LEADERS LEAD and BOSSES BOSS

Hi everyone, and welcome to my 1st weekly blog on SALES LEADERSHIP – HOW TO BUILD A WORLD CLASS SALES TEAM. This week I will be discussing various leadership styles and how to get the most long-term success out of your sales team.

The definition of leadership is the action of leading a group of people in an organization to success. The difference between a boss and a leader is that a boss manages their employees, while a leader inspires them to innovate, think creatively, and strive for perfection. Every team has a boss, but what every team needs is a leader who will help them achieve greatness.

Let’s look at the 12 defining characteristics of a Leaders vs Bosses as defined by INTELIVATE:

1. LEADERS – Teach you what to do / BOSSES – Tell you what to do

2. LEADERS – Emotional and people experts / BOSSES – Subject matter experts

3. LEADERS – Want you to feel successful / BOSSES – Need you to perform

4. LEADERS – Build your confidence for self-accountability / BOSSES – Hold you accountable

5. LEADERS – Measure success by passion and impact of the people they influence / BOSSES – Measure success by a title or rank in their hierarchy

6. LEADERS – Are independent of authority and position / BOSSES – Are dependent on authority and position

7. LEADERS – Focus on what is right / BOSSES – Focus on what is right now

8. LEADERS – Operate with a legacy in mind / BOSSES – Operate with a competition in mind

9. LEADERS – Are driven by passion and purpose / BOSSES – Are driven by fear and reaction

10. LEADERS – Want you to do better than they did / BOSSES – Want to always be your boss

11. LEADERS – Get joy from others success / BOSSES – Get joy from their success

12. LEADERS – Build your confidence so you will tell them what they need to hear / BOSSES – Build your fear so you will tell them what they want to hear

I’ve now been a sales executive for 30 years of my career. I can honestly say that my success has come from working for leaders who helped me develop my leadership skills. I’ve worked for bosses as well and the negativity that permeated throughout the organization bled down to our customers which eventually hurt our business.

The blogs that I will be publishing over the next month focus on building a world class sales team. The key to building a world class sales team is the strong leadership needed to have a sustainable team. Heavy turnover of sales professionals lowers moral internally, is costly for your organization with their on-boarding process, and most importantly, brings uncertainty to your customers as heavy turnover doesn’t allow for relationship growth.

Recently I was consulting for a company where there were some changes in executive leadership. The company brought in a new Vice President of Sales. The newly hired executive came in and without spending time getting to know his new organization, the current sales team, and the customers, he started making major policy and procedure changes. This is a popular characteristic of bosses, as they want to quickly put their thumbprint on the organization. The problem is that often this type of change fails miserably.

Baker Support can help your organization in evaluating the value of your leadership process. Give us a call or email us to arrange for a free consultation on how we can coach your leadership team to success. Although this blog is focused on Sales Leadership, we also have leadership experts in marketing, finance, technical service, and strategic selling.

Don’t forget to follow my weekly blog. Next week I will discuss Training – how to provide support to turn those weaknesses into strengths.

As usual, I wish everyone a great week

Warm Regards,

David Fliss

Chief Executive Officer

Baker Support/Food EcoSystems

+1 (561) 707-0378

[email protected]

www.bakersupport.com

?