CHAPTER 10

Take the Lead

Sales Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

YOU’VE LIKELY HEARD this story before: Tom is a hard-working salesperson who is a student of his profession. He becomes the top producer at the company and, because of his outstanding sales results, is promoted into management.

But in his new position as a sales leader, Tom quickly becomes puzzled and frustrated because his team isn’t hitting its revenue goals. In order to make sure the company goals are met, he is forced to put his salesperson hat back on. Due to this dual role, he is now working seven days a week and is beginning to question his decision to move into management. Self-doubt sets in. How could he be so successful as a salesperson, only to fail miserably as a sales leader?

The answer is simple. The tasks Tom excelled at as a top sales producer are very different from the tasks needed to lead a high-performance sales team. A salesperson is responsible for developing sales opportunities, whereas a sales manager is responsible for developing people. A top salesperson succeeds with good selling skills, while an effective sales manager must also excel at teaching the selling skills and knowledge that made him successful.

Is it any wonder that salespeople often have trouble transitioning into the role of sales manager?

When we conduct sales management training workshops, we ask participants to think about effective leaders, coaches, or mentors they’ve had in their lives. Then, we ask them to write down specific attributes that made these people effective in their roles.

The answers often include: “He cared about me.” “She really made me stretch.” “He was a great teacher.” “She was disciplined and focused.” “He didn’t accept excuses.” While varied, the answers are similar in one important way: None of them focus on hard skills. No one says: “He was good at accounting.” “She was a manufacturing genius.” “He was brilliant at technology.” It’s soft skills that make up the most critical part of the success equation.

No doubt many of you reading this book are sales producers who aspire to be in management or have already attained that level. If so, you need soft skills such as impulse control, empathy, self-awareness, delayed gratification, and interpersonal skills to improve your ability to lead and develop others.

Let’s take a look at the roles and responsibilities of a sales manager and the associated emotional intelligence skills that can enhance your success as a sales leader. We will examine your need to act consistently, offer inspiration and guidance, set high expectations, and recognize the efforts of those on your team.

How Do You Show Up?

Most everyone would agree that consistency is an important trait for a leader. At a basic level, consistency is connected to self-awareness and impulse control. Effective leaders must be aware of their emotions in order to manage them. Without such awareness, a leader can react to events that occur during the course of a day and behave in a manner that is not congruent with stated values, words, or actions. Such behavior rapidly erodes trust and credibility.

Inconsistent behavior is often due to poor impulse control. The manager says or does things without fully thinking through the impact of her words or actions, allowing events of the day to affect her emotions.

During the Monday morning sales meeting, for example, the sales manager is in a good mood and praises the team for their efforts and results. She gives a small pep talk on the topics of respect and personal accountability, emphasizing the importance of these traits in achieving personal and professional success.

The next day, after a tough meeting with the CEO, she turns irate, pressuring the team to sell more—or else. This behavior is the exact opposite of her pep talk from the day before. The team doesn’t know if they can believe or trust her because the message is always changing.

We call this kind of leader a “fair weather” sales manager. She’s nice as long as everything is going well. But when a business storm is brewing, this manager is the first to lose her cool. She becomes part of the problem, not the solution. Her temper flares, she points fingers, and she lets accusations fly—all due to her inability to manage her emotions.

Every day, the team asks the same question: “What kind of mood is Sarah in today?” As a result of her volatility, no one brings up current or potential problems. Salespeople don’t ask for advice because they can’t predict the mood of the day. Difficulties don’t get resolved and skills don’t improve, which affects client satisfaction, team morale, and sales revenues.

Great sales leaders excel at managing their emotions and don’t allow daily events to affect what they do or how they do it. They choose how they want to show up. We call these sales managers “all weather” leaders. They are capable of handling any kind of business storm without losing control.

If a major competitor moves into town, the manager doesn’t hit the panic button. She reminds the team that competition is good because it prevents complacency. If internal operations issues are impacting sales results, she doesn’t yell at other department heads. She works on getting the issues fixed, even when it’s not her department’s responsibility.

