The Circle of Sales Leadership
IF you are a sales leader or aspiring to be one, here are three things that you need to consider every time, all the time—destination, growth and influence.
Destination
WHERE do you want to take your leadership role? Up to what level would you like to lead people? And until when would you like to lead? The answers to these questions are vital to your leadership journey. I recently had an interesting conversation with a golfer on the topic of vision. He said, “Coach Lex, the farther the vision, the clearer the goal.” It made sense. You see, if your vision is far enough, the obstacles become a blur and the goal becomes clearer. So as a sales leader, make sure that your vision and destination is far enough.
But what if you already reached your intended destination? Does that mean that you should already stop? Not necessarily. In fact, the best thing to do is to re-craft your destination as soon as you are about to reach the current one. Remember this, the moment you decided to embark on sales leadership, you carried with you the dreams and aspirations of others. Think about them and just enjoy the journey.
Growth
AS a sales leader, you need to grow to the size of your destination. Growth therefore is inevitable. Consciously learn at every turn, and treat every challenge, obstacle and victory as precious growth moments. The key is to keep “lifting your sales leadership lid.” Bear in mind that you are not competing with others, rather, you are competing with yourself, making sure that you are better today than you were yesterday. Apply the 1% Rule on a daily basis—aim to become 1% better today than you were yesterday. Remember, growth is never achieved in a day. It is achieved daily.
And yet, as a sales leader, you are not only focused on your own growth. You are also accountable to your team’s growth and development, so that they too can successfully move closer to their destination.
Influence
ACCORDING to John Maxwell, “The true measure of leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less.” If you are a leader, and yet no one is following you, that means you are simply walking in the park. You are not actually leading if you are not influencing people to do what you want them to do. And that’s the reason you need to grow—your growth becomes a beacon for others to follow. In sales leadership, you need proof of concept that you’ve been to where they want to go. And that’s where influence happens. They follow you because they know that you’ve been to where they want to be, and that you are well-equipped to lead them there.
As a sales leader, your job is to influence people to grow so that they can reach their destination. But in order to effectively do that, your destination is to continually grow so that your influence strengthens on a daily basis.
You can do this!
Alexey Rola Cajilig is the President of ARCWAY Consultancy Inc., Executive Director of ARC DOCENDI, and the Executive Managing Director of EM-CORE Success Academy and EM-CORE Foundation, Inc. He is a Sales Leadership Coach, Strategic Sales Operations Consultant, Christian Motivational Speaker, Human Ecologist and Author of The effective Seller. He is also the creator of ARCH Styles, a behavioral and personality assessment tool. If you have questions and suggestions, you may send an email to salesleadershipcoachlex@gmail.com.