Inside Sales by Design

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Leadership Lessons from Earth, Wind and Fire

Are you at the point in your life where giving experiences as gifts instead of “stuff” as gifts is the norm? Giving stuff isn’t bad, I’m always game for a new pair of comfy jammies or shoes! You know what else I like, spa days, dinner with my husband and friends, concerts with other adults (our children are 6 and 3, so anything outside the Disney realm has high value!).

We have friends we like to give experiences to on their birthday and in this case, it was tickets to see Earth, Wind, and Fire. For those of you not familiar with the band, they are iconic group that transcends genre and decades. And I gotta tell you, it was an epic experience celebrating with our friends and family.

It got me thinking as we all screamed and shouted to the strains of Boogie Wonderland, there are some great leadership lessons to be had here.

1. Will your brand last 40 years? Is it Inclusive? This concert included at least four generations and people from all walks of life. Will what we’re doing transcend generations and every walk of life?

2. Does your leadership style inspire people to want to join in? And then grow into their own style? Or are you a leader who only wants it done his/her way? Out of the 12 or so folks in the group, 3 are from the original group, the rest are folks that joined along the way. They made the performance their own and there was a palpable sense of pride among the group. These songs are 40 years old and yet, pride and appreciation beamed though every song.

3. Fun! These guys were up there, groovin’, laughing, and overall having a blast! It made us, the crowd, have fun too. Do you have fun with your team? Is it part of your culture? Personally, fun is hard for me, so I make sure to have people on my team that specialize in fun and we make it happen.

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So You’re Starting an Inside Sales Team – 5 Questions to Ask to Start the Conversation

Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Inside Sales is growing in recognition and credibility as companies realize the many benefits of having a high performing sales team plugged in and accessible to their prospects and customers.

If you’re one of the many companies out there wanting to start an Inside Sales team, feel free to leverage the following questions to start and facilitate a conversation internally. (These are by no means the end all be all of questions, however, they’re a start.)

  1. What are the strategic initiatives for the company? 1, 3, 5 years?
  2. What is the plan to achieve your strategic initiatives? How do you know you’re successful?
  3. What do you think an Inside Sales team does?
  4. What do you want your Inside Sales team to do?
  5. Current organization structure? (What does Sales and Support currently look like?)

Essentially what you’re hoping to do with the right information is assign the right sales resource, to the right prospect or customer, at the right time in their buying arc.

Next steps:

  1. Level set on the definition of Inside Sales within your company
  2. Brainstorm as a company the best place to start
  3. Figure out the best next steps to get you to the starting line (remember to assign roles, responsibilities, and due dates)

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Revenue is King Attitude is Queen

And we absolutely positively know beyond a doubt that toxic people & behavior crush our culture.

Would you rather have an arrogant abrasive sales superstar? The one who consistently hits their number, but is dicey at best to work with and doesn’t want to be part of team. They’re the lone wolf.

Or the positive, helpful, interested in the good of the team AND makes their number star? This is the person who volunteers to help new hires “get it”. This is the person who goes above and beyond and still makes their number.

Personally, I’ll take a group of folks that work together as a team all day long and twice on Sunday.

Yep, we’re on the hook for Revenue. That’s what we sign up for as sales people and sales leaders. What we don’t sign up for, is to work with bad attitudes. How do you make sure your team’s attitude personifies royalty? Instead of being a royal attitude.

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Key Leadership Traits We’d Like to See

To catch some folks up from previous posts, we’re talking about High Performing Sales Leaders and character traits we’d like to in addition to hard skills. We talked previously about those character traits and you can access that post here.

Our group then talked about the “hard” skills of a compelling leader. Someone we’d follow into battle. And here are the big ones:

1. Set the vision – are you still talking about call metrics? And activity reports? As a group, we talked about Vision (yes, with a capital V). We’re not JUST a supply company or phone company or . Ed Porter with Sysco Guest Supply gave the example of a telcom provider he worked for and a speech by a VP. The VP essentially shared that it’s not JUST a phone. People will forget their wallet, but not their phone. It’s a connection to their family – a means of saying good night to their babies and family, of keeping in touch, of keeping connected. Wow. That vision gives meaning and purpose to the activities of the sales team. As leaders, we MUST do a great job of communicating our vision and giving purpose to our teams. How’s your vision communicated? Does your team get the vision? When’s the last time it was communicated?

2. Set clear goals – now that the vision is in place, let’s talk about goals. This is where the rubber hits the road and “being engaged in the right activities at the right time” lines up to achieving the agreed upon goals and quota. How clear and attainable are the goals in place for your team?

3. Accountability – aside from endlessly entering data that may or may not be useful to your sales team, what does accountability look like in your team? Is there a scorecard in place? Consistent coaching and feedback loops in place? Here’s the secret, when these pieces of the puzzle are put in place, the benefits are numerous and plentiful. The expectations are set and clear for your team, you as a leader have clear data to share, and there are no surprises at the end of the year come review time. How cool is that.

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How to Manage Up and Around Successfully

To follow on to earlier blog posts, and the AA-ISP Annual Leadership Summit help April 20-22, our Birds of a Feather Roundtable tackled the subject of High Performing Sales Leaders. Or better titled, How to Not Suck as Sales Leader”.

The final nugget that came up in our Birds of a Feather Roundtable at the AA-ISP Leadership Summit, was how to manage up. Man, that’s a tough one. Middle management, not to mention Sales Management, is not for the faint of heart.

Here’s what we talked about:

Managing your team is about ownership, driving behavior, desired outcomes, etc. Managing up and around the organization, to your boss and other teams, is about conversation facilitation. Wow. Let’s say that again:

Managing your team is about ownership, driving behavior, desired outcomes, etc. Managing up and around the organization is about conversation facilitation.

Here are some ideas to help with facilitation:

If you’re organization is siloed, perhaps host a Leadership Networking Session or Speed Dating. Have an agenda: everybody come prepared to talk about three things:

  1. What you do/what your team does
  2. Most pressing issue
  3. Biggest butterfly effect issue (meaning what issues get pushed down stream)

This is NOT a complaint session. Set the rules, have a facilitator, align the conversations to the company’s goals for the year.

We also said, hey, we’re Sales Leaders! What if we put our sales hats on and approached our counterparts as if we were consultatively selling to them? What if we took the time to craft a value proposition before talking to our HR, Finance, Marketing, Sales Ops, etc., counterparts? What if we took the time to craft the value proposition before we talked to our bosses? We’re still responsible for a desired outcome, however, facilitating the conversation takes more finesse as we’re bringing people into our world and day that have their own world and day to take care of. Food for thought.

This concept is also great for Sales Leaders that manage Managers. What are the best ways to keep your Managers aligned and sharing a vision and goal? There’s still driving and ownership, however, there’s also the facilitation piece. Phew! Being a good leader isn’t easy.