As the sales team observes her calm demeanor, they learn they can trust their manager to react in predictable ways that reflect self-control, respect for others, and proactive thinking.

How do you show up every day? Are you an “all weather” or a “fair weather” leader?

Do Your Words and Actions Align?

In addition to inconsistent behavior, one of the quickest ways to destroy credibility and integrity as a sales leader is to say one thing and do another. The words and actions don’t align. Remember, your team watches what you do more than they listen to what you say.

Consider a sales manager who preaches the importance of being on time to meetings with clients and prospects. He emphasizes the need for having a defined objective for each meeting and stresses the importance of preparation. Yet when he holds the weekly sales meeting, he models neither of the above. He arrives late and allows reps to straggle in throughout the meeting, disrupting the flow of conversation. He doesn’t distribute a written agenda of the meeting, so his sales team is not prepared to contribute and engage. The meeting quickly turns into a rote review of sales activity and pipeline. Little or no time is invested in attitude or skills training. The sales leader models the following concepts, based on his actions:

  It’s acceptable to be late to a meeting.

  Agendas are not important. Go ahead and wing it.

  Preparation sounds good but probably isn’t doable because of everyone’s busy schedules.

Obviously, these aren’t the messages most sales managers want their team members to take to heart. This manager’s actions have destroyed any impact his words might have had.

A similar scenario can arise during one-on-one interactions with team members. While sales managers all agree that building relationships is important, they often demonstrate the opposite behavior.

Consider this situation: Jen meets her boss for a coaching session. She’s excited to share details of a recent sales success and eager to get advice on a new opportunity she is working on. But when she begins to recount her experiences, her sales manager appears preoccupied. He takes phone calls and checks emails as he fidgets and repeatedly looks at his watch. Jen’s excitement quickly fades. She doesn’t feel recognized or appreciated, and the meeting ends early.

As she leaves, the sales manager says, “Thanks, Jen. I appreciate all your hard work.” Jen hears the words, but remembers the manager’s actions, which shouted, “Other priorities are more important than you.”

Emotionally intelligent sales managers possess interpersonal skills. They value their people, and their actions support that value. Instead of preaching the importance of relationships, they demonstrate their importance by turning off the technology and giving you their full attention. Their words and actions align, telling you, “You’re the most important priority on my agenda right now.” Jen sure could have used a manager like that.

Teaching Rather Than Closing

Good sales managers do more than simply model the kind of behavior they expect from their sales team; they take an active role in helping them improve their skills. Jack Welch, former chairman of General Electric, said it best: “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”

Good sales managers recognize that they are only as effective as the members on their team. Their job is no longer about opening and closing business; it’s about teaching others to do so.

Sales managers who lack this awareness don’t take the time to develop others. They are stuck being the company “doer,” the person who closes business. The problem is that when the company reaches a certain size, there isn’t enough of the sales manager to go around. She can’t be at every deal. Sales stagnate or decrease because she neglected the important role of teaching others how to win business.

Teaching requires delayed-gratification skills. You must put in the time to teach and coach in order to get the reward of a self-sufficient team. This requires paying attention to what your sales staff is communicating and requesting, and then giving guidance.

To this end, the emotionally intelligent sales manager makes a decision to be fully present during meetings. He displays interest and empathy by listening and asking questions. In the previous scenario regarding Jen, a self-aware sales manager would know that his primary responsibility is to transfer his knowledge and skills to his salesperson in order to help her become a better sales professional. So instead of checking emails and taking phone calls during their meeting, he would inquire about her new opportunity, teaching her new and better ways to achieve that goal. When he offered congratulations on her recent success, the words would be specific: “Jen, the research you did on their financials is really what made you win this project. That research shows me you took time to plan, even when it would have been easier to just ‘wing’ it.” As a result, Jen would feel appreciated and leave the meeting aware of what she had done right in her recent sale.

