Early last week I was having a conversation with a client, who has been in a Sales Leadership role now for approximately 6 months. Tiffany (not her real name) has a successful background in direct sales, and this being her first foray into the wonderful world of people leadership, she commenced her journey filled with big ideas, tremendous enthusiasm and boundless energy. She had established a firm 90 day plan and set out to make an impact on her team and business quickly. Her first 90 days were impactful – she was tested constantly by her team and her customers, she implemented the majority of the components of her 90 day plan, and her learning curve was incredibly steep. She was relishing the challenge. By contrast, her next 90 days were somewhat of a let down. The lustre of the new role started to wear off, and whilst she continued to implement her new 90 day plan with vigour, she noticed that some of her peers appeared to be ‘coasting’, almost going with the flow, and her perception was that the senior leaders were allowing it to happen. As such, Tiffany shared with me a level of frustration that I hadn’t seen her express before. She was frustrated that her peers and her senior leaders appeared to be comfortable with okay results, even though they recognised that they could drive significantly better outcomes. And through this, she felt as though her energy was being sapped as her senior leaders appeared to be more focussed on the administrative side of the business and not the business development and people development side. Rather than investing her time in front of her customers with her people developing relationships, she was expected to complete multiple weekly reports and attend internal ‘management’ meetings where the focus was entirely on the performance of the team and the company, and not on the outcomes being delivered to the customers. In her frustration, she said to me ‘I’m starting to question why I chose to become a Sales Leader’. My response to her shocked her somewhat – I said “well, are you an average leader or do you want to be a trailblazer”?

If you are a current Sales Leader, I’ll ask you the same question – “are you an average leader or do you want to be a trailblazer”? Are you comfortable ‘fitting in’ with your leadership peers and doing just enough to deliver okay results, or are you better than that, and wanting to make an impact and leave an indelible mark on your customers, and the competition? What if there were new frontiers that were waiting to be discovered or entirely new worlds waiting to be uncovered in your market? What would the results of your team and your company look like if you chose to become a trailblazer? Continue Reading