Leadership Styles Differ Based on the Situation: Sales Growth vs. Sales Recovery 

Leadership Styles Differ Based on the Situation: Sales Growth vs. Sales Recovery 

By Sean O’Shaughnessey & Kevin Lawson

As B2B-focused businesses navigate the ever-changing landscape of a post-COVID economy, sales leaders must adopt and institute strategies to meet the demands of a business in growth or recovery mode. 

While the goal for a sales organization may be to sustain the growth trajectory aligned with organizational goals, the year-over-year approach to achieving success can vary significantly. Sales leadership styles depend on the current situation, the starting point, and the existing team charged to accomplish the goal. Good sales leaders find a way to achieve the annual goal; great sales leaders find ways to achieve the goal and systemize the process to allow for repeatable growth, pivots, and rapid scale.      

Growth Focused Leadership

Sales leaders focused on growth must proactively identify new market opportunities, verticals, geographies, platforms, or sales talent. They must invest in new sales channels and technologies, along with onboarding and training programs to support the growth of their sales teams and the acquisition of new client relationships.

When sales teams are in a breakout stage of growth, it can be challenging to gain the discipline to systems and alignment on processes and approaches due to the nature of managing client expectations on a wildly rising revenue outlook. This situation demands that all of the skills of a sales leader be applied consistently and strategically across the team and sales practices.  

Seasoned leaders know that hiring for an increased workload and rapidly scaling teams can be tempting. However, this approach can often lead to problems down the line. Further, we must suppress the desire to hire quickly instead of exercising patience in finding the right candidate to continue to scale teams and culture appropriately. That patience means we must endure the short-term challenges of being under-resourced and under a great deal of pressure to keep performing as if we already had the resources on the team.  Instead, it is essential to focus on finding the right candidate who will not only be able to handle the current workload but also contribute to your team’s culture and help your organization achieve long-term success. Take the time to vet candidates carefully and consider not only their skills and experience but also their values and how they fit into your team’s dynamic. By prioritizing quality over speed, you’ll set your team up for success in the long run.

Another important consideration when building a team is to prioritize scalability. It’s easy to get caught up in your organization’s immediate needs and hire for the present moment, but it’s crucial to think about how your team will grow and evolve. Look for candidates with the potential to take on new responsibilities and leadership roles as your organization expands. Consider investing in training and professional development programs to help your team members acquire new skills and stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends. By prioritizing scalability, you’ll be better equipped to adapt to changing business needs and continue to achieve success over the long term.

Discipline to proven systems is essential for leadership and having transparent KPIs and organizational goal communications. The rigor and discipline of a sales leader in a growth cycle are particularly demanding. One primary concern for leaders in this mode is talent loss due to competitive pressures to grab your resources for their growth. It would help if you had experience and discipline for these growth moments.

Growth-Focused Action Items:

1. Identify new markets: Sales leaders must be able to identify new markets, niches, or customer segments that their business can serve. They should be able to analyze market trends, competitive landscapes, and customer needs to develop effective sales strategies. Leaders need to coach and build their teams on creating differentiation strategies for each new space entered.

2. Invest in sales resources: Sales leaders and business owners should invest in sales enablement tools like technologies and training programs to support the growth of their sales teams. This effort may include hiring new sales representatives, implementing new sales processes or technologies, and providing ongoing training and development opportunities.

3. Build Strong Culture: Cultivating a strong sales culture that emphasizes teamwork, collaboration, and continuous improvement is paramount for growth. These cultures are hallmarked with high degrees of trust and camaraderie. They should encourage their sales teams to share best practices, provide feedback and support, and celebrate successes.

4. Coaching for Success: Sales training is a crucial part of any organization’s growth strategy. However, it’s important to remember that training is just the first step in the process. Without proper reinforcement and coaching, the information learned during training is often forgotten as salespeople get busy with their day-to-day responsibilities. Investing in ongoing sales coaching is critical to ensure that your team can effectively apply what they’ve learned in training. Sales coaching can reinforce best practices, provide individualized feedback and support, and help salespeople stay motivated and focused on their goals. By combining sales training with coaching, sales leaders can achieve lasting results and drive revenue growth for your organization.

Through coaching, you can identify areas where individual team members may be struggling and provide targeted support to help them improve. This support can include assisting salespeople in developing more effective sales strategies, providing guidance on overcoming objections, and offering tips on better managing their time and workload. By investing in your team’s ongoing development through coaching, you’ll improve their skills and abilities and foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement. Sales coaching can lead to increased engagement and job satisfaction, ultimately resulting in higher retention rates and better performance for your organization.

Leadership for Sales Recovery 

The events of the last decade or two have taught us that geopolitical or global economic events can create massive disturbances in small and medium-sized businesses and cause the business to go into Sales Recovery mode. During these times, business leaders must create an all-hands-on-deck mentality to re-gaining revenue and sales momentum that has either evaporated or been lost.