Teaching involves accompanying reps on their appointments or conducting one-on-one coaching sessions. Both can be tedious and even frustrating. (“Do I really have to show you how to do this again?”) But patience pays off. In his book What It Takes to Be #1 (McGraw-Hill, 2000), Vince Lombardi’s son recounts a quote from his famous father, one of the greatest football coaches of all time, that reflects Lombardi’s dedication to the role of teacher:

They call it coaching but it is teaching. You do not just tell them it is so, but you show them the reason why it is so and you repeat and repeat until they are convinced, until they know. It was the way, back in Brooklyn, the good teacher I had and admired did it.

Lombardi was ahead of his time. He knew something about how the brain works and the power of repetition in mastering new skills. The “repeat and repeat” philosophy is an important one for sales managers to embrace as they teach new attitudes and skills to their teams.

Sales managers tend to fall short on this philosophy. One of the reasons for their past sales successes is that they learn new skills and acquire knowledge quickly. They count on the same from their sales teams. They teach a concept once and expect their teams to apply it flawlessly in future sales calls. In essence, what they are doing is forcing their salespeople to practice in the worst place—in front of the prospect or customer.

As we discussed in Chapter 2, new skills are learned because of the brain’s ability to develop new neural pathways. But without repetition, these neural pathways atrophy and new skills are lost.

Effective sales managers control their desire for instant results. They have the patience and discipline to listen to the problems their team members are having and offer guidance. Poor sales results are often not about hard skills. The salesperson simply isn’t good at handling stress, for example, or she gets anxious or critical when a sales meeting doesn’t go the right way, inhibiting her ability to move forward on the next opportunity.

This is where sales managers can add valuable coaching and insights by asking a few questions:

  What’s good about tough selling situations?

  What can we control or change?

  What are the lessons learned from this scenario?

  How will these lessons make you better on the next sales call?

  What’s making you take the prospect’s responses so personally?

These questions help the salesperson recognize that one bad sales meeting is just that.

One of the biggest differences we see between sales teams that achieve their goals and those that don’t is the sales manager’s involvement as teacher and coach. It’s no longer about how good you are but about how good you can make others.

Tough Love, Sales Leadership Style

Leadership in sales includes letting team members know what you expect from them. This role is similar to that of a parent. Good parents set expectations of behavior and character for their children, such as: you must complete your homework before you play; you aren’t allowed to text during mealtime; you are responsible for doing chores around the house. The best parents recognize that parenting is not a popularity contest, and they don’t give in to comments such as “None of the other kids’ moms expect them to …”

These parents are willing to hold their children to high expectations because they love them and are concerned about their welfare. They are willing to put off the instant gratification that comes from letting their kids do whatever they want because their ultimate goal is to raise successful, self-sufficient adults. And this means that when necessary, they are willing to use tough love. They make their kids abide by “the rules” even when they don’t like them.

A good sales manager shows the same emotional intelligence. She cares about those on her team, and because she cares, she sets clear expectations for success. She establishes and measures key performance metrics for sales activities. Team members role-play, even when they don’t like it, so they can master selling techniques. Excuses for late reports on forecasting or sales activity are not accepted.

When the sales team accuses this manager of micromanaging or having too high of expectations, she doesn’t give in and lower her standards. She puts aside her need to be liked and focuses on being respected, more concerned with developing these individuals into a high-performing sales team than with being their best friend.

To do this, sales managers must possess a healthy dose of independent thinking and self-confidence. Independent thinkers are self-directed and free of emotional dependency. They know that raising the bar on performance and holding staff members accountable for results inspired the phrase, “It’s lonely at the top.” And because they are confident as well as independent, they don’t accept excuses or mediocrity from their teams. Tough sales love creates high-performance sales cultures.

Holding Up the Mirror of Truth

Part of tough love means helping others see their own blind spots. Effective managers hold up a mirror to members of their team to show them the blemishes in their attitudes or actions.

