ISM Book Review - Sales Leadership

Books on sales leadership and being bold in selling are reviewed by MARC BEISHON

We were struck by the title of the first book on the stocks in this review – Stop Selling & Start Leading, from a trio of American authors. Two of them are academics who specialise in leadership, and have written extensively about this generally and in other fields. In this book, they say: “Leadership is an observable and learnable set of skills and abilities that is accessible to everyone. Research clearly shows that in the highest performing organisations leadership is everyone’s business. Similarly, evidence abounds that the most exemplary sellers engage most frequently in the practices of leadership. Leaders, like extraordinary sellers, are change brokers. They are guides who show people the way from where they are now to where they aspire to be in the future. Leaders make extraordinary things happen.”

The authors say they’ve researched this from the sales perspective by looking at buyers – “We identify the five buyer preferences that originally led to our hypothesis that sellers would be more successful if they replaced traditional selling behaviours with the behaviours of exemplary leaders” – and in fact this is based on a survey that adds data to that used to formulate an existing framework, The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. These five practices form the main chapters of the book, so we’ll go through them in this review, but they are: l Model the way l Inspire a shared vision l Challenge the process l Enable others to act l Encourage the heart.

BUYER–SELLER DISCONNECT

In Stop Selling & Start Leading the authors cite a survey by Hubspot on what customers want to discuss in a first sales call and what sales reps typically cover. There is a disconnect: n Salespeople want to know who is responsible for the purchase, the timeline, the budget, the reasons for buying and the overall goals for the company. But most buyers really don’t want to discuss these at first n What buyers want to hear at first are advice on how similar organisations have had success with the product or service, how the product works (a demo) and not least, the pricing.

What this means is that you mustn’t withhold information and must be transparent to build trust quickly. It also makes you look capable and confident.

The practices are indeed about behaviours, and they asked buyers questions such as, “How frequently do sellers you choose to do business with exhibit this behaviour?” and “Which leadership behaviours are the most important?”, and report that buyers are significantly more likely to meet with and buy from sellers who exhibit these leadership behaviours. Conversely, when asking sellers what gets results, “persistence” is often mentioned, but this isn’t a word that buyers use in describing their preferences.

Before the chapters on the practices, there’s a chapter that highlights “credibility” as the key to leadership and making the sale. In the survey, they also asked, “What behaviours could a seller exhibit that would increase your likelihood of meeting with or buying from him or her?” More than one-third of the responses were related to the credibility of the seller. Credibility is perceived by three factors: trustworthiness, expertise and dynamism, and people who are rated more highly on these characteristics are considered by others to be more credible sources of information, say the authors. In turn, honesty is the number one factor in evaluating trustworthiness, such as keeping your sales promises, followed by say expert product knowledge and simply having energy. But not following through on commitments is a dealbreaker and breaking even a small promise is a big deal when that’s all the buyer has to gauge credibility and trustworthiness, they say.

The first of the five practices, “model the way”, is about having a set of values or principles that reflect you and your company. This is where you “clarify values by finding your voice and affirming shared values” and “set the example by aligning actions with shared values”. So no little white lies, or telling tales on the competition – and keep your price integrity, and take responsibility for errors. You get the picture. As the authors say: “If you lack shared ideals or ignore them, buyers will see inconsistencies that cause them to doubt you, and you may also be seen to lack confidence.”

The second behaviour is “inspire a shared vision”, which sounds a bit like the first one, but it is about a vision you build with the buyer rather than the inward values you bring as a sales leader. Here, what you need to avoid is a vision of the future that is “fabricated, exaggerated, or farfetched, filled with ‘blue sky’ promises. Buyers react negatively when sellers overpromise and underdeliver.” Instead you need to “imagine the possibilities” and “find a common purpose”. The authors say that while sellers do think this is important, buyers rate it the least important leadership practice – but, generally, being forwardlooking is the quality that most differentiates leaders from individual contributors. The answer to this paradox lies in that word “credibility” – demonstrate it or buyers won’t believe your vision can come true. There’s a lot more on this behaviour, including familiar ideas such as storytelling and making emotional connections.

The third behaviour, “challenge the process”, sounds a bit like the Challenger Sale, and indeed as a leader you don’t wait for problems – you need to anticipate them or look for ways to make improvements. The authors do reference the Challenger Sale methodology, but warn not to be too confrontational. While the Challenger Sale qualities are valued, they are not the ones favoured most by buyers, and you must make “purposeful challenging”, and “offer more to back up challenges made”. Also in this behaviour is “experiment and take risks”, but by taking others with you to make risk safe. You turn experiments into learning opportunities by generating small wins rather than betting the house.

The fourth behaviour, “enable others to act” is about “buyer enablement” rather than sales enablement, and covers collaboration, because you can’t work alone, but you also want to strengthen others so they have self-determination – but buyers still want relationships with you as equals.

Finally, the fifth behavior, “encourage the heart”, is familiar in that it’s about recognising contributions and celebrating values and victories.

The book is American and has chatty examples, but also solid references. It is an interesting and accessible meld of leadership and sales concepts. SELLING BOLDLY VS FEARFULLY

BOLD

Proactive Confident Boldness Optimistic Grateful Consistent perseverance Focus on value and relationship Take constant communication action Make it look easy Plan‐driven

FEARFUL

Reactive Fearful Meekness Pessimistic Cynical Quick surrenders Focus on products/services Overplan and underexecute Labouring, and it shows Inquiry driven

Stop Selling & Start Leading by James Kouzes, Barry Posner and Deb Calvert is published by Wiley. It is available on Amazon

Selling Boldly by Alex Goldfayn is published by Wiley. It is available on Amazon SELLING BOLDLY The second book, Selling Boldly, is written by Alex Goldfayn, who practises what he preaches with his own US consultancy. It seems very much in the mould of a hundred other sales motivation books – is there anything new to be said? Goldfayn summarises his approach in two sentences: “The first step is to know how good you are so that you gain confidence, positivity, and boldness. The second step is to communicate with customers and prospects more, because the more we communicate, the more we sell.”

But what is the key to this? Overcoming fear – and it’s homing in on fear that sets this book apart as it doesn’t pull any punches. “Fear is the single greatest killer of sales growth, for individuals and companies alike,” says Goldfayn. His book is essentially about demolishing fear and as such is pretty much a psychological approach, but it’s not in the academic league of The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance, which is based on original research. Goldfayn first defines fear, noting we have fear from an early age about rejection, especially. Fear of failure, not being liked, of upsetting the customer – and the consequences – makes us reactive, use email instead of calling, procrastinate, and even turns us into perfectionists.

Confronting fear means identifying exactly what you are afraid of and what will happen if it happens. Goldfayn moves onto “positive psychology” and here makes a key distinction. Most sales improvement programmes focus on what’s going wrong – but instead he says you are doing good things, but he wants you do more of it.

The rest of the book is about his “selling boldly” system and toolkit, and the key is communicating more with customers and prospects. To do this you need the “bold” rather than “fearful” mindset, and he sets out a planner to help do this, which includes writing down things such as “three recent sales wins I’m proud of”. There are several other planners too, such as for weekly communications.

A key to developing the selling boldly mindset is talking to happy customers. There’s a lot more about the positive actions to take. Goldfayn writes in a simple, engaging way and makes it look fun too.