Jeff Osmun's Blog

Sales Culture – Leadership Required of a Sales Person July 1, 2009

Well, in our case, we are in sales… and there MUST be something wrong with us, something seriously wrong with us!

Among the major organizations in a company (operations, technology / engineering, finance, HR, legal, marketing and sales), doesn’t it always seem that everyone else has an opinion of what sales should be doing, think that sales people have the best jobs in the company, and think they could do it just as well, or better than you?!   It is also largely thankless because no matter how high the revenue result for that month or quarter, it could always be higher (particularly if you work in a public company)!  It’s alot like your golf score in that way: even if you shoot the low score round of your life, you find yourself walking off the course thinking, “jeez if I only would have got out of the bunker in 1 swat on number 12, I would have shot a…”

Anyway, we all have 1 things in common:  we choose to be professional sales people or sales leaders.

However, there is more to B2B consultative sales than what meets the eye of most outside the profession.  I’ll continue to offer my view of the keys to building a successful professional sales organization, elaborating on one of the more subtle, “softer”, and under-appreciated aspects: sales culture.

In my blog introducing my views on sales culture, I listed 6 elements of sales culture:

• Team mindset
• Leadership – add value
• Ownership – your number… your business
• Empowerment / accountability
• Professionalism / discipline
• YOU ARE THE COMPANY

This blog goes further into the issue of “Leadership – add value.” Isn’t there a leader inside each of us in sales?  There had better be or we don’t belong in the profession!  It is the job of the sales management professional to set the example, expectation, and bring that leader out!  What do I mean by leadership in this case, the context of the front line, bag-carrying sales person (that is to say, they are not managing other sales people) in a B2B consultative selling environment?

A front line sales person is exposed to the most important information any company can have, or want… their customers needs and desires.  It is critical for the sales person to not only ask the right questions of the right people at the right time, and in the right manner, to solicit this information (this is yet another area to explore further in subsequent blogs by the way), but then be able to process the information they obtain, add value to it based on their other knowledge, experiences, etc., establish a strategy and recommend the next course of action.  That action plan typically involves other resources from within the company, either from the sales organization, or from other groups in the company, such as executive management, engineering, product management, operations, finance, etc.  The sales person should act as the “quarterback” of the strategy and action plan.  They do not run the ball on every play, but they need to call the play, and make sure all the other players on the field do their assignments.  Often times someone else is carrying the ball when the team scores, but is was the quarterback’s (sales person’s) leadership which made it happen.

One of the most difficult challenges I have had as a leader of sales organizations has been getting the bag-carrying sales person to truly realize that they are in a position of leadership whether they like it or not, and how vital that leadership is to the success of the company.  They are not simply an individual contributor that executes their job and punches out.  They are THE link between the company and the most important constituency of any company, their customers!  Many sales people do not view themselves this way.  They do not realize the leadership position they have by default.  As we all know well, if you do not see yourself as a leader, you certainly will not behave as a leader.  Without this self awareness of their required leadership role, they often act simply as information conduits, just passing info from the company to the market / customers about products / services, etc., and conversely, pass info about what the customer says back to his manager, or others in the company.

Wouldn’t it be great if the sales person digested the info learned at a customer, processed it in the context of the market conditions, competitive situation, and overall growth strategy at that customer and personally offered an engagement strategy and action plan?  Based on this plan he / she created, the wise sales person would lead a meeting of other pertinent people in the company which it the end would result in a very clear roadmap to success, as well as the buy-in of all the team members!

This touches on one of the expectations I always set for my sales people which is to bring me solutions, not problems. The front line sales person often has the answer, and knows what to do, they may not realize it, or haven’t been encouraged to voice it in other organizations or with previous management.  My approach has always been to encourage the person to state the problem, and offer the solution (the approach, strategy, proposal ideas, etc.) then we can review and offer improvements if necessary, and so on.  This encourages the best ideas from all, and creates in the sales person a strong sense of ownership 0f their customer and business (which is another key element of sales culture and a good segue to my next blog!).

The key is for the sale people to realize that, regardless of their title, their pay, or their position in the organizational hierarchy (relative to the CEO / President), they ARE LEADERS.