Sales Leadership Development on Steroids
Sales leaders need to remember that they must regularly upgrade their leadership skills. Two critical areas will help you pump up your leadership quotient. The most effective ways are networking with a peer group of like-minded sales leaders who face similar challenges and utilizing a sales leadership coach.
As a former sales executive, I always understood the importance of investing in my own development and networking advantages, yet I always found myself too busy to do either. I rarely had time to meet with customers between meetings, presentations, conferences, and emails. Luckily for me, the organizations I worked for always insisted on professional development because otherwise, it would have continued to be a low priority. The reality is that networking with peers becomes more difficult the higher you rise in an organization.
Most companies don’t have sales leadership programs for their senior sales managers. Therefore, development opportunities must be sourced from outside. Since leaving the industry, I have learned that having a well-established professional network of executives was critical to building my business and a great way to ensure career security. I strongly advise clients to plan at least one networking lunch a month. Realistically most senior sales leaders don’t engage in networking regularly. Sales leaders must raise their leadership quotient since the sales force is the company’s most important promotional resource and usually has the greatest number of employees. Therefore, sales executives can benefit the most from improving their leadership skills.
The Old Way
As a sales leader, I would enroll in a 2-3 day leadership course offered by a well-known training organization. The reality was these courses were nothing more than a boondoggle. I would look for a nice location and get away for a few days. When I returned to my desk and found 400 emails and a packed week of meetings waiting, 90% of what was learned was quickly forgotten. That is the inherent problem with leadership courses offered by big-name training organizations. There is no sustainability built into the program. It is increasingly difficult to justify the costly $10,000 price tag of a weeklong Executive Leadership Training Course with little ROI.
The New Way
We have understood that networking and sales leadership training are the key elements to creating a pumped-up sales leader. Through one-on-one coaching, and group discussions involving the sharing of challenges and learnings, I believe that sales executives will emerge as the winners in this very competitive and challenging economy. Now more than ever, they must harness the power of group learning forums supplemented with the sustaining power of leadership coaching.
Is there a solution that enables Sales Leaders to network and improves their leadership skills?
Understanding the time pressures that sales leaders face, we have designed a monthly virtual networking group to discuss and learn new approaches to solving key sales challenges. Examining the needs of sales leaders, we developed a networking group called the Sales Leadership Mastermind group. This group is modelled after various successful networking organizations. Our main competitive edge is that we use Sales 2.0 technologies to network people together from the comfort of their work base.
There are 3 reasons why you should consider joining the Sales Leadership Mastermind Group:
1. Both the mastermind group and the one-on-one coaching are conducted online. There is a relatively small time investment of 2.5 hours per month. No travel costs and time out of the office travelling to meetings.
2. You gain access to world-class coaches who will help you develop and hold you accountable for building and executing your leadership plan.
3. The small group forums offer many advantages, including; getting to know and building relationships with up to 10 other sales leaders; a confidential forum to exchange ideas; peer-to-peer learning and sharing of best practices; and a dynamic learning environment that is personalized to meet your needs. To build your professional network, improve your leadership skills and increase your market value, invest in yourself.
