Christmas and the New Year is a wonderful season for reflecting on the year just about to end as well as a fantastic opportunity to connect with friends and family. It is a great time to be giving. And one of the most tangible forms of giving at this time of year is the giving of gifts. To see the smiles on people’s faces as they open gifts of love, a representation of what people mean to us. And at this time of year, there are many lessons around giving that we as sales leaders can take on board, embed them and implement them in the New Year. Because just when you think you have given all you’ve got, give some more and you will breakthrough to a new frontier and perhaps even discover a new world you didn’t know existed. And contrary to what many of us have been told and conditioned to believe, the more you give, the more you will end up receiving, not the other way round.
I remember when I first started out in Sales nearly 20 years ago, the environment was dog eat dog and often I would hear the phrase ‘nice guys finish last’. I thought that in order to be successful, I had to be anything but nice, in fact, I thought I had to be ruthless, focussing on what was in it for me. Over time though, what I discovered was that there didn’t have to be winners and losers – nice guys actually can do pretty well. And it was around this time that I read a great book called the ‘Go-Giver’ by Bob Burg and it completely changed my perspective.
Instead of focussed on getting and winning at all costs, it centred in on the Laws of Stratospheric Success, which not only had a profound impact on my ability to increase my productivity as a sales person, it also provided me with a tremendous foundation for my sales leadership career. And it was all focussed on giving. Here are some of the core laws that really had an impact on me :
- The Law of Value – this law was a epiphany for me in sales. It decrees that your worth and what you create is based on how much more in value you provide others than you take in compensation. This law alone created such fantastic and deep relationships with my customers, that I have focussed on this law in everything I have done ever since. With this law implemented, selling and working with customers all of a sudden transformed from being transaction focussed, selling a ‘thing’ or a ‘widget’, to being relationship and value focussed, always remembering that value was always in the eyes of the customer. This made a massive difference.
- The Law of Compensation – this law is another huge paradigm shift – it decrees that the money/income you make is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them. Whilst if would be easy to focus on the numbers, especially given that sales is often considered a numbers game (and many Sales Leaders unfortunately place far too much emphasis on the numbers at the expense of the customer), it forced me to treat every customer and prospective customer not as a number, but as an important advocate, and my focus went from selling the features and benefits of my products and services, to putting my 100% attention on my customers and understanding what their challenges were and where their opportunities were located. When I implemented this law, not only did it not feel like ‘selling’, I discovered that I had the capacity to help more customers and the amazing by-product of that ; the numbers almost took care of themselves!
- The Law of Influence – this law decrees that your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests ahead of your own. As a salesperson, this integrated very closely with the Law of Compensation and the Law of Value, and as a Sales Leader, it enabled my leadership impact to really take off. I learned really quickly as a leader that influence is leadership and leadership is influence, and the most impactful way to influence others was to focus on them, their needs, their desires and help them overcome some of their obstacles and challenges. In this process I understood that leadership, especially in sales, was not about me. And just when I thought I had given as much as I thought I could give, I discovered that I actually had another gear, and could give even more. When this happened, guess what I discovered? That my salespeople also possessed another gear and another level of performance (sometimes even multiple new levels). When they discovered this, their productivity and engagement with their customers went to another level. And guess what? The numbers were always taken care of!
So as a sales leader, or any type of leader for that matter, know that your long term sustainable success is going to be built on how much you focus on and give to others. Understand that people are typically either givers, takers or matchers. A vast majority are actually matchers – they are willing to give as long as they receive something back ; this is very transactional. And in leadership, takers have very short careers. Be a giver, and recognise that just when you think you have given all you’ve got, give some more. The results you achieve will be extraordinary.
To your continued sales leadership success.
Darren
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Thank you for taking the time to read this post – I greatly appreciate it, and welcome comments and feedback. Please feel free to comment below, to follow me on LinkedIn, or to connect via Twitter, or Facebook.
Darren is a Sales Leadership and Sales Performance Coach, Facilitator & Speaker. He is an experienced and committed coach with a background of sales leadership success in large organisations. He applies a genuine focus to coaching and developing high performing sales leaders who are looking to unleash the potential of themselves and their teams.
