If every motivational strategy in the book fails to turn your team around, it’s time to look in the mirror. The problem may be you.
As a sales leader, you may honestly believe that you’ve created an environment that fosters success and encourages innovative approaches to achieving sales goals. But if the numbers aren’t backing that up, or if your team members are rapidly deserting you for greener pastures, it’s time for a reality check.
When it comes to leadership, behavior carries far more weight than words. It doesn’t matter how often you encourage your team to find creative new approaches to the sales process if you dismiss their ideas with little or no consideration.
You can tell them that your door is always open until you’re blue in the face, they aren’t going to believe it if you put them off every time they come to you for advice.
If you preach the importance of everyone pulling their weight, but let under-performers slide because you don’t have time to deal with them, your top performers will become frustrated and resentful.
Whether you mean to or not, your behaviors are probably creating a performance-sapping environment of fear and uncertainty if:
- You’ve become so preoccupied with what is going wrong that you fail to see or acknowledge what is going right
- Stress has made you short-tempered or prone to abrupt responses when approached for help
- You avoid unscheduled interactions with your team by cloistering yourself in your office
Effective sales leadership means leading by example and following through on promises made. If you can’t put your team ahead of yourself, it may be time to find a new career.