Week 3 saw me back in my base office ready to take on the world. My confirmed client schedule well defined and a list of prospects looming on my whiteboard just waiting to be called.

Not a Natural Salesman

I am not a natural salesman. The thought of getting in front of someone to ask them for money in exchange for a product or service is not something I crave. Like most people of a technical background there is a small sense of fear that their rejection of my product or service is in fact a proxy for a rejection of me. However a funny thing happens when sales is no longer a hobby, no longer an intellectual curiosity to be viewed from the sidelines. No, now my business success rides on my ability to ask for the sale and close the deal.

It was funny how smoothly I was able to make the transition. Not that I am particularly good at it yet. Just that I had no problem doing it right away. In week three I would close two new coaching contracts that brought me ever closer to my monthly revenue target. It was exciting to do this and to gain the confidence that I could do this.

What did I learn?

Sales is a Relationship sport

Selling to someone you do not know is infinitely harder than doing so with someone who knows and trusts you. As a coach selling in a high trust context this is especially true. The maintenance of a trust based professional relationship cannot be over stressed. Since I had these in place my first several contracts in the first month were relatively straight forward to close. Not easy in any way just straight forward. It is clear to me that the development of a relationship will continue to be an important aspect of the process. Now it should also be said that referrals are a great proxy for an established relationship. When someone refers you, you enter into the sales discussion with the referrers credibility. If you maintain professionalism and passion for your service and can in fact meet the prospects needs you stand a very good chance of closing these deals as well.

Confidence in your service is crucial

Have you ever tried to represent something you did not quite believe in? You just can’t give it everything you are can you? Deep down you know that your integrity cannot fully support this thing and must hold back. Holding back comes through in our behaviors and ultimately in the confidence or lack thereof we demonstrate. No you must believe in what you are selling in order to be effective especially in the high trust environments of personal services. As a coach I have a deep confidence that I can help my clients. I have too many success stories to think otherwise. I am blessed with helping people to transform their lives into higher levels of productivity, capability and confidence. No for me I know that I know I can help my clients and my prospective clients. It is easy to be in front of them and discuss how the process can help them transform their lives.

GO ahead make a mistake or two most people will give you grace anyway

Okay many of you get this already and my technical brethren will appreciate this as I do, sometimes you need to just go and do something. The act of executing a “good enough” plan is infinitely more important than a “perfect plan” waiting to be executed. Sometimes we need to just go forth and DO, make mistakes, stumble a bit and figure things out. I have found that people have grace for you if you are not quite polished, not quite perfect. In fact it makes you more human more approachable more credible. Not that we should manipulate this to our benefit but whatever you do waiting until the perfect plan has been birthed is a strategy for FAILURE. Don’t fail, make mistakes learn and grow. Its good for the soul and the cash flow…

So these are my thoughts on week 3. Next post we talk about week four and closing out a month.

Through the passage of a five-year accidental journey (isn’t most of life like this?) I sped from unemployed, to ‘business development’, to de-facto customer relations guy, to marketing manager, to business line leader/manager, to being appointed ‘business line executioner’, to unemployed, and back again to business development. My very own circle of life. During this process, I learned a great number of things about life, leadership, corporate politics, and about the human side of business (I never was a numbers guy). Where it gets interesting is where my polarity toward the teachings of the great philosophers, academics, and practitioners of modern leadership and management have intersected my current role in the development of new business for my company. I hope to share these experiences in a useful way in this forum.

My Topical Responses:

1. I wholeheartedly agree that Leadership = Sales.
2. I also wholeheartedly agree with the opinions of many of those responding to this string that being great at sales does not necessarily mean that you have even a remote chance of concurrently being a great leader. As I mentioned to Ron in an off-line discussion, there are certainly exceptions, but the hard drive toward the bottom line, and the typical ‘self-oriented’ nature of the high-level, high-producing sales person does not lend itself to being the kind of leader that I would want to follow.

HOLD THE FLAMES! One of the greatest things about getting educated about leadership is learning that you can get educated about leadership… let us take an intermission to cool those flames and let me go over how I perceive that Leadership = Sales…

So, why does Leadership = Sales? Because life is a sale, and a good leader has convinced you to buy. Does it sound cliché? Yeah, but this one is the real deal.

