“One of the things newly promoted leaders should learn as soon as possible is how to articulate what needs to be true to win.” – Richard Cogswell in today’s Tip 1769
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Richard Cogswell. Richard is a people-first sales leader and author of the new book The Cultural Sales Leader. He is an organizational team builder who believes that people, vision, values, and behaviors build winning sales cultures. Living and working in Singapore, Richard is currently working in Fintech and card issuance. Here he is:
Richard Cogswell: The leadership is inherent theory is very much alive and well. And can often lead to a lack of leadership training, and particularly the subsequent failure of first-time and newly promoted leaders. The truth is, most newly promoted leaders don’t receive any leadership training at all, and they are left to their own devices. And the myth that being a good leader is an inborn quality is therefore perpetuated. But it actually also happens for a lot of good reasons. If you consider internal promotions, there are a lot of good reasons as to why a management suite may want to uplift and internally promote, as opposed to going out to market.
Firstly, there’s the immediacy. It’s much quicker and cheaper to promote someone who’s already working for you. Secondly, you get to maintain their knowledge and their IP, and they can plug in with far less time than an outside hire would take. Then thirdly, there’s the reward aspect. It rewards the individual for their contribution, and it shows others that promotion is possible. Then lastly, there’s the hope element, the hope that by promoting someone who’s already successful, particularly in sales, somehow will confer that success onto others.
But I think we’ve all seen this. It’s not always a clear shot to success, and it can often lead to that individual leaving, creating a turnaround situation where the management suite is then forced go to market after all and find someone more experienced and expensive, probably, but someone who then has the ability to come in and change the direction, reset the agenda, and perhaps just start again with strategy and culture.
So this theory essentially can lead to a lot of failure. Why? Well, firstly, it does not acknowledge that leadership is actually learned. Sales is actually a team sport, but the setting of an agenda in terms of where you will focus and how you will win in your market rests on your shoulders as the profit and loss owner of your commercial function. Within this, you must be clear on what the goal is, what you will need to be able to win. You also have to manage yourself, your business, your team, new stakeholders such as leadership, leaders of functions, and align with them. And you have to then activate and manage your plan, including any pivots you may need to take. And that’s already a lot. And that’s precisely why the move from single contribution to leadership can be so challenging.
And then, secondly, you have to be conscious of the skill sets and the drivers of the individual that’s being promoted. And not all salespeople will make good sales leaders or sales managers. Here we have to look at the role of single contributors within a sales environment, which on the one hand is a common term that we’re all used to within sales. Experts and salespeople who do their role without any management responsibility. But unfortunately, it can also have a negative context, and single contributors can literally be just that. Pureborn hunters focused on bringing home the prey to the business to be rewarded and heralded as the great providers. And sometimes these performers, whilst being totally effective, can be incapable of sharing knowledge or being able to interact across the team, and they can default to directorial type of leadership or even micromanagement.
So the theory of inherent leadership is not sufficient to explain why formal leadership training can be prevented. I also think in the majority of cases, it’s because the person promoted does not actually ask for help, or perhaps feels that they can’t ask for help, or they may not even know how to present the business case with the return on investment, or the company in question may not even promote the fact that there might be a training budget to hand. So one of the things newly promoted leaders should learn as soon as possible is how to articulate what needs to be true to win. And this includes asking for investment that includes training. And the realization that investment in one’s self and one’s leadership development can be as transformational as anything else in your business.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Richard and to buy his book, The Cultural Sales Leader, just click over to DailySales.Tips/1769. Once you’ve clicked over there, be sure to click back here for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!