Jeff Monday

If only leading a sales team was as simple as reading an AI generated article! 😀 Spoiler alert: it’s not! Great leadership takes practice and study: Start by getting a mentor that is a current sales leader. Study the books on great leadership: “Multipliers” by Liz Wiseman “Leadership and Self Deception” by The Arbringer Institute “On Leadership” by John Wooden Ask for a stretch assignment where you get to manage a small team. Think long and hard about the culture you want to create. And when all else fails, “Be the leader you would want to have for the situation/moment.” Do that enough times and you’ll be a great leader!

The old phrase “compensation drives behavior” is out-dated. While compensation can drive behavior it’s an external motivator. If this is your only motivator, you might not be attracting the right talent. I found that helping my team achieve autonomy, mastery, and purpose has had a much greater impact to my team’s motivation. These are intrinsic motivators that drive the right behavior. When you get them right, the compensation model is just the icing on the cake! For more on this subject check out Dan Pink’s “Drive”.

Coaching is at the core of being a great leader. If you want to have a great organization, you have to have great people. The best way to get there is coaching. My favorite book on the topic is the, “Coaching Habit” by Michael Bungay Stanier It has transformed my coaching conversations with these seven essential questions: 1. "What's on your mind?" 2. "And what else?" 3. "What's the real challenge here for you?" 4. "What do you want?" 5. "How can I help?" 6. "If you're saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?" 7. "What was most useful for you?" These questions empower meaningful dialogue, uncover insights, and drive positive change.

I still use SMART goals with my team. The most important thing to ensure is that your team’s SMART goals are aligned with your goals and that of the company. Once we get through our SMART goal setting we schedule a follow on meeting to discuss alignment. There, we refine our goals that are in alignment and scrap the ones that don’t align. At the end of the year we review the goals as part of our annual review. The SMART system ensures we have a framework to judge our success and set goals for next year.

At Apple we were taught that the first thing a leader should do is set vision and purpose. You have to connect how your sales team impacts the overall company’s mission. (i.e. in the early days our job was to sell enough of the current product to give our engineers enough time to build the next BIG thing). The next thing you had do was deliver velocity and vector. Help them understand the direction of your specific team and how fast they need to move to get there. Finally distill this into no more than three simple bullets the team could refer back to as they prioritized their activities for the sales quarter or year (search: commanders intent).

The best approach I have used and seen in practice is to build a proactive plan. This plan should demonstrate how you would drive impact in the role you are applying for. By providing value up front and asking for feedback, you can demonstrate a strong interest in the role, show that you are prepared, and you will be perceived as persistent instead of push. For details on how to execute this approach, check out the LinkiedIn article I published on Flipping the Interview!