What is a sale? I am talking about a real sale, not the grocery store. The sale that I am talking about is the sale where you take the time to build a relationship with the prospective buyer, come to an agreement, and be it written or verbal, you close the deal.
You Close The Deal.

Have you ever worked for someone who closed the deal with you? Someone who you considered a leader that you respected, trusted, and could count on? Someone whose stories you still tell to this day in respectful emulation of greatness? I hope you have, because everyone should have the privilege of following a great leader. Can you honestly say that you were not “Closed” by them? Did they build that relationship with you? Did you buy in? Were you sold, or did they convince you to buy? Real salespeople do not have to ‘sell you’ — you want to buy.

Sales

• Build the relationship
• Communicate the value proposition
• Generate a buying attitude
• Close the deal
• Repeat

Leadership

• Build the relationship
• Communicate the value proposition
• Generate a buying attitude
• Close the deal
• Repeat

Ok, let’s fan those FLAMES!

Please note: some of these sales types can get ambitious about more than the next fat commission check!

Learning to lead is about wanting to learn how to lead. Not all of us are natural leaders, in fact, those who we consider ‘natural leaders’ likely are the ones sitting in a dark house under a small reading light at 4am, listening to the coffee perk, while staring at a book about leadership, wondering if they too can learn to be a great leader.

Being a leader is a lifelong journey that begins with fertile soil within the mind of the pilgrim. The process is continuous, a Mobius strip, no beginning, no end.

Here are my tips for a high-producer who is stepping out of a direct sales role, and into a Leadership role:

• Stick a pin in that big ego balloon!
  • It served you well, but it is no longer about you! It is about your people! Learn to take pride in their success and your role in helping them to achieve their goals. If you cannot find pleasure or pride in doing this, you will find no pleasure in your new role.
• Listen to the way you speak about YOU, and do less of it. Work hard to keep conversations about we, our, the team, etc. See first bullet for additional guidance.
• Get a copy of The Courageous Follower by Ira Chaleff. Read it, and do not forget its message when one of your followers calls you out on something. Remember, without followers, there are no leaders and you can only follow yourself around for so long.

I would like to close this with a call to others to add to this incomplete list of tips for the newly hatched leader coming out of a sales role. What is the next step? To pass this information along to those who might benefit from it. Put theory to practice and see what you can grow.

Today’s commenter on our question, are sales and leadership really the same thing is Flyn Penoyer. Flyn is a trainer and coach and inside sales expert from the California Bay area. Flyn took a similar perspective to our other commentors in that he clearly states that leadership and sales are not the same thing.

I think if this were true you would see a great number of sales manager’s with leadership skills and leading their teams. In the real world today this is unfortunately not the case.

I appreciate the argument and see his point of view. There is certainly more different in the two roles than is the same for sure. Like our previous guest Kenneth Lund, Flyn expanded on his perspective of motivation as a central factor in leadership and compared it to the persuasion of a sales role.

Leadership is not persuasion but motivation, or more correctly the catalyst of motivation in others. Leadership is about inspiring others to a goal or objective and there, is and need not be, any effort to persuade or encourage others to follow.

In his comment Flyn makes an important distinction when he identifies the catalyst of motivation. This is exactly the point we discussed in Kenneth Lund’s post. A leader does not provide his team motivation (long term anyway) rather he provides bursts of short term emotional motivation and the environment where employees choose their own level of motivation. Done well this can create ultra high levels of motivation, done poorly it can sink an entire company.

So what does Flyn have to say about the sales professional and their persuasion?

Selling is about creating value for an exchange, leadership is about catalyzing motivation in others through vision.

I agree that this is the transactional core of the sales equation. I cannot help but wonder what old Zig Ziglar would say about this though.

“Sales is a transference of emotion”

Yes I think that is what he would say. Sales is about do much more than the transaction. It is about trust, and value creation, and solving each others problems.

Well I may not agree with Flyn completely on this point but his last comment is worth noting.

You cannot buy effort…but you can inspire it to no limit if you are a great leader.

