Improve Your Leadership Style

The one factor that can be changed immediately in the performance formula, and that can bring about almost immediate improvements in performance, is leadership style. Everything that you do to improve your own personal leadership abilities will act as a multiplier for your sales force and increase their sales results. The best news is that there are no limits on how much better you can become as a sales manager and a leader when you devote yourself to self- improvement.

Many thousands of employees and salespeople have been asked the question, “Who was the best boss you ever had, and why?” It seems that the best bosses in every field, including sales, have two specific qualities: clarity and consideration.

In defining clarity, the people surveyed said, “I always knew exactly what the sales manager expected me to do.” The manager set clear goals and objectives, discussed them in detail with the salespeople, and then helped them to achieve those targets. The salespeople knew, every day, exactly what they were supposed to do, from the time they started work in the morning until the end of the day.

In my experience, clarity is 95 percent of success, not only in business and sales, but in life. The greater clarity you have with regard to what it is that you want to accomplish, and the greater clarity that each person who reports to you has, the faster and easier you will get the results you desire.

Caring About Your People

The second quality of the best bosses was “consideration.” People surveyed said, “I always felt as if my boss cared about me as a person, as well as an employee.”
In practice, this meant that the boss would take time to ask the sales employees about their personal lives, their families, and how everything was going in their time away from the office. This means that, when you talk about business, you focus on sales results. And when you talk to the individual, you focus on things of a personal nature.
What percentage of people’s thinking is emotional, and what percentage is logical/rational? The answer is that people are 100 percent emotional. The fastest way to connect with an individual is to ask something about the person’s emotional life: the individual’s personal and family life, aside from the job. This immediately triggers feelings of warmth toward the manager and greater commitment and loyalty to the company.

Four Management Styles

You’ve probably seen the managerial grid that divides management personalities into four different quadrants or styles. These are sometimes called telling, selling, managing, and motivating.
It is important that you use the right style of management for the particular individual with whom you are working. For example, a new person requires “telling,” which is a directive, hands-on style of managing. You tell the person exactly what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and how it will be measured.

You then follow up, like a master teaching an apprentice, to make sure that the new salesperson is doing exactly what’s required to get the results you expect.
The second type of management is “selling.” This is when you take the time to explain to your salespeople what they are doing and why. You encourage and persuade them to do what they need to do to get sales results, both for the company and for themselves.

Managing and Motivating

The third leadership style is “managing.” This style is used with experienced salespeople who only need a little direction and guidance to do their jobs. You set clear goals and standards accompanied with clear measures of activity. You then make sure that they are doing what they are expected to do each day.

The fourth leadership style is “motivating.” You create an incentive structure within your business that motivates people to perform at ever-higher levels. For example, the most successful companies have regular sales contests of some kind. They can be daily, weekly, and monthly contests. The biggest companies have annual contests whereby salespeople can earn bonuses, prizes, vacations, and financial rewards if they meet and exceed their sales quotas.
One of my clients had a simple reward system. He would take the top-selling salesperson out to lunch to an expensive restaurant on the first day of the following month. The top salespeople, who were earning good incomes already, would not be motivated by a small increase in their income. But being taken out to lunch by the boss was a status symbol, which strongly motivated them.

In the last few days of the month, there would be a flurry of sales activity among the top salespeople, those who were doing 80 percent of the business, just for the honor of walking out the door for lunch with the boss on the first workday of the month. What kind of motivational incentives could you create within your workplace that would cause people to perform at their very highest levels?

The Golden Rule

Jack Welch told the managers at General Electric, “Always manage your staff as if the situation would be reversed and you would be working for that person one year from today.”

General Electric had a high-performance system of incentives and rewards. It was not unusual for top-performing people to be promoted over the heads of their bosses. It happened every year. It was a good idea for each manager to be aware that it could happen to him. As a result, each person was treated with respect.
The Golden Rule says that you lead and guide others the way you would like to be led yourself. Guide them the way you would like to be guided. Give them feedback the way you would like to get feedback. Build them up and encourage them to perform at ever-higher levels as you would like to be encouraged.
In your interactions with each salesperson, you should supervise, counsel, coach, and discipline the individual in the same way that you would like to be treated.

One of the most important parts of Golden Rule management is that you give your salespeople the freedom to perform. People who have worked under exceptional leaders say that one of the things they liked the most was that they had considerable freedom to determine their daily work routine as long as they delivered the sales results expected of them.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

Remember also that each person is different. Each salesperson may require a different style of leadership, or a combination of styles, depending on the person’s experience and personal situation at the time. Be prepared to be flexible and to treat each salesperson as a unique individual, different from every other salesperson who reports to you.

ACTION EXERCISES

1. Review a list of the names of the members of your sales team. Write down next to each name the ideal leadership style that you could practice that would help that person perform at higher levels.
2. Practice consideration. Make it a habit each day to ask your salespeople simple questions like, “How is everything going?” Or, “How are you feeling today?” Or, “How is your family?” You will be amazed at the kind of responses that you get from these types of general questions that focus on the person rather than on the job. And the more you ask these questions, the more loyal and committed your salespeople will be, both to you and to the company.