Holding the mirror up means you must be comfortable being a truth teller. And some days as a leader, that means telling a salesperson that he has a bad attitude, lacks organization, or might not be as committed to success as he claims he is. You might be the first person who has ever held up the mirror to this person. And you might be the first person who has cared enough to ask him to change and stretch in order to reach his full potential.

In the words of Tom Landry, former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, “Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.”

Offering Inspiration and Recognition

Tough love doesn’t mean being cruel or never showing a soft side; in fact, inspiring team members and recognizing excellence is a big part of tough love—and this is something hard-driving salespeople tend to misunderstand. Often, they land in the position of sales management because of their ability to achieve goals. They are results-oriented, which is a goal. But in keeping their eye on the goal, they can forget that managing is as much about inspiration as it is giving direction. The best sales managers recognize the accomplishments of the team and inspire members to continue to do better.

Most managers excel at problem solving. The downside is that some sales managers don’t balance problem solving with praise and celebration. They only focus on pointing out what the company or sales team is doing wrong. “Lost another one to EFG Company on price,” a manager might say. “We missed our delivery date to ABC Company.” “MNO Company is coming out with their new product before us.” Quickly, the sales team becomes stressed and unmotivated just thinking about all the problems and challenges.

Ed Oakley and Doug Krug, co-authors of Leadership Made Simple (Enlightened Leadership Publications, 2006), teach a basic principle in their leadership workshops. They train leaders to open their meetings with the question, “What are we doing right?” This simple query produces powerful results. Members of the sales team begin recognizing all the good the company is doing rather than focusing on shortcomings. They begin acknowledging their own contributions and achievements, as well as those of their peers. Optimism is contagious. When each salesperson is charged with saying something positive, the sales culture moves from finding fault to finding success. The team is inspired because they begin looking for the good instead of always dwelling on what’s not going right. An inspired team is a successful team.

Effective sales managers give compliments, create recognition programs, and set up events that inspire camaraderie and teamwork. Often, they reward top salespeople with material items such as rings, plaques, and incentive trips. These ideas work well as motivators, but we also recommend an often-overlooked way to recognize salespeople that is far less expensive: make them heroes.

Making someone a hero means that you pay attention and identify one thing each salesperson on your team does well. Once you have identified that “one thing,” make the person a hero by pointing it out during sales meetings. If applicable, have him teach the “one thing” to his peers. This recognition establishes the salesperson as the expert and go-to person on a particular topic. It builds confidence and is an effective way to make a person feel unique and important because of his contribution.

I implemented this recognition strategy when I was vice president of sales with seven direct reports. Each person had a specific talent, the “one thing,” that I recognized and developed. One manager, for instance, was especially good at selling fundraising programs. I made Lynette the “fundraising expert” at the company. Another manager was very good at selling to the youth market. Nancy became the “youth expert.”

Because they were known as the experts, Lynette and Nancy invested extra time in creating programs and go-to market strategies in addition to their daily duties as sales managers. They enjoyed the stature that came with being the expert and the company reaped the rewards of these managers sharing their brilliance and creating faster growth in those product areas.

Here are a few areas of expertise that might constitute the “one thing” that a salesperson does well and can teach others:

  Creativity in business development—good at thinking outside of the box.

  Success in client retention—never loses a client.

  Ability to grow existing accounts—good at up-selling and cross-selling.

  Finesse with customer service—excellent at making lemonade out of lemons.

  Skilled in taking business away from competitors—good at finding the gap in the competitors’ offering.

Make your salespeople heroes. It’s a powerful form of recognition that keeps them motivated and on a journey of self-improvement.

The Most Overlooked Motivator of Them All

Finally, don’t forget the most overlooked motivator of all: the fun quota. It’s easy for sales managers to get caught up in the pressure of hitting monthly, quarterly, and year-end revenue goals, but everyone needs a release valve. On the surface, fun may not appear to have a direct link to hitting goals; however, if you need evidence of the correlation between fun and revenues, just study one of the most successful airlines in the business, Southwest Airlines. Fun is a core value of this organization. They hire people who have a sense of humor and use it with customers.