Think back to the early stages of when you opened your business. Those first few sales years, likely, were filled with attracting clients whose primary qualification was being willing to say yes to your product or service and their ability to pay for your goods/services. It was simple and gritty, and your leadership style was to hustle and close as much business as possible. This is the kind of effort required to recover lost revenue streams.

Being laser-focused on recovery becomes the all-consuming focus for sales leaders, and modifying behaviors and requirements to achieve recovery becomes the management style. Think of this as a strategic sprint where you apply this methodology and tactics to get back to the previous point of success and then shift to the growth-focused leadership style. The following are a couple of tips to get the recovery process started.

Recovery Leadership Focus:

1. Prioritizing profitable products/services: Sales leaders must analyze their sales data to identify the most profitable products or services and focus their sales efforts on those offerings. They should also consider upselling or cross-selling to existing customers to increase revenue.

2. Streamlining sales processes: Sales leaders should look for ways to streamline their sales processes to increase efficiency and reduce costs. This may include implementing new sales technologies, improving lead generation and qualification processes, and simplifying sales contracts and proposals.

3. Building strong customer relationships: Sales leaders must build solid relationships with their existing customers to encourage repeat business and positive word-of-mouth referrals. They should invest in customer success programs, provide exceptional customer service, and regularly communicate with customers to understand their needs and address any concerns.

4. Salespeople must be successful: During a “recovery mode” of operating a business, each salesperson must be relied on to bring in their share of the company’s needs. One of the critical measures of success for a sales team is whether or not the revenue they generate outweighs their cost to the company. Sales leaders must set clear revenue goals for their team members and ensure that each salesperson can meet or exceed their targets. If a salesperson consistently falls short of their goals, the sales leader needs to take swift action to address the issue. This action could involve providing additional training or coaching, reassigning sales territories or accounts, or even making the difficult decision to terminate the salesperson’s employment. By proactively addressing underperforming sales team members, sales leaders can help ensure that the team can meet its revenue targets and contribute to the organization’s overall success.

Another important consideration when evaluating the performance of sales team members is the concept of burden costs, i.e., the costs associated with supporting a salesperson’s activities, such as overhead expenses and administrative support. Sales leaders must keep a close eye on burden costs and ensure they are within the revenue generated by individual salespeople. By regularly monitoring burden costs and revenue generation, sales leaders can make data-driven decisions about allocating resources and prioritizing sales activities. This effort helps ensure that the sales team is operating efficiently and effectively and that each team member contributes to the organization’s overall success.

Whether leading sales for growth or recovery, the situation requires approaches and strategies tailored to each internal challenge. Sales leaders must be able to adapt their leadership style to the needs of the business and the stage of the business cycle where the focus remains on prioritizing profitability, streamlining processes, and building solid relationships with customers to achieve long-term success.

This article originally appeared in two parts at https://salesxceleration.com/adapting-leadership-styles-to-the-situation-sales-growth-vs-sales-recovery-part-one-sales-growth/ and https://salesxceleration.com/adapting-leadership-styles-to-the-situation-sales-growth-vs-sales-recovery-part-two-sales-recovery/

About our guest co-author: Kevin Lawson is the President of Lighthouse Sales Advisors. Lighthouse Sales Advisors is a sales leadership solution provider for small businesses. Lighthouse helps business owners navigate the potential pitfalls around sales growth, sales turnaround, or scaling up by leveraging sales acumen and decades of experience to build effective sales teams.

Two Tall Guys Podcast – From Slump to Success: Guiding Salespeople through Tough Times – Episode 30

Two Tall Guys Podcast – From Slump to Success: Guiding Salespeople through Tough Times – Episode 30

In this podcast episode, Kevin and Sean discuss how to help a top-performing salesperson get through a slump and get back on track. They emphasize the importance of a time-based sales strategy and keeping an eye on the early stages of a sale, such as lead generation and relationship building. They recommend reinforcing the positive aspects of a salesperson’s work and ensuring they follow the right process to build an effective pipeline.

They also suggest an intellectually honest approach to pipeline management to evaluate the pipeline’s health and identify areas that need improvement. This involves looking at close rates and the average time taken to close deals. Moreover, they discuss setting realistic goals for salespeople, focusing on the right activities for the right prospects, and practicing delivering the right message to the target market.

They stress the importance of patience and confidence-building for salespeople in a slump, as well as celebrating successes. Lastly, they highlight the role of a sales leader in supporting their team members rather than taking over their tasks.

