Sales Progress Blog

According to a recent survey by the Hay Group,  64% of the top 20 Best Companies for Leadership, say their people are expected to lead even when they are not in a position of authority, a mere 35% of average companies have this mentality.  By expecting that all employees demonstrate leadership skills they are developing employees internally to move up their ranks.  Strategies like this reduce turn over and down time needed to train leaders brought in from outside the company.

Another key finding from the Hay Group, employees from the top leadership companies are more comfortable that their company will come out of tough times stronger.  These people trust their company’s leaders to bring them through tough times, and they worry less about losing their jobs therefore allowing them to put their full energy into their work with out the fear that they won’t be around to finish it.

So how much time does it take to develop these top leaders? According to the same survey, 22% of the top companies report spending 25 plus days per year training leaders, while only 16.4% of all respondents of the survey reported spending 25 days per year developing their employees.  With this said, top companies spend about 2 days a month training their leaders.  These companies understand that this time is a great investment to their future.

What does all this tell us?  Top companies have great leaders, and leaders come from our people, so we need to spend the time and potentially the money on management training to develop them.  This training effort is an investment not an expense, and should always be seen as such.

Shannon Gburzynski Sales Training employee training solutions, leadership training, management leadership training, management training, on the job training methods, sales leadership skills, training of trainers

When a sales person happens to display leadership abilities, typically we promote them to management or lead sales rep.  But shouldn’t all reps have sales leadership skills?  Skip Anderson made a great point in his recent blog post he said, “Leaders have the ability not only to lead, but also to easily get others to follow, a helpful skill during sales interactions.”

We associate leaders with many great qualities, they can incite passion in others, have the ability to get others to see their vision, and are trustworthy.  Shouldn’t we want all of those qualities in all of our sales people?  A sales person with passion is believable.  A sales person who can get others to see their vision is persuasive.  And a sales person, who is trustworthy, gets repeat business.  Yep, I think these are all good traits to have in a sales person, not just in a manager.

If you’re a rep, think about these qualities as you go about your daily work, and strive to exhibit them everyday.  And if you are a manager, coach and inspire your team to exhibit these qualities, in the long run they will out perform the followers because they will pave the way to success.

Visit Skip’s Original Post

Shannon Gburzynski Sales Management sales leadership, sales leadership skills, Sales Management, sales skills