Driving Sales Beyond

Leadership Management - From Napoleon To Welch

As I watched President Obama share his vision on Tuesday night during his press conference, I thought of his leadership, which then led me to think about leadership management within wholesale distributors and all sales organizations during these tough times.  

Some observations I recently received from one of my LinkedIn profile discussions, suggested that as leaders today we must:

• Lead by example and lead with action. Leadership is not about being perfect or doing everything right, it is about doing the right things that help empower others to do what they need to do.
• Understand the imperative nature of hiring good people (regardless of the economy) and, even more importantly to let them do what you hired them for. In tough times like these, it is very easy to "micro-manage".
• Keep the vision alive and make sure that people are still able to see it. Focusing on tasks, blurs that vision, and decreases morale for those on the front lines. In a highly transactional environment for example, some find the focus on tasks to be very depressing. We must bring long-term vision into the scenario, along with goals and then let our people go out and figure it out.
• Remember that people look to their manager for that vote of confidence, encouragement, enthusiasm, or just the gentle righting of the ship. Positive people possess that magnetism which can nudge individuals forward.
• Be direct in what you want out of your people and then let them figure out how to get it done. It doesn't work with everyone, and in every situation but if you have those go-getters on your team, then let them go. Set them on a path for success by simply getting out of their way.

Here are five great quotes on leadership management. Which do you think provides the best insight to sales leadership for these economic times? Tell us why you pick the one you do. 



1. "The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it." Theodore Roosevelt 


2. “A leader's job is to look into the future and see the organization, not as it is, but as it should be."  Jack Welch 
3. "A leader is a dealer in hope." Napoleon Bonaparte 


4. "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." Peter Drucker 


5. "Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." George S. Patton

Please Share Your Thoughts
Which of these quotes do you think provides the best insight to leadership management for wholesale distributors and all sales organizations for these economic times? Tell us why you pick the one you do. 



Ongoing, Clear Communication: There is No Substitute

Over the last two weeks we surveyed LinkedIn users regarding the role executive management’s guiding ideas play in influencing their sales reps daily practices.  We polled the members of this business community asking, “To what degree do your vision and values direct sales rep behavior?”   A full 85% of respondents indicated that the vision and values “guide all the reps do” or provide a “direct link.”

The comments we received are equally as enlightening relative to this leadership trait, and many focused on the importance of not just establishing the guiding ideas but the ongoing, clear communication of these.  For example:

• "We are making progress on linking vision and values, however there is no end to this effort."
• "I believe the transfer of vision is the number one thing a c-level or sales organization manager can do. I learned a long time ago that repeating the vision over and over again, and in different ways, with different media, is key. One memo to the field won't cut it."
• "When the values, vision, purpose, etc. are built into defined processes that lay the framework for the sales department, it is pretty easy. When tasked with incorporating these values, etc. as a secondary set of guidelines not attached to job responsibilities or specific procedures it can be difficult to maintain across an entire team."

Consistent, Clear, and Repeated
These responses can be summed up with one respondent’s observation:  “Management has a responsibility to consistently articulate and demonstrate these [ideas] by their words and actions.”  This leadership insight touches on three key communication realities that we know build an engaged and productive sales force:

Keep it going -  In terms of lasting influence, a continuous string of little conversations about company ideas and valued behaviors trumps one grand mention of them.

Keep it consistent – A simple message repeated often has great staying power.  “What’s your main thing?” asked one of our poll respondents, adding, “The ‘main thing’ is the company’s purpose and priorities. When every person in an organization knows and understands the main thing, people will focus on what is important.”  

Keep it clear – When leaders take the time to link company ideas with desired behaviors -- and clearly communicate that relationship – they connect the dots between ideas and actions and make the connection obvious to others.       

Quick Three-Step Diagnosis
If ideas that drive your company fade by the time they reach street-level sales activity, run a communications check:

1. Does leadership keep the communication fire stoked with ongoing conversation about ideas that drive behavior?
2. Does leadership address and re-address the same ideas throughout the organization, over time, and in different settings?
3. Does leadership communicate a clear connection between the company’s “main idea” and desired behaviors?
   

What Are Your Thoughts?
Do you agree with the outcome of the poll?  

Have you seen a great example of consistent and clear communication of the guiding ideas that ultimately impact the behaviors of the sales team?  

Or, how about a poor example?  Please share your thoughts so we all may continue to collaborate and learn from one another.

64% of Sales Organizations Are Fundamentally Flawed

In our just published book Driving Distributor Sales Beyond: Best Practices for Outselling Your Competitors; we illuminate a fundamental flaw in most sales organizations.  Only 36% of the hundreds of distributors we surveyed indicated that they have developed their sales systems equally as well or better than others throughout their enterprise.  Too often, distributors rely on one-off sales training workshops, for example rather than taking the same discipline of systematizing processes they have incorporated throughout the other parts of the business.

Our finding and research sponsored by the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors - Insititute for Distribution Excellence is in good company.  Last year the Wall Street Journal interviewed Ram Charan in an article titled - Next in Line for Reinvention: The Art of Selling.  In this discussion, Ram observed, “I began to see companies with good strategies, good technology, good costs asking, ‘Why are we not getting good results?’  I found many companies had focused on the back end of the business:  Operations, accounting, finance, overhead.  But the sales force had been neglected.”

When it comes to systems, I’ve seen distributors centralize their service centers to improve efficiencies and drive costs out of the operations. I’ve seen companies implement customer relationship management (CRM) software packages to manage business processes, lead management, and quoting. Distributors are constantly looking for efficiencies in the routing of their delivery vehicles. And warehouse management systems that include radio frequency identification (RFID), bar coding, and other technologies are implemented to efficiently monitor the flow of goods in and out of the warehouse. But when it comes to applying processes and systems to the sales force, many distributors come up short.

Let me prove it to you.  In my speaking engagements, I’ll often ask business leaders the question; “If you have a sales organization of 30 sales people, how many different selling systems do you think you have?”  And you know the response I get.  The answer is typically 30 or more.  Management in most businesses has simply allowed their sales processes to evolve without much strategic thought.  They have allowed their sales representatives to do what they think is right.  They react to every whim of their suppliers.

Can you imagine your warehouse staff trying to manage the warehouse when each is using a different warehouse management system?  Of course not!  But we allow that very inefficiency in our sales organization everyday.

Top performing distributors however, take a holistic approach to driving sales.  Take these three steps to begin to systematize your sales efforts:

1. Establish a guiding idea - 100% of what is codified as part of your customized sales and sales management system must relate back to your guiding idea.  For example:  Our priority is to identify and then satisfy the customer’s needs profitably.  
2. Develop principles - Define sales and sales management principles that support your guiding idea. For example:  The objective of the customer needs analysis is to identify the customer’s needs from the customers point.
3. Define the processes required to implement the principles - Outline the steps your team must take and the tools they must use in order to “live” the principles.  For example:  The fours steps of the customer needs analysis are, the research, positioning statement, intentional questioning, and the physical survey.

Most sales organizations are fundamentally flawed.  Our research shows however, that those distributors who drive sales beyond what the market is prepared to give them, do so by taking the same process and systems mentality to the sales organization as they have employed in other aspects of the business.

What do you think?

• Why do you believe there is a reluctance to bring standardized systems and processes to the sales team?  
• What have you and your organization done to bring a unified approach to the market?