I look for agreement rather than difference and this point I agree with whole heartedly. It reminds me of a famous quote by Charles Francis

“You can buy a man’s time, you can even buy his physical presence at a given place, but you cannot buy enthusiasm… you cannot buy loyalty… you cannot buy the devotion of hearts, minds, or souls. You must earn these.”

Sell Well

Ron

I love this first response to our sales equals leadership question at Linked In. Why? I love it because not only does it address the issue of how sales and leadership are similar but it also opens the door to a very critical leadership question. Is motivation an external or internal event?
You see external motivation is fleeting if not pointless for anything more than an immediate term. We have all seen the movies where the inspirational coach rallies the team at half time to overcome the odds and win the big game. That story line is so old it would not surprise me to learn that the first ever sports movie used this theme (and every other one after). This is short term emotional motivation it is unsustainable and like every other emotion it is subject to change.

For those of you who are thinking what the heck is he talking about hang with me. I will eventually get back to Kenneth and the whole sales thing.

Motivation is a primarily internal event that can be influenced by external factors. I can threaten you to do as I say or you will lose your job. That is an external motivating factor. Again how long does it last? It lasts about as long as the employee figures you are paying attention. No what we need to do as leaders is create an environment where employees want to excel, they want to perform. We do this be ridding the environment of my favorite technical term stupidity by management. We do this by creating systems that reward the right behaviors and outcomes. We create a system that provides real time feedback to employees on how they are performing. We do this by fostering pride and team spirit.

Back to Kenneth…

Kenneth mentioned in his comments the contrast between motivating customers and employees. To motivate employees we must communicate with them he says.

A customer can be persuaded to buy from you, and to believe that you are the one person that can help him. A team member, or employee on the other hand, I believe, can never be persuaded to do a good job or change his or her way of work, you have to make the team member or employee understand your goals and motives for doing things, and makes your team understand what are the goals of the department and/or company.  

So are sales and leadership the same thing Kenneth?

Are they similar – Maybe I would have to say.

Kenneth is correct the analogy of comparing sales to leadership only goes so far.

But certainly far enough to see that influence and persuasion are very similar and this aspect is central to both roles.

Sell well

Our next guest on this series is Sujatha Das. Sujatha hails from India and is a corporate manager of people development. Unlike previous commentators this time we get a more strategic response.

“An approach has to be chosen on a situational basis.”

Knowing what we need is a critical dimension for the developing leader. You remember the old saying that if the only tool in your tool belt is a hammer every problem tends to look like a nail? Well the perspective presented here is exactly the medicine to combat this disease. A leader must take stock of their won competencies. This may require candid feedback from a trusted colleague. With this in hand we stand a better chance of actually figuring out how to approach a growth opportunity. We will know what we can and cannot see for ourselves and where we can focus our growth. I have heard it said that the start of learning is to become conscious of your own ignorance. This is exactly where learning begins. We can then deploy the right situationally appropriate resources to develop where exactly we need to.

This post will end with Sujatha’s wisely spoken words…

“I strongly believe that as a leader, we must find what suits when and take this up. ”

So we have written about relationships, we have written about reframing the problem and we have written about adding value. Are you starting to track with me that you can develop your ability in sales the same way we conduct leadership development? Is it coming into focus?

Well I have one more argument I hope to persuade you with. It gets back to a Zig Ziglar’s quote that sales is about a transference of emotion. Remember that one? This too has a definite parallel in leadership. As a sales professional you convey the value the customer will receive, the satisfaction they will realize through the purchase, the peace of mind they get with the product reliability, the confidence they will have in the quality.

In leadership we talk about the end goal, the realization of the vision. Masterful leaders will paint a picture of what the end goal looks like, the benefits the team will enjoy, the satisfaction they will experience their new future roles, the comfort they will realize in knowing the process they will take to get there. All of these realizations are conveyed through the leader, through their voice, through their reputation, through their integrity and their actions.

A respected and trusted leader will sell his team on the future convincing them that the pain of not moving is greater than the uncertainty and fear of moving forward.

Just as a salesman will convince his customer that the frustration today of not having this product is greater than the uncertainty they have in how the new product will solve their current problems.

