Episodes

As a sales leader, how predictable are the sales opportunities flowing through your team? Are they highly qualified? Are you laser focused on specific customers and specific opportunities, or throwing mud against the wall hoping it sticks? Are you converting a high percentage of the opportunities? Are the closed opportunities highly profitable? In working with sales leaders, what I find fascinating is how unplanned and unprepared the vast majority are when it comes to sales opportunities. I...

In working with sales leaders and their teams, what is intriguing is that many of them do not have a consistent methodology when it comes to sales, and in some cases, no methodology. This often results in them not being able to identify, qualify and then convert significant business opportunities, which has a direct impact on their sales numbers, not to mention the bottom line profitability of their business. There is a better way. As a mentor with Sales Director Central, we work with sales lead...

Who are you? On the surface, it may seem like a really obvious and somewhat simple question, and as a leader we can often fall into the trap of responding with our title, where we work etc. Just look at the vast majority of LinkedIn profiles which show the role title in the headline of the profile. As a leader, I want to challenge you to go deeper and really reflect on this question, who are you? That’s what I explore in today’s episode.

As a sales leader overseeing a high performing team – hopefully, an exceptional team, we must continue to develop them. Provide training, mentoring and coaching. Unfortunately though, many sales leaders don’t make this a priority, and instead prioritise measuring performance, and focusing on the numbers. The result is often a plateau in performance. One of the key reasons for this is that the sales leader is not investing in themselves, and not seeking mentoring, coaching and development from ot...

Last week I posted about the importance of development and as a leader, becoming a development champion. Over the last few days, I have had the opportunity to reflect on the importance of this development as we celebrated the 2022 season with our female football presentations. What has become very clear is that whilst the success achieved by 2 of our female teams this season has been underpinned by the development of each of the girls, there is another key ingredient – character. And this equal...

More and more companies today are tapping into the power of Influencer Marketing to spread the gospel of their products and services, leveraging off the credibility of celebrities, business people, sports people and the like. It is a very effective way to build market credibility and scale, especially in the consumer space. What is less common, yet is just as effective, is B2B Influence Marketing, where organisations can tap into the credibility of industry influencers and leverage this credibil...

As leaders, at some point we will need to conduct a challenging or difficult conversation, even though we may want to avoid it, or we do not feel like having it. A core responsibility of a leader is to lean into that conversation, whether it be with a direct report, a peer, a manager, customer, external stakeholder, or even senior executive. Whilst we may never learn to enjoy it, we can develop competence and confidence by following some key principles and a simple framework.

As a sales leader, how important is critical thinking to your team’s success? It is an obvious question and yet many sales leaders do not create the discipline or even know how to become a critical thinker. In today’s episode I uncover some of the key characteristics of a critical thinker, share the 5 different thinking styles we can adopt to help us think more critically, as well as share a simple yet effective process for critical thinking.

If you have been following me for a while, you know that I am an avid fan of John Maxwell and his work. I especially love his core philosophy of ‘adding value to leaders who multiply value to others’ – this is all about servant leadership and underpins how I work with leaders. One of the key responsibilities that we have as leaders is identifying and then developing other leaders, and in today’s episode, I unpack the 3 E’s of developing Sales Leaders.

Yesterday was an incredible day. I had the privilege of watching 2 of our local female football teams play off in the Grand Final. Despite the nerves, despite the ferocious competition and despite the somewhat inclement weather, both teams came through to secure a Premiership victory. It was a perfect way to end the season and a tremendous reward for the hard work and dedication the girls have shown throughout the year. They have met every challenge thrown at them, have constantly challenged th...

I absolutely love leadership development, whether it be working with groups or 1:1. This week, I wrapped up a leadership development program with a wonderful organisation after working with their teams over the last 4 months. Over the program, we covered numerous leadership topics, challenged the leaders’ thinking, conducted group coaching and individual coaching sessions, and observed significant progress, change and transformation in a number of leaders. In today’s episode, I reflect on this a...

To be successful in sales, we must learn to develop a high level of expertise in pitching for business – in other words, presenting a message. We often say that leadership is influence and influence is leadership, and this is especially true in sales – we must be able to influence a customer to take a course of action that will either benefit them or will tangibly solve a problem. Unfortunately, many sales leaders and their teams dive head first into a pitch or a presentation without the necessa...

