Transcript

John Maxwell once said that a leader is someone who knows the way, shows the way and goes the way.

We think there’s an extra line to add to that statement. And that’s a great leader sells the way.

Selling as a concept is often misunderstood. Why? Because people tend to think of pressure, of a pressure salesman, forcing what they want onto the other person. When in actual fact, when it’s done really, really well, it’s something that you do for a person not to them. And the same can be said for leadership.

Sir Alex Ferguson, the former Manchester United manager, summed it up really well in his excellent book called “Leading” he said,

“The difference between management and leadership was making people believe that the impossible was possible.”

Alex Ferguson was all about creating the standard, but he knew that he had to first of all, sell the reason why it was important. And he lived up to his standards because he believed and demonstrated that nobody was bigger than the team.

Too many businesses get bogged down and take their eye off the ball.

With in-fighting, team politics and the selfishness of, let’s keep our arm around this. Let’s not let them know. Oh, no, we don’t do that because they don’t really help us.

All of these things are symptoms of an underlying problem, which is basically that there’s an overall inattention to the end result.

This brings with it an energy of competition, not one of collaboration, open communication and collective creativity. It can only stymie growth. So a leader’s job is to help their people, and the departments across the business to understand that they’re not actually competitors, that they don’t need to look after their own and not think about anybody else, because they are actually customers of one another.

When everybody starts to treat one another as customers internally, it becomes a two-way street. And that’s when the magic of values starts to come to life.

Why? It’s because values-based behaviour is never selfish. If you flip the equation the other way round and think of selling as something that you do for somebody rather than to them, you actually remove the sense of competition.

By being ‘others-focused’ you end up becoming a giver, somebody who wants to be helpful and in return, the people that you help want to help you back. And this is something that great leaders understand.

They understand that one of their key roles is to make sure that all teams and departments can work as seamlessly together as possible.

Now, how do you do that?

You first of all have to know how you want things to be done around here. You have to uphold those values and recognize that the behaviours that people do on a daily basis are an expression of those values.

So John Maxwell was right when he said, “a leader needs to know the way, go the way and show the way.”

But it’s also really important that a leader knows how to sell the way.

How good are your leaders at creating an internal sales culture? Where every team member and department is there to serve one another with your customer’s best interest at heart. Because they are driven by doing the right things, to make a difference, to help the business achieve the growth that it deserves.

How good is your internal sales culture?