Flex Your Power

By Lain Chroust Ehmann • Illustration by David Plunkert
When you look for quotes on leadership, you find thousands of them going back thousands of years. Seems as if leadership has been a hot topic ever since people started congregating around a philosophical water cooler. Yet no one has yet come up with one
definition of leadership that explains precisely what it is, how to get it, how to use it, and how to control it. And we’re not going to claim we’ve done that either. Instead, we talked to a variety of people – experts, managers, and authors on the subject – to compile a broad view of what it takes to lead. And what it means to sales managers and their teams. Here’s the consensus. Take what you need and run with it. Or lead with it.

First of all, even if you never intend to move into the corner office – or into sales management – leadership is a critical skill for sales professionals. As a salesperson, you lead clients through the buying process, spearhead cross-departmental teams in support of customers, and muster the various experts on your sales force as needed. The stronger your leadership skills, the better you’re able to serve your customers and get your job done.

“But I’m already doing great on this front,” you may say. “I’ve got a handle on my schedule. My clients are happy, and I’ve got a great working relationship with my coworkers.” That’s wonderful – but that’s not leadership. Debbie Ellisen, vice president of sales for Vindicia, a leading provider of back-office solutions for digital merchants, says the two categories are quite different: Management is about day-to-day tactical management of resources, while leadership has to do with the creation of new strategic ideas and visions.

And skill in one area doesn’t necessarily mean skill in the other. “Great managers may not be great leaders,” adds Chester Elton, coauthor of The Carrot Principle: How the Best Managers Use Recognition to Engage Their People, Retain Talent, and Accelerate Performance (Free Press, 2007).

To help you focus on the characteristics of effective leaders, we’ve created a list of critical skills and then selected a “poster child” for each. We wrap up each quality with tips on how to incorporate these skills into your everyday work life and finish with some suggestions for positioning yourself for greater leadership opportunities.

Leaders have vision. Ask for a success story from the dot-com craze, and Amazon is sure to come to mind. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of the ultimate in one-stop online shopping, is almost synonymous with the Internet. But the dream did not start out that big. In 1994, Bezos gave up his job as a VP of a New York investment firm, packed up a used car, and moved to Seattle with his new wife and a vision – to start an online business selling books.

Of course, the idea was wacky. Of course, everyone told him he was nuts. Of course, he faced many obstacles along the way – and of course, he overcame them all. What carried him through the tough times was his clarity of purpose, his vision of what Amazon.com could be. “I knew that if I failed, I wouldn’t regret that,” he’s quoted as saying. “But I knew the one thing I might regret was not trying.”

The lesson: Know what you are trying to accomplish with vivid clarity. The more real you can make your vision, the easier it is to share it with others and convince them to come along. This is especially true if you are asking your clients to take a leap of faith toward an unknown solution that you know will pay off for them. Paint a detailed, accurate vision, and they won’t be able to resist.

If you’re interested in moving up to a higher position in your organization, sales consultant Lenann Gardner recommends “developing a perspective that is larger than just sales.” Gardner, author of Got Sales? The Complete Guide to Today’s Proven Methods for Selling Services (Jarndyce & Jarndyce Press, 2007) says that taking a wider-angle view when you create your own vision will demonstrate your willingness to think beyond the quota, toward the good of the company as a whole.

Leaders find effective strategies. Vision is great, but if you cannot find a way to connect to it from the current reality, it’s useless. One leader who has been able to bring the imaginary to the realm of reality is football legend Bill Walsh. The legendary coach led his teams to amazing NFC division championships and NFC titles and earned a spot in the NFL Football Hall of Fame. One of his many strengths was as an offensive coach, constantly reading the field and creating strategies that would maximize his players’ skills and exploit the weaknesses of their opponents.

The lesson: Strategy is something that’s refined every day, one battle at a time. Just as Walsh had to look at each season’s team and each week’s opponent anew, salespeople need to evaluate each customer and each competitor on an individual basis and create a plan to address each unique situation. What worked yesterday or last month may not work tomorrow.

Leaders are flexible. If there’s a leader who knows the value of flexibility, it has to be Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor of New York City has been lauded for his role in responding to the horrific events of September 11. All schedules and routines went out the window as he existed in the moment. He went from comforting the bereaved to inspiring the emergency workers to becoming a great statesman and the face of the future.

The lesson: There are times to stick to the plan, and there are times when you need to be prepared to fly by the seat of your pants. The trick is to always operate from your core beliefs, allowing them to provide guidance in times where confusion threatens to reign. It’s times like these when those with the soul of a leader come to the forefront. “You can’t manage change, you can only lead change,” says Gardner.

Leaders are great communicators. The key to communicating is connecting with the audience. Former President Ronald Reagan was so well known for his ability to reach the American people that he earned the nickname, “The Great Communicator.” He didn’t use fancy language or rhetoric to win people over; in fact, it was the very simplicity of his style, coupled with his humor, which made him so popular. Adds Elton, “A senior leader’s job isn’t to have all the ideas or even most of them. Their job is to communicate corporate goals to employees and motivate them to achieve those goals.”

The lesson: When you have something to say, say it in the simplest way possible. Save the fancy verbal footwork and piles of data for the engineering team, and stick to word pictures and vivid descriptions. Finally, remember Reagan’s advice: “Facts are stupid things.”

Leaders listen. Sharing information is one skill; collecting information is another, equally valuable skill. And the queen of listening very well may be Meg Whitman, CEO of online auction site eBay. Whitman, who took the helm of the company in 1998, is known for her humility and passion for listening to both her customers and employees. It’s through this dedication that Whitman has grown the company to over 5,000 employees and led its acquisition of PayPal and its expansion around the globe.

“When you’re trained in an MBA program or in most businesses, you use the words, ‘Drive, push, go after,’ and it’s not that way here. Here, you have to use the community of users to chart the course of the company. You can’t direct them to do much of anything,” Whitman told CBS MarketWatch.

The lesson: As a “trusted advisor,” it’s natural to want to share your expertise with your customers. But too much talking and not enough listening is a sure formula for alienating your clients. Take a tip from Whitman and commit to listening to what your customers are saying. Ask them what’s important, what they worry about, and what would make their life easier – even if it’s outside your typical scope. What better way to become a trusted partner than by solving problems your customer never even knew existed.

Leaders are inspirational. If there is one skill that can make up for a multitude of sins in other areas, it just might be the ability to inspire. People want to be a part of something great, something larger than themselves. Just ask business legend, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch. Known for his passion, commitment, and sense of fun, Welch led by example and took pride in his ability to develop his people. He regularly rewarded the highest performers (and cut the bottom feeders), thereby encouraging workers to make it to the top. “Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act,” Welch has said.

The lesson: Unless you inspire others to act, you are a team of one. The more you can inspire your team members to be the best they can be, the further your reach as a leader. Says Welch, “If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it, you almost don’t have to manage them.”

Any of these legendary leaders would be sure to tell you that it doesn’t matter where your box falls on the organizational chart: Leaders can be found anywhere in the organization. “Keep yourself growing and learning, but don’t think you necessarily have to be ‘the leader,’” says Ellisen. “It’s okay to be the salesperson who’s still a salesperson.”
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