I get asked a lot about the difference between sales leadership and sales management.
And it’s really quite simple …
Too many sales people feel compelled to have to hit their targets, and what that drives is a conscript mentality.
The highest performing sales people see sales as a challenge that they want to rise up and meet.
They’re not looking at every sale as a conversion – they look at every sale as an opportunity to perform, to deliver, to be better than the rest of the field that they’re playing in.
Great sales performance where the sales team rise up, starts with great sales leadership.
And that has everything to do with how the leader shows up in every moment … in the little things, in the small things that matter – it’s called the power of small.
John Maxwell says that everything rises and falls on leadership, and if this is so, sales people can only rise up if the leader rises to the challenge in every moment … has the resilience to step up and to lead not because they have to, but because they choose to.
Great sales performance is about recognising that the challenge is there to be taken and that the targets aren’t there just to be achieved.
If you’re a sales leader, are you truly leading or are you managing?