FEATURE | LEADERSHIP
LEADING FROM THE FRONT GRAHAM SCRIVENER offers ten tips for effective sales leadership
I
t goes without saying that a high performing sales team is critical to business survival, but success or failure boils down to leadership performance. Are sales leaders strategic? Do they coach? Do they build accountability and trust, and can they lead their teams successfully through change? These are a few of the essential behaviours prevalent in leaders with high performing teams, yet research1 has found that as many as 58% of workers move into management roles without relevant experience. Faced with overwhelming demands and competing priorities, some revert to their strong suit of selling, at the expense of developing their salespeople. To do a job well, sales managers should follow the ten tips below.
“Those who coach well embed it into the team culture. They build it into their sales and management strategy.�
1
BE A MODEL SALESPERSON Nothing is more persuasive to a team than seeing the behaviours expected of them in action so, to land the big deals, you need to model the sales skills that you want your salesforce to use. These desired behaviours then gradually become recognised internally as the way the organisation sells and, externally, for how it conducts business.
18 WINNING EDGE
18-19 Scrivener V2.indd 2
ISMM.CO.UK
15/07/2015 16:12
