Salescraft Training
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Salescraft Training
Leadership Styles That Transform Sales Teams
Unlock the secrets of impactful sales leadership and transform your team's performance! Join us as we break down authoritative and coaching leadership styles, showing how each can drive your team toward achieving ambitious revenue goals. Through vivid career examples, we highlight the critical role of continuous learning and self-improvement in becoming an effective leader. Whether you're preparing for an interview or navigating team management, you'll gain actionable insights to identify and leverage your unique leadership style.
But that's not all—discover the delicate balance required to cultivate an empowered, high-performing team. Hear firsthand experiences of coaching individuals into senior roles and the importance of allowing space for mistakes as a growth strategy. We explore diverse leadership approaches, including coercive, democratic, pace-setting, and affiliative styles, and discuss why clarity in leadership and decision-making is essential. Learn about the challenges of balancing team development with personal targets, the value of emotional bonds, and how to create an environment that fosters confidence, support, and accountability. Tune in to elevate your leadership game and inspire your team to new heights!
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Graham Elliott
You can contact me at graham@salescraft.training
My website is www.salescraft.training
Checkout my sales course: Consultative Selling
As I'm talking about leadership in this series of podcasts, I thought it'd be good to look at different leadership styles. Now, this might be something that you've thought about. It might be something you haven't thought about. If you are going for interviews in a leadership role, you may well be asked to describe your leadership style and, as usual, I do a bit of research on the web before I do these things, and it gives me ideas as well about what to talk about, and an article I found online talked about different leadership styles, so I thought it was worth, first of all, talking through them, maybe to give you an idea where you fit or how you see yourself fitting, and perhaps, as a comparison, finding out how the people that you lead, how they, see your style, if that's a conversation you're able to have with some or all of them, because it's always very helpful to know how you sit and how effective you are, and I also believe in everything we do. The best people, in my opinion, are the people who are always learning, always trying to improve, and one of the ways to improve is to recognize where we might be weak or not as effective as perhaps we think we are. So I thought it was definitely worth looking at these leadership styles, maybe to put some granularity in it, if you like, look at different ways that people lead and for you to maybe look at which styles you have. And the point about this is that most leaders will have more than one style. We will generally do a blend I guess not everybody, but most people will be a blend of different styles and it may be that we use different styles in different situations. So the first one I'm going to talk about is authoritative and that's basically designed as mobilizing towards a particular vision. So if you're running a group and in this series because it's associated with my sales training course, I'm particularly looking at this with regard to sales leadership Often when you're leading a sales team, one of the very clear visions that you have, one of the very clear goals you have, is a particular revenue target that you need to hit in terms of sales as a group, and there may also be a profitability target associated with that, depending on exactly how you manage that aspect with your sales team.
Speaker 1:So some companies I've worked for in my career, I'd be given a price list. I had no idea what the margins were. I was just given a price list, maybe the authority to discount to a certain percentage level and beyond that I would need to then go to my sales manager to get authorization. But I didn't know how profitable those sales were. So that's how some companies like to work. Other companies I've worked at I've been given a list price basically, which is essentially our buy price from our supplier and we would then put up, create our own pricing, basically for more or less every deal to be competitive but also to make sure that that deal was profitable. So what that amounted to in terms of a percentage would normally work in the percentage. So this is probably not relevant to what you do, because I don't know what you're doing, but just to give you an idea, where I was selling relatively high value equipment so let's say 30 to 50 to $100,000 per item I'd really be looking at around a 33 percent margin where possible. So I'd be marking up to generate that level of margin and that gave us as a business good profitability. So that was sort of the targets we were coached at least as to that degree as sales people and that would be as a sales manager I would be providing that guidance to the sales team. That that's the kind of margin to go for. In other areas, where it was more consumables, we might be looking at 12 to 15%, and that might be more competitive, so we had to work on thinner margins.