In 2022, there is information coming at us at a rate faster than in any other time in history. Whether it be the print media, visual media and especially social media, companies and individuals are screaming ‘look at me’ to advertise their products and services. It is difficult to look at any social media platform today without being bombarded by ‘Influencers’ spruiking something and it is equally challenging not to be sucked in to the comparison game. Photographs of ‘successful’ people standin...

Belief is a very powerful phenomenon and is very often incredibly difficult to change. All of us have beliefs that have been formed through our formative years, via our upbringing, where we lived, who we surrounded ourself with, even what school we went to. The beliefs become rock solid and heavily impact everything we do, and they can either be resourceful beliefs or unresourceful beliefs. Interestingly though, the beliefs are not necessarily true, but appear so. As sales leaders, we must be in...

Leadership is not easy and is not for everyone. It comes with great responsibility, and a fundamental responsibility is to create and maintain a high performance culture and a culture that people want to be part of. In driving this culture, sometimes we have to have some difficult conversations, which leaders often do not feel like having. We must have them anyway.

In the sales game, the vast majority measure success by the numbers. Either you hit the sales target or you don’t and sales leaders can be very laser focused on the scoreboard and lead according to what the numbers are saying. But this does not always tell the full story. It has often been said that sales is a numbers game and interestingly, sales leaders who focus entirely on the numbers tend to lead teams which achieve outcomes within plus or minus 10% of the sales target. Each conversation a...

Are you ruthless and uncompromising when it comes to your standards of excellence? Are you focused on the key principles and disciplines that will create an environment of sustained success? If not, why not? As leaders we must be ruthless around the standards and expectations that are set as well as relentlessly measuring performance against these.

When it comes to strategic selling, especially in the enterprise space, the expectations placed on the sales person to drive tangible value and differentiation have never been higher. The sellers who are able to think differently about their customer, challenge their own organisation to think differently, and begin to focus their attention on the customer’s customer and what problems need to be solved, are the ones who will eventually win, and be known as true trusted advisors. In today’s episod...

In professional golf, there is a well known saying – ‘Drive for show, putt for dough’. The professional golfer who achieves sustained success is the one who is able to convert the opportunities when they count, especially when the pressure is on. And whilst a pro golfer has a high level of skill set across their entire game, the elite performers are exceptional in the art of golf within 100 metres of the hole. They double down on their zone of genius. So it is in sales and sales leadership. W...

Whilst the vast majority understand the importance of clarity in communication, I’m still amazed at how many people cause confusion through the inability to create that clarity. In sales, we understand that a confused mind will very rarely buy, and yet, we do not spend near enough time asking ourselves whether we are being crystal clear, nor asking others the same question.

I often ask leaders why they are in a leadership position. The answer to that question will very often indicate their frame of reference and how successful they will be. Many jump into a leadership role for the prestige, the perceived power, the status, and even the symbolism that they believe the role represents, and whilst these leaders may start out by adding some value to the team, very quickly they become divisive and subtract from the team. Leaders who have a servant’s heart, who seek to c...

It is amazing how events happen and situations present themselves to test attitude. And I have certainly been tested over the last 24 hours. What I have had to remind myself though is that nothing that happens has any meaning until I allocate meaning to it, and so it has helped to reframe some stuff that has taken place. I also reflected on the great words of Zig Ziglar – “it is your attitude and not your aptitude, that will ultimately determine your altitude”. So true.

Many people set themselves ambitious goals to become a leader at some stage in their career, however, don’t necessarily think deeply about the characteristics they will need to form & embrace in order to become an effective & successful leader. They are drawn to the allure of the leadership role & the expected profile, status & prestige that they believe comes as part of the deal. For many, when they step into the leadership role, they quickly find the role not to be what they expected, & a key...

I love working with sales teams exploring sales techniques and best practice. And when it comes to sales effectiveness, learning to deal with sales objections are close to the top of the list. What’s interesting though is the number of sales people who are taught that sales objections need to be overcome, and to close the sale at the earliest possible opportunity. Hence many sales people see objections as challenges, or as even as rejection, and become quite defensive. In this episode I explore ...