The 5 Keys to Sales Leadership

By John Boyens, Sales Productivity Expert and Business Strategist, Boyens Group

Most sales leaders I know didn’t go into sales leadership because they demonstrated a specific skill or because they expressed an interest. Very simply put they were good salespeople so someone promoted them to a leadership position without giving them the necessary tools, professional development opportunities and/or management training to be successful in the short term. Here are the 5 keys to sales leadership based upon my 40+ years in sales and sales leadership as well as best practices of other, successful sales leaders:

1. Recruit, hire, train and retain the best talent available. Don’t settle for the best of the worst and always have an active hiring pipeline in place.

2. Be clear and consistent in your communication. Approximately 90% of management problems are people problems and 90% of people problems are communication problems!

3. Set clear goals/expectations. Inspect what you expect.

4. Know your numbers. This means everything from sales metrics, sales management KPIs to success formulas, etc.

5. Assess the readiness level of team members. Don't be hesitant to de-hire people who aren’t performing.

Let’s take a deeper dive on key #1; recruit, hire, train and retain the best talent available:

• Ask behavioral interview questions during the interview process
• How did you prepare for this interview?
• Describe your job search process?
• If I were to offer you the job today what would you do hit the ground running?
• How do you qualify/disqualify opportunities?

Behavioral interviewing helps eliminate misunderstandings during the interview and reduces the candidate’s ability to mislead. The fact remains that a candidate’s past and present behavior is the best predictor of how he or she will behave in the future. Behavioral traits don’t appear on a resume… you can only learn them from interviewing the candidate.

Make sure to establish a 30 to 45-day on boarding process to shorten the salesperson’s ramp time to productivity. That should include setting clear goals/activity levels. Of course the measure who meets minimum, on target,  and over-achievement. Know what motivates your salespeople so you’re able to create the right environment for the individual salesperson as well as the entire sales team. Then celebrate successes early and often!

John Boyens is a TMSA Affiliate Member and will be the featured Sales Productivity Expert and Business Strategist during the 2016 TMSA "Essentials in Sales and Marketing" Seminar for Small Transportation Businesses. If you're interested in securing the services of John Boyens and his company, visit www.Boyens.com.