Adapt Great Leadership Advice from Those Who Have Been Successful

Adapt Great Leadership Advice from Those Who Have Been Successful

The easiest way to up your game is to watch, listen, and ask questions to the successful people around you.

Great reminder by Mark Stephenson in his book entry, check out more below!

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Tech Sales Insights LIVE

Join Randy for this weeks episode of Tech Sales Insights LIVE featuring Lisa Pope, President of Epicor

'Is ERP Dead?'

This episode is sponsored by Sandler . Sandler is a world leader in innovative sales, leadership, and management training. For more than 50 years, Sandler has taught its distinctive, non-traditional selling system and highly effective sales training methodology, which has helped salespeople and sales managers take charge of the process.

“We're very careful about prescribing whether it's cloud and cyber and data, and infrastructure modernization is still a play that's out there that we spend a lot of time on, and really ultimately driving technology and business outcomes. And so that's what we have to do. You know, we have to understand our customers care about what's important, their measures of success, and then tailor what our business is all about to create those outcomes, and that's where we spend a lot of focus.”

- Joe Koenig

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Four Critical GTM Execution Priorities to Help You Build a Great GTM and Company

First Thing First is the Customer!

Blog post number 2 in an awesome series by Mark Stephenson on Fundamentals to Thrive in This or Any Market

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Gong

There’s a reason most forecasting meetings put reps to sleep AND leave you less-than-confident on what to call…

It’s because they don’t help you learn the actual state of your pipeline or avoid forecast surprises.

Here’s why it matters:

Win rates drop by 48% when deals push to the next quarter (!)

The good news is that there’s a 5-step formula to run world-class forecasting meetings.

Use it to run forecast meetings your reps actually look forward to.

And most importantly, you’ll know what’s really going on inside your team’s deals so you can confidently call your number.

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Grab the 5-step formula here.

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New episode of I'm Not Selling You Anything hosted by Brian Montoya ?? featuring Quentin Packard , VP of Global Sales at Spectro Cloud :

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Randy's Tips to Sell More ?? Excerpts from Your Go-To Sales Advisor

Adapt Great Leadership Advice from Those Who Have Been Successful

By Mark Stephenson

What the Idea Is: Get great leadership advice from those who have gone before and paved the way to success.

Why It Is Valuable: While John Wooden is known for his team’s unprecedented winning of ten NCAA Championships in basketball and seven in a row, few realize that he worked for over sixteen years to perfect his approach, tinkering with every detail before his team won its first NCAA title. Similarly, these are not shortcuts to greatness in sales or sales leadership; rather, together they construct a detailed focus on continuous improvement that require a lifetime of learning. This approach is knowable, it’s workable, and you can do it!

How It Works:

Wooden’s Twelve Lessons on Leadership and What They’ve Meant to Me:

1. Good values attract good people. People are attracted to candor and authenticity. They like plain-speaking people who mean what they say and do what they say.
2. Love is the most powerful four-letter word. What do you do when it’s not easy to do it? Giving feedback is like this. Giving feedback to help someone in life or career is an act of love. Wooden was the master of providing feedback on and off the court. His players loved him (sometimes later), but often for a lifetime.
3. Call yourself a teacher. Wooden taught English at UCLA. His instruction was detailed and methodical. Many comment on Wooden’s ten-of-twelve-year National Championship run, but few know that he perfected his teaching approach and updated his “Pyramid of Success” for over thirty years before UCLA won its first National Championship.
4. Emotion is your. enemy. Any strength over done can be a weakness. Passion often drives us, and we must believe in what we are doing; but professionals are focused, analytic, and measured to be bold.
5. It takes ten hands to make a basket. In sales as in life, make sure you are working for a company that you have a vision for, and then give it all you have—anything less is squandering your opportunity.
6. Little things make big things happen. Wooden taught his players how to put their socks on in the first practice every year, so they would never get blisters in a game—sweat the details of what can go wrong so it doesn’t!
7. Make each day your masterpiece. In their deals, career, and life, sales people often “play checkers” (one step at a time) versus “playing chess” (many steps at one time). Play chess and win more.
8. The carrot is mightier than a stick. The stick is not lasting. Capture people’s hearts and minds and you have talent for sustained exceptional performance.
9. Make greatness attainable by all. Show people what the activities look like to be great, and enable them to get there themselves.
10. Seek significant change. No one is excited to be mediocre. Do it right or don’t do it. Besides, there is “margin in the mystery.”
11. Don’t look at the scoreboard. Everyone is great at tracking the results, but few are good at clocking the actions/activities it takes to be great and win with regularity.
12. Adversity is your asset. Create a crisis of opportunity for people to take the action that is in their best interest; they often need the catalyst for change.

Qualities It Takes to Develop a Winning Team and How I Value Them:

• Industriousness: The saying goes, “The harder you work, the luckier you get,” and nowhere is this truer than in sales. Indeed, the truism “Work finds those who get work done” also underscores the fact that in sales one of the most direct correlations is between effort and output. However, we must clarify these statements with one that Wooden is famous for saying: “Never confuse activity for accomplishment.”
• Friendship: People want to be around people they find connection with, and they ultimately buy from people they like.
• Loyalty: I have a son who went to West Point, where first-year cadets have a very tough year as a “Plebe.” It’s basically a year of hard work, hard talk, and not much sleep. West Point is a leadership school at its heart, and its practices have been honed for over 200 years; its leaders understand you must first know how to be a follower before you can one day become a leader. Loyalty is earned; it’s not something to be traded or trampled on. Trust is a close cousin to loyalty and is essential for effective and lasting relationships as well as high-functioning teams.
• Cooperation: Others have now realized that teamwork is a critical element you hire for, and no high-performing team can go without it.
• Enthusiasm: Enthusiasm can and should be “catching” with your pros- pect and clients and is absolutely essential for you to have in everything you are representing.
• Self-control: As Randy Seidl is famous for saying, “Never miss the opportunity to say nothing.”
• Alertness: Always be ready and sensing new information that can be seized for advantage or completeness.
• Initiative: The harder you work in sales, the “luckier” you get.
• Intentness: Be present and focused in all things, and you will have the advantage.
• Condition/Practice: Wooden’s practices had an intensity and focus about them that caused players to often remark that playing the actual game was “easier.”
• Skill: Skill is the critical first element of consistently hiring great talent. What skills are you looking for? Be as specific as possible. You would not put a “point guard” at the center position in basketball. The tighter your hiring spec is, the more you will recruit folks who can have impact per your ramp quota.
• Team Spirit: This is now often referred to as “culture.” If you have been with a market-leading, high-performing team, you might take this for granted—but you never will again after experiencing a bankrupt culture.
• Poise: Poise can be gained by having command of your solution, its application, and the process of qualification. Being prepared always helps as well.
• Confidence: Confidence comes from being prepared and being conversationally fluent in your solution, your customer, and your draft.
• Competitive Greatness: Know your competition; however, Wooden’s focus was on knowing your game plan above all others.?