Speaker 1:So, coming back to the leadership style, though and this, as you'll see, will become part of other leadership styles too but when you're looking at the authoritative style, you're heading towards a particular vision, so that is a particular goal, and one of the things I like about that is that it's very easy to see whether or not you're on track, whether or not you're likely to hit that goal, and in the environments I worked in, I like to have everybody together once a month. It might not be physically you might do Zoom calls because I might have salespeople in another country, for example and not only was it not always practical to fly them to head office once a month, but, honestly, it probably wasn't that desirable either, because you, depending on where they were, you'd be disrupting their activities for at least a few days, plus home life, plus everything else. So, although it's good to get together once or twice a year, which was something I'd normally aim for, I don't see it as necessarily something that's desirable to do every month, but you would obviously need to make that call yourself so authoritative moving towards a vision, moving towards a goal. The next one I have here is coaching and this also, that leadership style, falls into the kind of example I was talking about there with how do you set your pricing if you're in an environment where the salesperson needs to set pricing? And in fact, I saw in one company somebody I was working with who wasn't reporting to me for this particular group of activities, but he started to get a reputation for making his margins too low and his manager was not tracking it to make sure that what he was offering, the offer price he was putting out there, was actually good for the business, and in several of his sales he won the business but it actually cost the company money. So these are things where, as a leader and there are good leaders and there are bad leaders this was an example of a bad leader who was letting this guy do these quotes without looking at all of the costs associated and we would come back or the business would come back at the end of the deal at a loss. You've got to make sure your people understand the business aspects of what they're doing if you're in that sort of environment. So that's one aspect of coaching. Another thing I like to do was to get a feel for where everybody was at in terms of how they were selling, what they were comfortable with, what they weren't comfortable with.
Speaker 1:Now, just again, speaking from my own experience as a sales manager, I recognize that not all sales people like to have their manager come out with them to visit clients. But kind of got to get over it because that really needs to be seen. If you're in that kind of situation as a leader, as a sales manager or whatever, however you're leading your team, that needs to be seen as something that's of benefit. And frankly, when I was a salesperson, sales engineer earlier on in my career, I would tend to take my manager to either the tricky customers, partly really for two reasons. One is if it did start to get bogged down into areas that I wasn't authorized to make a decision on, then I had somebody with me who could do that. But also it allowed me to see him, in this case, in action with what to me was a difficult client, because I would do everything I could think of. But if I was still struggling a little bit and on occasion, I would ask my manager to come in with me if I was in that situation, because I wanted to learn. I wanted to get things resolved, I wanted to get the business done, but also I wanted to learn and find other ways of dealing with situations that I, in that instance, was struggling with. So, again, as a leader, when your style of leadership includes coaching, that's where you need to be available. You're there to develop your team for the future, and this is one way it's defined. A particular definition for a coaching style of leadership is to develop people for the future.
Speaker 1:Now, there are definitely a fair number of managers actually I've worked for over my career who were quite, let's say, intimidated by the potential of the people under them. Let's say, intimidated by the potential of the people under them. Another way of saying that is that they felt challenged by the people below them and they would try to keep them under control, if you like, but limit them so that they became less a challenge to them. Now, that, to me, is a really good definition of a weak leader. That's not a leader, in my opinion. That's simply a manager who is managing processes, and not a particularly good one at that. So one of the definitions I've seen of a good leader is somebody who creates more leaders. That's, hopefully you're not in that position where you're feeling a little bit threatened by your people, and if you are, well, that's a whole other conversation, really, I guess.
Speaker 1:But one of the things I like to say to my salespeople as a sales manager was that my intention was to be the worst salesperson in that group, and what I meant by that was my intention was to teach those people everything I could teach them based on my experience, my knowledge, the years I had in sales, and so that they were at that point on an equal level to me. If we were up against one another, one wasn't likely to outsell the other, but if they added their twist, their personality, things that they'd learned what I could teach them, then they would move up and be the better salesperson. And if that sounds strange to you, well, the reason that I'm happy to do that is I was pretty confident I was still the better leader, and if I wasn't, well, you know, these people need to come through anyway, and I also feel it's one of the responsibilities we have if we are in that let's say, more experienced group, maybe older than the people that we're managing, but I believe quite strongly that is something that we need to do to keep these people developing. It also means being pragmatic from a business point of view. If something was to happen to me as a leader, the business could go on.
