Money A ‘Key’ To Successful Sales Leadership?
Perhaps this is still the pinnacle of recent Sales Leadership 'advice' - freely summarised: A Sales Professional is a good Sales Professional when one works without emotion - in the example given, one will leave emotions at the customer parking lot and Sales success would be theirs..
(Image Credit: pixabay.com).
For those of you who are familiar with my work know quite well that I am a practical Leader and Coach, based on my decades of international Leadership and Sales experience. Also, I have seen more success with developing people who can be themselves versus those that have to play ‘a role’.
Not only that, but an organisation in my view cannot ethically make ‘supra-human’ demands to Sales Leadership and their teams - they better respect people, their uniqueness, how they learn, adapt and operate, so they can make the best use of an organisation’s human capital and create worthwhile human experiences for all involved.
Sales Leadership not only starts with becoming more self-aware and developing and using one’s introspective ability, but it also ends with this same self-awareness.
Without self-awareness a Leader has no idea who she/he really is, what she/he thinks, why she/he does what she/he is doing and how she/he contributes to relationships with others (including customers)?
Unaware Leaders often question why things happen with team members, with senior leadership, with customers and with themselves - it all seems to have nothing to do with the Leader?
In fact, without self-awareness Sales Leadership has no opportunity to develop leverage to even consider making the smallest personal change and actively work on one’s own reality.
A reality, which for most people is based on perception through a set of ‘fixed’ beliefs, static since the age of 6-12. Contrary to what most people believe, education does not change beliefs. Beliefs are therefore also not “intellectual” but “emotional” (feelings).
What does this have anything to do with Sales Leadership?
A lot - Everything a Sales Leader does, everything she/he wants to achieve, sooner or later creates a ‘human interaction’ - not unimportantly the Leader is actively part of this interaction. This makes it critical for a Sales Leader to know who they are, what they think and why they believe, they think they do, what they do?
Sales Leadership results are relatively ‘simple’ to measure, from individual to team to corporate Sales Targets. Targets are required to be met, preferably exceeded. It is all about “Money”.
Well, you may say, not all, but still - the end result of the Sales Leadership co-creation of value with a ‘Business to Business’ customer, may present itself as improved Sales volume, improved quality and/or saving a customer’s (process) time, but will ultimately need to be measured in success - With “Money” as a result.
“Money” - a highly emotional subject. Have you ever tried to discuss the subject of “Money” neutrally, either at work or privately? Did you succeed? I dare to say, you most likely failed.
Money has a magical magnetisation to conflicts - more clearly internal, personal conflicts, which in the presence of other people, spontaneously and uncontrollably transform into external conflicts. The majority of the population has a pretty ‘tense’ relationship with “Money”.
People receive money, spend money, lose money, save money in their bank account(s), procure large purchases, make financial forecasts, have (large) personal or business debt, create balance sheets and all these actions in itself call for a personal, strong and mostly consciously unaware emotional reaction. When noticed, often deliberately tried to be pushed aside, but nonetheless powerfully and uncontrollably influencing one’s behaviour.
Money associated beliefs and their resulting negative emotions can literally stop a person in their tracks and eventually may even lead to physical symptoms. Memorised feelings and emotions will drive the same thoughts over and over, resulting in the same experiences.
Your "Money or Your Life", for Executive Sales Leadership might easily be ‘translated’ into the (negative) beliefs a Leader has about money and the resulting emotions have far reaching consequences to Sales Leadership success.
Negative money beliefs form limiting performance barriers - often times these types of performance barriers cause not just stress, anxiety and other negative emotions - They frequently form the basis of a feeling of inadequacy and result in failure to achieve one’s professional and personal goals.
In my humble opinion, it is therefore not too much to answer the question “Money a key to successful leadership?” with a wholehearted “Yes”. Yes, as Sales Leadership it is important to be knowledgeable about the foundations of modern day Professional Sales - Psychology, Economy and Organisational and Business Management and to strategically apply these in a continuously changing and often international Account Management context.
However, in my coaching work with Executive, Sales Leadership and (pre-) Burnout clients, I almost always experience a huge ‘AHA’ moment by the client, when these deep rooted 'money-based' beliefs disguised as performance barriers reveal themselves.
Performance is contextual and feelings and emotions are contextual - the latter uncontrollable within a human behavioural context.
(Image Credit: pixabay.com)
Emotions trigger feelings - feelings form an attitude over time and become part of one's personality. A personality that creates a personal reality - a daily perceptual round of observations, based on past emotions, qualifying the same day by day experiences as ‘new’, concluding this is one’s life.
Make a commitment today to your Sales Leadership success and to creating personal change by starting to discover what your own personal ‘relationship’ with Money is? You may be surprised as to where this could lead you?
In my Coaching work I use my proprietary True Change™ approach - An approach based upon human behavioural biology and an integration of different forms of psychology.
Based on my experience, I have come to conclude that there are five (5) logical steps that will need to happen to identify and remove Sales Leadership performance barriers and to ultimately improve sustainable success and fulfilment:
- Become aware of the current biggest Executive Sales Leadership Improvement Performance Fallacies
- Become aware of the Single Most Important Success Factor determining the outcome of Executive Sales Leadership Performance
- Create Self-awareness
- Find leverage to Personal Change
- Make Personal Changes, resulting in sustainable Executive Sales Leadership Performance improvement and prevention and/or management of Executive Burnout recovery
Het op geavanceerde wijze bereiken van doelgerichte en duurzame prestatieverbetering in de zakelijke context is mijn missie.
Gedurende een lange tijd ben ik al gefascineerd door menselijk potentieel en hoe we menselijke prestaties duurzaam kunnen verbeteren in een zakelijke context. Ik heb gedurende de afgelopen vijftien jaar vele vormen van psychologie, methodieken en geavanceerde technieken bestudeerd.
Ook heb ik mij verdiept in het vinden van manieren om executives en ondernemers te helpen in hun zoektocht naar het halen of overtreffen van hun doelen en het voorkomen of duurzaam herstellen van burn-out.
Door gebruik te maken van het True Change™ Executive Coaching vijf-stappenplan begeleid en ondersteun ik executives en ondernemers bij het maken van blijvende persoonlijke veranderingen, die leiden tot zakelijke groei en preventie of herstel van burn-out.
