern was that they were new. He was new, and his words were what if they become collateral damage of my own shortcomings? And I don't even know what they are yet. So, when I did a data analysis of him and his whole team, I noticed an alarming trend that led me to a deeper analysis of five hundred thousand managers and those who reported directly to them.
Now, we've all heard the phrase, "As goes the manager, so goes the team." We can see this and often observe it in our companies and organizations. But in sales, it's not just an observation. It's an algorithm.
GET MORE DETAILS ON THIS TOPIC IN MY LATEST YOUTUBE VIDEO:
The Data:
My analysis showed that when a sales manager has certain nonsupportive beliefs toward sales, their team was three hundred and fifty-five percent more likely to have the same beliefs as their manager. And beliefs are the fuel for the mindsets, and mindset is everything.
Psychology tells us that how we think is what we do or how and if we'll even do it. But the good news is that in my analysis, I found that managers who had supportive beliefs had positive beliefs towards sales and the activities of sales were one thousand percent more likely to pass the positive beliefs onto their team. That's how much more powerful they are.
Unfortunately, only seven percent of the five hundred thousand managers I analyzed actually had the mindsets that would support success. But why does the perception of sales really matter? Why did the beliefs even matter?
I wanted nothing to do with sales:
You know, it's still a little bit funny to me whenever my mom asks me to describe what it is that I do for work every day, and I tell her, Ma, I talk to salespeople every single day--on purpose. And the face that she gave me because she didn't understand because growing up, I hated the idea of sales.
When I went to college to get a degree in marketing and business, my adviser told me I would be a great salesperson. I should consider some sales rules after school. I didn't even let them finish the sentence. There is no flipping way I'm gonna call people, interrupt them, and push them into buying stuff that they don't want to. So, if any of those jobs have the word sales in it, then you can just cross it off the list.
Like a lot of you who never planned on being a sales leader or in sales for that matter, I was not planning to talk to salespeople every day.
But as I told my mom, sales is about helping others. It's about being the kind of person who puts other people's interests first and can communicate well with them to make them feel comfortable with their choices.
Sales is life:
We are all salespeople. We are all sellers.
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