Two Tall Guys Podcast – Catching People Doing Things Right: Rewarding Sales Efforts and Results – Episode 29

Two Tall Guys Podcast – Catching People Doing Things Right: Rewarding Sales Efforts and Results – Episode 29

In this engaging podcast episode, hosts Kevin and Sean dive into the crucial topic of rewarding effort and results during sales meetings. They emphasize the importance of recognizing salespeople’s achievements through monetary rewards, acknowledgment, and praise. The hosts discuss the impact of consistent processes for catching people doing things right and sharing best practices among sales teams. They also touch upon the idea of self-reward for sales practitioners, encouraging them to celebrate their successes.

Throughout the conversation, Sean and Kevin provide actionable advice and tools for sales leaders to cultivate a positive work environment, ultimately leading to better results. They also highlight the human aspect of sales, acknowledging the challenges that salespeople face daily.

If you’re a sales leader or a sales practitioner looking for valuable insights and strategies to elevate your team’s performance, don’t miss out on this podcast. Subscribe now on your favorite podcast player to stay up-to-date with the latest episodes and learn from industry experts like Kevin and Sean. Happy listening and happy selling!

Two Tall Guys Podcast – Part 2 – Building and Scaling Successful Sales Teams: A Conversation with Tim Warren of Helium SEO – Episode 28

Two Tall Guys Podcast – Part 2 – Building and Scaling Successful Sales Teams: A Conversation with Tim Warren of Helium SEO – Episode 28

In this podcast, Tim Warren, CEO of Helium-SEO, discusses his approach to handling difficult situations in a sales environment. He emphasizes the importance of coaching opportunities and scaling through challenges or problems with existing salespeople. Tim shares his approach to handling a situation where an account manager did not provide the level of service they were supposed to, causing a client to feel that the service level had dropped. He stresses the importance of being open, honest, and transparent, taking responsibility, and having a plan to fix the issue. As a CEO, Tim wants to show his team how to take ownership and responsibility for handling similar situations and eventually be able to handle them independently.

Tim emphasizes the importance of building a strong culture in a business. According to Tim, a company’s culture should be grounded in its core values, which should guide the behavior and actions of every team member. The culture should be so strong that it feels like a cult, somewhere between a business and a religion. Tim believes that a strong company culture can significantly impact business success by attracting and retaining top talent and creating an environment where everyone feels valued, motivated, and committed to achieving the company’s goals.

To maintain the company’s culture, Tim emphasizes the importance of hiring according to core values and being strict with those values when people do not live up to them. He suggests promoting and praising team members who embody the company’s core values. By doing so, it reinforces the importance of these values and helps to maintain the culture. Overall, Tim believes that building and maintaining a solid company culture is essential for business success.

Two Tall Guys Podcast – Building and Scaling Successful Sales Teams: A Conversation with Tim Warren of Helium SEO – Episode 27

Two Tall Guys Podcast – Building and Scaling Successful Sales Teams: A Conversation with Tim Warren of Helium SEO – Episode 27

In this podcast, Kevin and Sean talk to Tim Warren, the founder, and CEO of Helium SEO. Tim talks about his background and how he got into sales. He discusses his experience building technical engineering-focused SEO and SEM campaigns for mid-size and enterprise clients. He also explains how his company has been able to drive higher ROI for its clients.

Tim shares his leadership journey as a sales leader and how he has learned that star salespeople don’t always make great coaches. He emphasizes the importance of having a sales process in place and training salespeople effectively to ensure consistency in performance. Tim also talks about the challenges of growing a sales team, such as hiring the right people and scaling the team without sacrificing quality. He reinforces why his LinkedIn profile says he is “Recruiting rockstars to build Helium to $100M. Are you ready to take your career to the next level?”

This podcast provides insights into Tim Warren’s sales journey and his approach to building and leading successful sales teams.

Two Tall Guys Podcast – Part 2 of Communicate Your Value Proposition to Win More Deals with Kelly Crandall of Sales Xceleration and Next Level Strategies – Episode 25

Two Tall Guys Podcast – Part 2 of Communicate Your Value Proposition to Win More Deals with Kelly Crandall of Sales Xceleration and Next Level Strategies – Episode 25

Kelly Crandall returns to Two Tall Guys Talking Sales for her second episode in two weeks. Kelly is an expert in sales after working in the corporate world, running a small business, providing Fractional Sales Leadership for her customers in Florida, and now is the Visionary for Sales Xceleration. 

This episode centers around building a strong value proposition and creating a sales strategy that resonates with customers. In this particular episode, the topic of discussion is the third area of the sales process and how it can help build trust with customers.

Kelly has agreed to stick around for the second episode, where she focuses on the validation needed to create trust.

A great sales strategy starts with answering the questions of why act and why act now. Then answer the question of why choose us. Then you need to validate that your product solves the problem so that you can have the conversation about trust (because #b2bsales is simply the transferring of the trust from the sales team to the prospect). The hosts and the guest emphasize the importance of covering all three areas to create a strong value proposition.

