Sales Leadership Is Evolving, Are You?

What do you think is the difference between sales leadership and commercial leadership? Is there a difference? Have you ever taken a pause to consider what each of these things could look like? It's something that I've been thinking about a lot.

I wrote an article, I've gotten some great feedback and had some really good, deep conversations around this perspective shift.

You know, commercial leadership has been around for a a long time.

Sales leadership, ultimately, nothing has meaning except the meaning that we give it.

However, we do need to pause and think about what meaning are we giving this and what is the expectation that we have and therefore the support that we're providing to our leaders who are leading either sales leaders or leading the coalface, leading the salespeople that are on the ground doing the grunt work.

And I think it's really timely for us to have this conversation and to consider, is there a difference and what does that difference look like? Because if we think about sales leadership and typically what it has been up until this point, there's a danger that it can become very transactional.

It's about drive the target, hit the number, we've hit it, what's driving the figures, up, down, let's keep going, next number, next, next, next.

And there is this danger of, again, it being almost one-dimensional, a single lens focus on hitting that number.

But the reality is that the world has changed so much, so much in the last six months, three months, couple of years and so on.

And so if our definition of holistic sales leadership, my world commercial leadership, if that definition doesn't change, if those expectations and as I said, the support doesn't match and align with that, then then the business is at risk of getting left behind because your sales leaders, whether they are leading the cold face sales people or they're leaders of leaders, there's so much more in that role now and there's so much more opportunity to expand that role and expand that perspective because we also now have the tools accessible that we never really had before.

So the world that our sales leaders are working in has changed.

You know, if we think about, again, that state of change and how quickly everything is changing, it's evolving as does our expectations and therefore support of sales leadership need to evolve.

It's no longer about chase the target, hit the target onto the next one.

When we're in that space, it's really easy for coaching to become a tick box.

it's not deep and meaningful and valuable.

By deep, meaningful and valuable, I don't mean it takes hours.

It means that the people that are doing the selling, they often feel the pressure, but not necessarily the support.

It means that there could be a culture of performance at any cost.

And that cost does show up eventually.

And ultimately, this is the example that, you know, the scenario where results can be reliant on a few high performers.

And that is such a risky place for a business to be.

And yet, it's such a common place that I see businesses are in, in that their sales team There's just a handful of people that you can really rely on to live by a value and sales culture that goes beyond just the one-off, that will show up every day and give their best not to burn out, you know, to have that balance of being able to perform and take care of themselves.

You know, there's people that are really great at having the conversations with clients, converting.

There's an intrinsic internal locus of control and motivation.

They're the ones that are really driving those results.

What do you think is the difference between sales leadership and commercial leadership? Is there a difference? Have you ever taken a pause to consider what each of these things could look like? It's something that I've been thinking about a lot.

I wrote an article, I've gotten some great feedback and had some really good, deep conversations around this perspective shift.

You know, commercial leadership has been around for a a long time.

Sales leadership, ultimately, nothing has meaning except the meaning that we give it.

However, we do need to pause and think about what meaning are we giving this and what is the expectation that we have and therefore the support that we're providing to our leaders who are leading either sales leaders or leading the coalface, leading the salespeople that are on the ground doing the grunt work.

And I think it's really timely for us to have this conversation and to consider, is there a difference and what does that difference look like? Because if we think about sales leadership and typically what it has been up until this point, there's a danger that it can become very transactional.

It's about drive the target, hit the number, we've hit it, what's driving the figures, up, down, let's keep going, next number, next, next, next.

And there is this danger of, again, it being almost one-dimensional, a single lens focus on hitting that number.

But the reality is that the world has changed so much, so much in the last six months, three months, couple of years and so on.

And so if our definition of holistic sales leadership, my world commercial leadership, if that definition doesn't change, if those expectations and as I said, the support doesn't match and align with that, then then the business is at risk of getting left behind because your sales leaders, whether they are leading the cold face sales people or they're leaders of leaders, there's so much more in that role now and there's so much more opportunity to expand that role and expand that perspective because we also now have the tools accessible that we never really had before.

So the world that our sales leaders are working in has changed.

You know, if we think about, again, that state of change and how quickly everything is changing, it's evolving as does our expectations and therefore support of sales leadership need to evolve.

It's no longer about chase the target, hit the target onto the next one.

When we're in that space, it's really easy for coaching to become a tick box.

it's not deep and meaningful and valuable.

By deep, meaningful and valuable, I don't mean it takes hours.

It means that the people that are doing the selling, they often feel the pressure, but not necessarily the support.

It means that there could be a culture of performance at any cost.

And that cost does show up eventually.

And ultimately, this is the example that, you know, the scenario where results can be reliant on a few high performers.

And that is such a risky place for a business to be.

And yet, it's such a common place that I see businesses are in, in that their sales team There's just a handful of people that you can really rely on to live by a value and sales culture that goes beyond just the one-off, that will show up every day and give their best not to burn out, you know, to have that balance of being able to perform and take care of themselves.

You know, there's people that are really great at having the conversations with clients, converting.

There's an intrinsic internal locus of control and motivation.

They're the ones that are really driving those results.