Influence everyone that is what we are talking about here, how do we influence others to agree with an end result that will benefit both them and us.

Soon we will talk about the methods of influence we have at our disposal to get the sale, lead the team.

Sell well

Ron

Yes relationship building is a key attribute of sales and not so ironically it is equally important in leadership. Without a trust based relationship a salesman will not likely get invited back and a leader will likely fail on a new initiative. We need to be good at building relationships. How do we do this? Well there are a few sure fire ways of enhancing your abilities in this area.

Mentors

Find someone in your life who is excellent with people. Interview them, ask them to help you identify how you can get better at interacting with people. Watch their technique and see how their skills might be adapted to your abilities. You want to develop your own genuine approach nothing fake or copied.

Modeling

Watch others and test it out yourself. Again it may seem awkward at first but practice makes for improvement.

Volunteering 

I love the feedback you get when leading in a volunteer role. People vote with their feet and they generally wear their heart on their sleeve. This means almost instant feedback if you know what you are looking for.

Recognize this is a life skill. It took you this long to be not so good at relationships, that is not going to change overnight. Resolve to get better one interaction at a time.

This conversation will need to continue. In the mean time try out one of the methods above. Post your experience. If you want to learn more contact me at ronn.hurst@gmail.com

Two days ago we started a new thread on sales leadership and today we continue on that theme.

You are in the client’s office and its not going well. You have tried everything you know. You have described your products with impeccable detail. You have explained your excellent service offer; you have built your credibility. You have told some jokes to put them at ease. You have even handled their objections yet something is still wrong. They have a cold disinterested look in their eye; another meeting, leaving for home you do not know. What you know is the sale seems to be slipping away.

What do you do?

Has this situation ever happened to you? It happens to me reasonably often. Typically for me it happens in the context of leadership. I have done all the right things. I cast the vision, I communicated the process, I involved them along the way, I handled objections, I did all the right things yet they still did not want to follow.

What did I do?

I changed the context. What the heck is a context and how can that help me you say. Well this is a fancy word for reframing the problem in a way that can be solved. What I recommend you do is ask the right questions. Be open and honest and gently confront the situation. You don’t look convinced by what I am saying what are you thinking/feeling right now?  How do you see this situation? You mentioned earlier that you …. Can you see how that challenge could be solved with us working together on this?

The goal here is to change the conversation from you selling them to you listening to their needs and wants. Remember old Zig Ziglar?

“Help enough people get what they want and you will get what you want”

How can you help a person until you know what they are struggling with? Now the cynics in the crowd may have already pointed out that I have overlooked a piece of the puzzle here. I have and we will pick that up in the next post.

Sell well

Ron

Here we go…

Can a road warrior be a leader?

So you are a salesman / saleswoman. You are looking at this site on leadership development and saying what the heck does this site have to offer me?

Great question!

Glad you asked!

Actually it has everything to do with you.

Zig Ziglar is famous for many quotes, lets talk about two of them

“Help enough people get what they want and you will get what you want”

“Selling is the transference of emotion”

Have you heard these before?

Well old Zig was not just a great motivational speaker and all star sales man he is also a great leader and an even better leadership development coach.

If I told you to go sell a product to a complete stranger what would you do first?

Would you

• Scream no way and walk out of the room?
• Say ya right where is the camera I know this is a trick?
• Would you go knock on the door and hard sell the person till they gave in?
• Would you say hello and try to get to know them, try to find out about a problem you could help them solve?

Well which did you choose?

I am guessing that a good 80 % of real sales professionals would choose door number 4. You know what is funny so would 80% or more leaders.

We first need to understand our customer, their needs, their frustrations. So next question would you start with a cold call or try to get a referral to get in the door? Which approach gives you the better chance to succeed? I think the answer is obvious isn’t it?

Let me end this post by challenging you. Go back and find any one post on this blog that catches your attention. Then read it with new eyes. Every time you see the word leader substitute sales man or sales woman. Every time you see leadership development read sales development. See if it doesn’t make all the world of sense.

I would love to hear your feedback on this.

In the coming weeks we will explore more about how you can be an even more effective sales person as we dig into this thing called leadership/ sales.

Sell well

Ron