Kelly explains that proof is the key. Salespeople should be authentic, transparent, and empathetic while using data and statistics to support their claims. Testimonials, case studies, and stories help build trust with customers. The goal is to anticipate objections and provide proof in advance.

Salespeople transfer their trust in the product to the prospect. The hosts also explain that salespeople sell three things: the product, the company that makes the product, and themselves as salespeople. Building trust is an essential part of the selling process.

Validation events can be expensive for young companies. Owners should help get customer testimonials and create case studies to leverage for future sales pitches.

This podcast episode provides a comprehensive overview of creating trust and how it can help build customer revenue. Kelly emphasizes the importance of covering all three areas to create a strong value proposition. She provides practical tips on using proof to build trust and anticipate objections.

This podcast episode is a valuable resource for anyone looking to improve their sales strategy and build a stronger value proposition.

Leading Your Sales Team to Success: 5 Best Practices You Need to Know

Leading Your Sales Team to Success: 5 Best Practices You Need to Know

In today’s highly competitive business environment, sales leaders play a crucial role in the success of their organizations. They are responsible for setting sales targets, creating effective sales strategies, and motivating their teams to achieve their goals. However, being an effective sales leader requires more than just setting targets and motivating your team. This article will explore the five best practices of effective sales leaders.

1. Set clear and achievable goals.

One of the primary responsibilities of a sales leader is to set clear and achievable goals for their team. Setting goals is critical to keeping your team focused and motivated. With clear goals, your team will know what they are working towards and may be able to achieve the results you expect.

When setting goals, it’s essential to make them SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. 

  • Specific goals are clear and well-defined. 
  • Measurable goals allow you to track progress and determine success.
  • Achievable goals are realistic and within reach. 
  • Relevant goals align with your organization’s overall objectives. 
  • Time-bound goals have a deadline or timeframe for completion.

Setting SMART goals gives your team a clear direction and purpose. This guidance helps them focus their efforts on the activities that will help them achieve their objectives.

2. Develop a sales strategy.

Once you have set your sales goals, the next step is to develop a sales strategy. A sales strategy outlines your team’s approach to achieving its goals. It includes the tactics and activities that your team will use to reach its targets.

Your sales strategy should be based on deeply understanding your market, customers, and competitors. It should also take into account your organization’s strengths and weaknesses. A good sales strategy is flexible and adaptable. It allows your team to adjust its approach based on the market or changes in customer needs.

When developing your sales strategy, it’s essential to involve your team. Your sales team has firsthand knowledge of your customers and their challenges. You can tap into their expertise by involving your team in the strategy development process and gain buy-in for the approach.

3. Provide ongoing training and coaching.

Sales is a dynamic and constantly evolving field. To be successful, your sales team needs ongoing training and coaching. Ongoing training helps your team stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and best practices. It also helps them develop new skills and techniques that can help them close more deals.

Coaching is equally essential. Sales coaching helps your team identify areas for improvement and develop strategies to overcome challenges. It also gives your team feedback and support, helping them stay motivated and focused.

You must understand your team’s strengths and weaknesses to provide effective training and coaching. This requires regular communication and feedback. Regular one-on-one meetings with your team members can help you identify areas for improvement and develop tailored coaching plans.

4. Foster a positive team culture.

Sales can be a high-pressure and stressful environment. To be successful, your team needs to work well together and support each other. This requires a positive team culture.

A positive team culture is built on trust, respect, and collaboration. It’s a culture where team members feel valued and appreciated. It’s also a culture where team members feel comfortable sharing their ideas and opinions.

As a sales leader, you are critical in fostering a positive team culture. You need to lead by example and model the behaviors you want to see in your team. You also need to encourage open communication and provide opportunities for team members to collaborate and work together.

5. Use data to drive decisions.

Finally, effective sales leaders use data to drive their decisions. Data provides insights into your team’s performance and helps you identify areas for improvement. It also lets you track progress toward your goals and make informed decisions about your sales strategy.

To use data effectively, you need the right tools and systems. This includes a robust CRM system that captures and tracks critical sales metrics such as leads, opportunities, and pipeline value. It also provides analytics tools to help you analyze your data and gain insights into your team’s performance.

Data can also be used to optimize your sales process. By analyzing your sales data, you can identify bottlenecks and areas where your team struggles. This allows you to develop targeted interventions to improve performance.

Effective sales leaders use data to continuously improve their sales process and drive results. They are always looking for ways to optimize their approach and stay ahead of the competition.

Being an effective sales leader requires a combination of skills and practices. It requires setting clear and achievable goals, developing a sales strategy, providing ongoing training and coaching, fostering a positive team culture, and using data to drive decisions. By following these best practices, sales leaders can motivate their teams and drive results. They can also create a culture of continuous improvement that allows their organization to stay ahead of the competition.

Header image by Tumisu from Pixabay