I was on a flight with Southwest and the flight attendant had everyone in stitches as she reviewed what is usually considered the dry rules and policies for flying. The best comment made was, “And if you are sitting by an adult that is acting like a small child, please help him administer the drop-down oxygen mask before helping yourself. It will save us all in case of an emergency landing.” Southwest continues to post profits when most airlines are going out of business or into the red.

Work as hard at hitting your fun quota as you do making your sales quota. During sales meetings, show funny sales videos from YouTube. Plan a happy hour where your team can play together. Send each salesperson a humorous card once a quarter. As part of your next sales meeting, have people share tales of their worst sales calls. These stories are often hysterical and show other team members that there is life after failure.

When I was vice president of sales, we incorporated fun into the introduction of a new line of products. We rented a studio and created an audio recording to teach the reps about the new offerings in a rather unusual way: we recorded songs, poems, and skits. One skit was a serious news broadcast about the “Fleecing of America.” We used the concept to introduce a new line of polar fleece jackets, discussing the potential repercussions to Americans if they didn’t purchase these jackets. There could be frostbite issues due to poor coverage. Or, because they were not wearing the latest fashion, the person could possibly get arrested by the fashion police and end up in jail. And who wants to plead guilty to bad taste? All of the scenarios were ridiculous and fun.

This crazy approach worked. Reps called the corporate office, telling us they had pulled over on the side of the road because they were laughing so hard. They reported that they kept playing the audio over and over due to the humor. It was the best product launch we ever had. Having fun can make you money.

Best Practices for Sales Leadership

In reviewing the skills that make a successful sales manager, it’s instructive to consider the thoughts of John Kelley, former CEO of McData Corporation and now president of CereScan. Kelley grew McData Corporation from $200 to $630 million in revenues from 2001 to 2007.

Kelley exudes emotional intelligence. After hearing him speak at an association lunch, I set up an interview specifically for this chapter of the book. I wanted to learn his secrets to leading effective sales teams and organizations. His answers support much of what has been discussed in this chapter and others. What follows is what he shared about some of his best practices.

Emotion Management

“One of the things I subscribe to and taught members of my team was [that there would be] no yelling,” says Kelley. “There’s no need to raise your voice. Part of the way I accomplished this was my philosophy of giving feedback fast. Deal with a problem quickly without denigrating other departments or people. When you start dwelling on something, that’s when tempers can flair.”

Consistency

“Good leaders come in all flavors and varieties,” he notes. “However, they have a few things in common. One is that they are consistent. My best sales manager always held a Monday morning meeting that was prepared and predictable. He also planned three days in the field with his sales team. The team knew the sales manager would be looking over their account plans and calendars. That consistency and accountability produced sustainable sales results.”

Self-Awareness

“It’s important for people to discover for themselves that they aren’t hitting the objectives or behaving in a way that is going to get them promoted,” Kelley explains. He goes on to say:

I ask five questions to help a person discover for himself that he is not on the right path.

Do you like the industry?

Do you like your job?

Tell me about your career path.

Tell me the characteristics you feel are important for that career path.

Tell me why you think you’re going to get promoted based on how you’re acting, as it relates to those characteristics.

Usually after asking these questions, the person realized that his actions and words weren’t aligning. If he wanted to go in a certain direction within the company, it was up to him or her to change.

Recognition and Appreciation

“I’m a big believer in thank-you notes,” Kelley says. “When I was president of McData, I wrote five thank-you notes a day, recognizing very tangible things in the note. The notes were often a page or two because I wanted to get into the specifics of why I wanted to write the note in the first place. My desire was for the person reading the note to have an emotional connection when he read it.”

