How to Lead a Sales Department Optimized Towards Performance and Motivation!

People in proactive sales have their own DNA. Most of them are active, hungry and hopefully confident, but for the same reasons they are also not easy to lead. They often have their own opinions, a fact that not every executive appreciates. Sometimes they see themselves as a lawyer of the customer rather than as a defender of the corporate objectives (see pricing, goodwill, etc.).

Nevertheless, despite this common special DNA all are individually distinct. “Treat every person the same way as you want to be treated” goes the saying that we have heard so often. Applied to the leadership of people this is unfortunately a tragic error, since this would entail: All people are like you, everybody is “wired” as you, everybody is motivated just like you. But this is just completely and utterly… WRONG!

Leadership According to “Sales Maturity”

Although the maturity model by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey has been around for a lot of years and the consequent recommended “situational leadership” has been proven inconsistent by experts, we can still find the same approach in different categorizations and leadership recommendations. Therefore I want to present to you the most important approaches of the model…

How do I Lead Inexperienced Empoyees, How Experienced Employees? When Should I Lead Proactive, When Reactive? …

And: For Every Phase its Form of Leadership!

DIRECTING | Sales Maturity 1: Low Know-How & Low Independence

New employees as well as experienced employees that have been given a new field of work get added to the phase of Sales Maturity 1: give them smaller packages of work with individual working steps, add clear instructions and daily feedback (around three minutes). Create an allowing environment for questions, clear understanding and the possibility of bringing in own ideas. Once a week you should have a longer feedback discussion in order to discuss how accomplishments and failures have been experienced. These discussions are necessary for reaching the next phase and are also essential for communicating a company’s business and leadership culture.

• TIP: Also use these talks to encourage your new employees to compare their experiences at your company in contrast to their previous work environment. This is an effective lever against internal organizational blindness.

COACHING | Sales Maturity 2: Higher Know-How & Independence in Testing

In the phase of Sales Maturity 2 you furthermore hand over small but completable packages of work. You only communicate the working objective and let your employees explain their working steps to you on their own. You add what is missing and define feedback loops which now should be scheduled and adhered to by the employee. In this phase the feedback comes to you: listen very carefully and support wherever help is asked for.

• TIP: You can now see who uses their “freedoms” for independence and where the potential is hidden.

SUPPORTING | Sales Maturity 3: High Know-How & Low Independence

To this category your “problem children” are added. The abilities are strong, but the aspiration is weak! The attention of an executive is automatically guided here! (“You can do better! Why is nothing moving forward?”) A special problem here is when the aspiration was once rather high and has now faded away – but more on that later. At Sales Maturity 3 it is essential not to criticise the low motivation but to intensify your relationship and find the reason for the discrepancy. It is also important to have a sequential view: WHERE EXACTLY is the aspiration missing? Are we talking about single areas? Do you know your employees’ preferences when it comes to work? Maybe they are not working in a field that suits them.

• TIP: Show interest and find the reasons! Frequently the root of the problem lies within industrial hygiene factors (dissatisfiers like: regulations, checklists, personal “quirks”, personal conflicts or team conflicts). Oftentimes those problems are easily eradicated and the path is clear again.

DELEGATING | Sales Maturity 4: High Know-How & High to Highest Independence

In this phase projects are no longer delegated in single packages of work. Apart from the concrete task at hand the employee now also has to bear the full responsibility as well as the decision-making power (without a duty to consult for every minor decision, following the “task, authority, responsibility principle”).

Those are the employees we all want (and ideally right from the start)! Here we have no problems, those are our “workhorses”, …

But in all sincerity: these employees are extremely important. Oftentimes their progression is a long path – but it can yield a double dividend, since they are also able to support the team. They frequently function as an “informal” executive and thereby bear in them the potential of the entire team. Because one thing is clear: team members predominantly exchange views with each other rather than with their higher ups. It is therefore good to know if these employees are sympathetic towards you or not, because they will influence the entire working atmosphere – whether intended or not.

• This can be used positively if you want to promote certain changes in your team.

Employees in Sales Maturity 4 are also the ideal “godfathers” for new, unexperienced employees. They oftentimes have a role model function within your team.

But there are two sides to every coin… One problem for these routineers is that they seldom give feedback, because “everything is fine anyway”. Another problem is that they often take up extra tasks where others would object, since everybody knows they can be relied on – this can be very demoralizing. A third fundamental theme is that those highly skilled employees with a lot of know-how simply feel bored and can’t see any further development opportunities for themselves.

In my years long experience as a coach I have often experienced, that such employees go into “internal emigration”, which means they can slide back into maturity level three – when there is no aspiration “anymore”. Or they quit and the executive is completely dismayed…

• TIP: Increase your communication a little bit. Take time for feedback discussions, also if there is nothing to criticise! Use these talks as a chance and have your employees explain to you their success strategy. Who knows, maybe you will get a good tip on how to motivate your other employees?

• TIP 2: If there is little to no opportunity for a vertical career (only through your retirement), then maybe job-enrichment (horizontal expansion of ones field of work) or job-rotation (something new to try) could be a good fit.

The topic at hand goes way further than described here, so much is clear – e.g., HOW do you take along single employees with their emotional or psychological quirks? But that’s to save for another newsletter. See you then…

Get an individual consultation to establish a quote for your in-house leadership training with: Maurizio Nuzzaci / Nuzzaci@interconnectionconsulting.com

09/12/2022

Copyright: Interconnection, Publication free of charge for coverage regarding the study and InterConnection Consulting.