Is your sales culture one of fear or is it a learning environment? Most managers would insist that they are enlightened leaders who foster the perfect environment for safe learning. My experience has been that sales cultures are usually the opposite, where the singular objective of managers is to apply pressure in a variety of ways.
These types of sales managers fall into three categories: the data junkie, the criticizer, and the take-over artist. The first pressures salespeople to achieve better results; the second strives only to point out performance flaws; and the last is a manager who believes they are the best salesperson in the room.
The data junkie is a remote manager who rarely, if ever, observes a salesperson in action and, instead, evaluates salespeople with spreadsheets and data. The tacit, false assumption is that the salesperson knows how to do the job correctly with no constructive coaching. In reality, many salespeople need guidance and performance coaching, something the data junkie is unable or unwilling to provide.聽
The criticizing leader finds time to evaluate actual performance but strives to expose mistakes and criticizes salespeople as the primary means of motivation. Rather than inspire, the criticizer expects obedience and adherence to the chain of command. The false assumption is that constant criticism of little flaws will add up to big productivity in overall performance. The end result is instead a loss of motivation and, worse yet, a breakdown in constructive communication.
The take-over artist is usually a former salesperson who has been promoted to a new role as sales manager. The expectation is that sales performance skills will automatically translate into sales leadership skills. The take-over artist persistently usurps control of sales calls as the means to close deals while falsely presuming that demonstrations of performance will produce, by osmosis, performance improvement for the observer.
In Simon Sinek鈥檚 book, Leaders Eat Last, he provides a compelling argument that the best learning environments are 鈥渟afe.鈥� Robert Mager鈥檚 put forth a similar postulate in his book, What Every Manager Should Know about Training.
Fear-based leadership produces chemical reactions in the nervous system which release adrenaline and cortisol, hormones that impede learning. Tension triggers primitive fight-or-flight survival responses, which also impede learning and therefore prevents productive dialogue.
Enlightened sales leaders foster an environment of safety that produces optimum performance patterns and constructive communication. I鈥檝e always liked to think of it as 鈥減ermission leadership.鈥�
Permission leadership begins by focusing on the development of career skills. This means literally curating the performance that gives the salesperson skills that endure for a lifetime. We have a saying in my profession that it is better to train a performer properly and have them leave than not train them and have them stay.
Of course, the goal of sales is results. Nothing in the aforementioned thesis should suggest that anything other than sales growth is the goal. The assertion I鈥檓 putting forth, however, is that merely pressuring for results is not the same as managing the performance and the statistics that produce results.
Enlightened leaders measure prospecting quality and quantity as predictors of future outcomes; fear-based managers solely measure sales results, often without knowing the metrics that predict them. Enlightened leaders systematically build sales performance focusing on the scientific skills of selling as the foundation for growth before emphasizing the artistic skills of selling; fear-based managers randomly criticize.
It is true that there are times for coercive leadership tactics during a crisis or a persistent lack of adherence to performance standards. But in normal circumstances, enlightened leadership usually creates the best long-term results.