Speaker 1:That group that I was running could continue, and I was definitely on the lookout for people who were obvious candidates for a more senior role, and I would develop them into that role and, strangely enough, in one company, the person that I coached into that role and actually promoted into that role was one of the younger people in the group. But he definitely had the ability and he was in a position where everyone was basically told if they needed a decision on something that they weren't authorized to make and they couldn't get hold of me then to contact this guy and he would make a decision. And then the conversation I had with him was simply to say look, do your best. You might get it right, you might get it wrong. The truth is, you're likely to get it wrong at some point, maybe at several points, and if that's the case, what we'll do? We'll take the decision apart. I'm not going to take you apart, because this is how we grow, but I think empowerment is really important in your inner leadership position. People need to feel empowered, they need to feel heard. So coaching is an important one.
Speaker 1:Coercive or maybe even commanding might be another description of another leadership style, and that's demanding compliance. Now, yeah, to me that's something that is certainly less a part of how I choose to lead and manage. However, while and I'll talk about another couple in a moment that kind of tie into this, so while I will listen to everybody and make sure they feel heard, where there needs to be absolute clarity is that there is one leader and I will make the final decision. The buck stops with me. It's my decision, I'll own it, but I think that's very important. So it needs to be clear who is in command, who is leading the show, and I think the danger with being too commanding is that you can kind of run, rush over everybody, not listen to them, and that's where people don't feel heard, and this is where you start to get problems with people either undermining what's going on in some form or simply going. Probably, probably the better ones would just leave because it's not a healthy environment for them.
Speaker 1:Democratic style of leadership is one of consensus. So that's one of the options I was alluding to there. Although having more of a democratic style of leadership or way of dealing with people can be beneficial, there needs to be a clear leader. I think that's really important. Pace setting is another one demanding excellence and self-direction. So what you're doing with pace setting or at least this is my understanding of that method is to really push people to go for it.
Speaker 1:But that's through motivation, and I think a big part of motivation is leading from the front. So it's all very well telling people they need to make a certain number of calls a day or a certain revenue every month, or whatever it is, but if you're not willing to go out and do the same and demonstrate that you are absolutely capable of doing that too, demonstrate that it is achievable, then you're likely to come unstuck a little bit. So I think leading from the front is a good example. It's not always practical to do that, because something I found as a sales manager was in I'd normally have a target, but in the end I dropped that because what I was finding was that I was spending a lot of time developing the team I had and that gave me less time to work on the opportunities that I had and the target that I'd set myself, and that meant that I was tending to drop behind targets. So the only way to handle that was to step back from my team and just really focus hard on getting my deals in.
Speaker 1:But it's about finding the balance that's needed how much time you need to spend with people, what's the right amount of time when you're developing them and these may well be questions that you're asking, and I think it does very much come down to where everybody's at. I definitely want to coach potential. I'm not going to spend a lot of time with someone who's not going to cut it, so I'm not talking about spending endless hours and essentially doing somebody else's job for them. That's not a positive thing to do and not something I would encourage. But you do need to make sure that people have the time that they require in order to build up their own confidence, recognize they could have a place where they can ask questions if they're struggling with something. You ideally want a manager you can go to or a leader you can go to, rather than feeling that if you put your hand up, if they put their hand up and say this isn't going well. They're going to get torn apart and made a fool of and maybe lose their job all this kind of stuff. So I think that is important.
Speaker 1:Then the final one is affiliative, which is building emotional bonds. So again, I do believe in having that kind of a structure within a team. I do like team building in some form. I think some of the team building activities you know you need to know your group. Some of them really don't work. They become a bit silly. But there definitely needs to be opportunity to bond that people feel they can ask one another for support. It's not all about you as the leader and the manager about who's talking to who, but what you are doing is creating an environment for those people to work in.
