Leadership is not about bossing people around, and it’s certainly not about driving people so hard they will burn out. Time and time again, businesses have discovered that teams who have good leaders work better and work more efficiently than teams who have poor managers.
When working with expert sales teams, it’s easy to forget that these people, who are usually tough nuts to crack and hungry for success, are looking for good leadership within their team rather than a good boss, but implementing good leadership in your team, along with team coaching, is a great way to motivate and inspire them to be the best they can be.
Here are seven easy ways to implement good leadership in your business and improve the morale of your sales team. High morale will almost always translate into bigger and better sales for your business too.
- Be Driven By The Results
Good results look different depending on the team, the individual, and the task at hand. When doing your yearly and quarterly goal planning for your sales team, you must stay realistic with the results you’d like to see and work towards helping your team achieve these results properly.
This is why tracking is so important. Tracking field sales activities is one way you can keep tabs o what is going on even when your team is out of the office, and a great way to inspire them throughout the day, leading to a better management and team relationship where people feel supported in their role rather than pushed to the point of burnout.
- Work On An Individual Basis
Everyone has strengths, and everyone has weaknesses, but what happens if we focus entirely on the weaknesses and try to “improve” them? People fail. What happens when we focus entirely on the strengths and ignore the weaknesses? People fail. It’s a very thin line to walk with, but Rick Green, the American comedian, and advocate of adult ADHD awareness, is often quoted as saying, “Your future lies in your strengths and not in your deficits.”
What this means for aspiring leaders is that supporting your team members’ strengths will get you further than focusing on their weaknesses, but that acknowledging weaknesses is a human trait is also important. Weaknesses may never be fully ‘fixed,’ but by understanding the weaknesses of your team, you can work toward better cohesion and a more efficient and supportive way of working for your employees.
- Make Good Hiring Decisions
Right on the back of playing to strengths rather than weaknesses is to make good hiring decisions. It can be tough to know exactly what type of person will fit in well with your team, but during the hiring process, you should aim to be as honest and open with candidates as possible. Don’t try to sugarcoat the role or sell it for more than it is, and if you want the best talent, then you need to be prepared to pay for that talent.
Making good hiring decisions is about finding the people who will fit in with your current team and help to drive it forward without causing division within the team. You want someone who will light a fire under them rather than leave them in the dust. If you are struggling to know how to reach these people, then don’t be afraid to reach out to experts who can guide you through the hiring process.
- Coach for Growth
Do you want to know one of the best-kept-secret of the most successful sales teams? It’s in team coaching. Coaching in the workplace is gaining popularity all over the world, as more companies recognize that giving employees that extra bit of support and encouragement can translate into a better and more motivated workforce.
With team coaching, you’ll learn how to work with your team to get the best out of them as a whole, and your team will learn how to work with each other to support everyone’s goals and passions, translating into a more determined group who are closer and more inspired to succeed.
- Get Behind Learning Opportunities
Studies have shown that workplaces that invest in training and learning opportunities for entire employees are more successful. There is really good science behind this statement, too, as the more learning you open your mind to, the more your mind becomes receptive to new ideas.
A sales team is the perfect team for continued learning because their job is so fast and so varied and requires constant adaptation. Get behind the ongoing learning and self-improvement of your team by encouraging continuing professional development, and you’ll see the difference in no time.
- Give Decent Feedback
Feedback is often one of the hardest things for people in leadership and management positions to give. Do you go down the hard-line and tell your employees that everything they’re doing is rubbish? Do you try to take the soft approach and suggest that maybe if they could improve, that would be nice?
In truth, giving feedback doesn’t come naturally to most people, but learning how to give honest and effective feedback to your team could prove the difference between a team that is motivated to succeed and a team that is on the verge of collapse. Aim to schedule in yearly reviews to give this feedback, but don’t be afraid to do this more often. A monthly check-in with your sales team members allows you to give feedback and for them to give you feedback too!
- Be Authentic
When most people think of sales, the last thing they usually think of is authenticity. Sales is about making money, whatever the cost, right? No, and with that attitude, you’ll end up failing, and so will your team. In today’s modern world of online sales, offline sales, and traveling sales, it’s critical that your team remember to be authentic. Tell the truth because if you tell the truth, then it’s already the worst-case scenario, and things can only get better from here on in!