In addition to tremendous growth at McData, it’s worth noting that eight former members of John’s team went on to become CEOs.

Action Steps for Improving Your Emotional Intelligence in Sales Leadership

We love this quote from John Maxwell, author of several bestselling leadership books (The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Developing the Leader Within You, and The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, to mention three that have sold over a million copies each): “If you are leading, and no one is following, you are not leading. You are out for a walk.”

Are you leading a highly motivated team or are you just out for a walk? As you have learned in this chapter, there is a big difference between selling and leading. Selling is more self-focused; leading is other-focused. There are five steps that will get you on the right path for leading and developing others:

1.  Be consistent.

2.  Give up your need to be liked.

3.  Show empathy and courtesy.

4.  Become a teacher.

5.  Put fun on the weekly to-do list.

Step #1: Be Consistent

You give up the privilege of mood swings when you take on a leadership role. Each morning, get some downtime and think about the possible areas where you will be challenged to handle your emotions. Anticipate and visualize your calm response to those situations. Write down and repeat affirmations and questions that will help you show up the way you want. Here are a few that we suggest:

  “Test your assumptions and assume your assumptions are wrong.” This phrase helps you stop jumping to conclusions and delays the impulse to say or do something incongruent with your values.

  “I am calm and in control.” It’s important to use the word “am” because you must act as if you have already achieved the desired behavior. The subconscious mind believes what is repeatedly affirmed, so state your desired behavior, not your current reality.

  “What’s funny about this?” Sometimes it’s important to lighten up and stop taking yourself and life so serious.

The pace of the leader is the pace of the group, and your ability to handle the day-to-day challenges that occur in business is key as to how your team, in turn, handles challenges.

Step #2: Give Up Your Need to Be Liked

There’s a difference between liking someone and respecting them. Your sales team may like you as a person; however, they only value and apply input and feedback from people they respect.

Set high expectations for how you want your sales team to operate. Raise the bar instead of lowering it when you receive pushback on accountability. If a salesperson gives you an excuse for not executing a specific skill or activity, ask them some truth-telling questions:

  What did you choose to do that was more important?

  What’s the real reason you are not calendar-blocking in order to achieve daily and weekly goals?

  How committed are you to your success and what proof are you showing me of that commitment?”

Sales managers who have a high need to be liked have a lot of friends. They also have fewer sales.

Step #3: Show Empathy and Courtesy

When you meet with a member of your sales team, pretend he is your most important customer. Would you be taking phone calls or checking email if you were meeting with a client? Show your sales team the same courtesy. Focus is a required leadership skill, and it starts with the type of interactions you have on a daily basis with your sales team. Be present, interested, and genuine. Your nonverbal expression will tell the salesperson whether or not you are present physically and mentally. If your answers are short and generic, he will know that you are simply checking the “meeting” box off your list. You’ve invested time with the person, but you have nothing to show for the investment.

Step #4: Become a Teacher

Teaching is a privilege and should not be taken lightly. You have an opportunity to make a permanent difference in a salesperson’s confidence, attitude, skills, and lifestyle. Apply your delayed-gratification skills and put in the necessary time with each person on your team.

When you create your calendar for the week, write down the specific number of hours you will devote to teaching and coaching. Write down a second goal on the one thing you want your sales team to learn and focus on that week. Repeat, repeat, repeat, and you will win and win and win.

Step #5: Put Fun on the Weekly To-Do List

Take business seriously, but not yourself. Be on the lookout for small and big ways that you can add a smile, a laugh, or fun to your sales team’s day. Appoint someone on your team to be the fun police. Make it their job to come up with something fun or funny that week. Sales can be stressful, so if you can provide a daily dose of stress relief, it will go a long way to making the job more enjoyable for your team.

When you are a sales leader, your team looks to you for advice, encouragement, and congruency in your words and actions. Team members rely on you to teach and guide them to become the best that they can be. Remember that salespeople work for people, not companies. Be the leader that every salesperson wants to follow.