Speaker 1:Now that environment will either be supportive or they will feel under a lot of pressure all the time. And look, people need a certain amount of pressure. I absolutely go along with that. But I've certainly worked for sales managers who are very bad. In fact, one guy even told the internal salespeople not to tell salespeople when they had an order come in unless they specifically asked about it, which to me was just ridiculous. But there you go. So they're the groups, that the types of leadership, or an example of types of leadership, and you might have your own or there might be another style you can think of that. I haven't covered All of that is good, but I think the important thing, what it really comes down to, is what kind of a blend of those different style alternatives are appropriate for the environment. You're in the business, you're in the type of salespeople that you have, how experienced they are, what they need individually in terms of support and training and coaching. So all of those things that you'll need to make a decision on.
Speaker 1:I think empowerment I've spoken about that is really important. The other, the final thing I wanted to just talk about, is a mistake that I think a lot of, and I made this mistake too. So I'm not standing here saying that I've been perfect, because I definitely haven't and in fact, I've learned more by messing things up, although I try to minimize that. But certainly, people who are new to sales management or if you're new to leadership, one of the dangers is to micromanage people and again just flip things around about. How would you feel in their shoes if your manager, your leader, is micromanaging everything you do? You don't feel supported, you don't feel trusted, you're definitely not empowered. I mean, this is not a good environment to be in. So if you are somebody who's quite new to all of this in a management position, be very conscious of not micromanaging people. Let people do their thing. Ask them about what they're having, maybe where they would like some support, some training, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:I'm a big believer in having regular reviews with people, maybe formal reviews every once, twice a year. But one of the things I would always do was spend time with each of my salespeople in their area, partly because it was an opportunity to meet their clients, get some sense of the potential business in that area and with that customer group, and that was looking forward because I always had an eye on growing the business. But it was also an opportunity to just sit down with them for over a course of might be two or three days and have a cup of coffee after each call, chat about how the call went, maybe ask them. One of the most powerful things I think you can do as a sales manager, as a leader, is to ask people how they felt it went. Don't dive straight in with the critique. A lot of people like to do that, you'll get out of a meeting, sit down then you tell them everything they did wrong. I'm not a believer in that.
Speaker 1:I think a much more effective way of working with people is to sit down and just ask them how they felt it went and see what they say, ask them what they felt went well, what did they feel could have been better. And with those kind of conversations better, and with those kind of conversations, you can identify areas of strength, you can identify areas of weakness and you can identify what you need to do to build those areas of weakness up. And this is, to me, all part of it, because, at the end of it, at the end of the day, you want to have a sales team that functions really well, that you have people out there who are professional, they're good at their jobs and you've got a successful business. They're looking for opportunity. You're in a position where this team can really build a business into something that's very sustainable and, of course, part of that vision.
Speaker 1:So, going back to the authoritative, the very first one I spoke about is that comes back to. It's not just about hitting the number, but you can also look at what's in it for the individuals in the team? Is there opportunity to specialize with a particular group of clients or a particular type of product? Is there the opportunity to go into some sort of management? Is there the opportunity for them to grow into a role where they can have their own team, maybe one, two, three, whatever it might be people reporting to them in that particular part of business?
Speaker 1:So the balance is always finding what you do with the group as a whole and also looking at how you work with the individuals, and we all want to have individuals working as salespeople who are very good and very motivated, and you want them there for a while, because it's very disruptive taking new people on as a leader. You have to spend a lot of time with them, getting more time than you would with the others, and, depending how good they are, you might have to spend more time or less time. You might well be investing in training for them. There's all these other things, but it all takes you away from your day-to-day business, which is having a really good sales outcome each year and something that you can develop. So I'm going to stop talking about that, but I hope you found that useful, maybe something to reflect on, to think about. Maybe there are tips in there that you can pick up with and use yourself and help your team to get a lot more effective. So I'll talk to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.