For sales today, a mindset is at least as important as a skillset, and I refer to this mindset as social intelligence. In our ongoing series on this vital topic, we have already discussed the qualities of self-responsibility, individuality and security.
Now let’s take up a very important quality: freedom.
Salespeople and Freedom
Many salespeople become salespeople because they seek freedom. They seek freedom from being tied to a fixed income. If they’re outside salespeople, they might seek freedom from a fixed 9-5 schedule.
But there is an aspect to freedom which is sometimes missed by salespeople–and can be missed by many others. In fact I think there is often a myth about freedom which goes something like, “Freedom means I can do whatever I want to do, and can say whatever I want to say. I am in control of everything, and nobody should ever be allowed to cut in on my freedom, in society or in the company.”
This, by natural law, cannot possibly be true.
The 2-Sided Coin
As pointed out by Thomas Mann, freedom is one side of a two-sided coin. One side is freedom–and the other is responsibility. In actuality and in practice, freedom cannot work without responsibility.
For example if you take a long, historical view of the United States, you’ll see that the freedom it now enjoys cost millions of lives spent defending it. The only way that America’s freedom will survive into the future is if it is protected with the same responsibility that created it in the first place, and that has allowed it to continue.
Freedom with no responsibility, if you look at history, much of the time results in a dictatorship–simply because the dictator is the only one now taking responsibility. And of course a dictatorship is anything but free.
Any company is willing to grant salespeople a certain degree of freedom–providing that they demonstrate a corresponding degree of responsibility along with it.
Freedom and Trust
Trust is certainly part of freedom, too. Employers are only going to grant freedom in any degree to salespeople if they can be trusted. No salesperson will last long if they are collecting a base salary and spending their days on the beach making fake calls.
So you can see that freedom is earned with responsibility, and trust only becomes possible with freedom responsibly taken and practiced.
Freedom and CRM
This freedom/responsibility balance is one of the principles upon which Pipeliner CRM is built. Pipeliner is completely flexible so that sales and company management can exactly tailor the degree of freedom with which a salesperson within the company can operate.
Pipeliner CRM is of course customized to a company’s exact sales process, through which a salesperson converts leads to opportunities, and opportunities to won deals. With Pipeliner, a company can make it possible for a sales rep to freely move an opportunity from stage to stage of the sales process–or, can make certain activities mandatory before an opportunity can be advanced. Pipeline stages, tasks, activities and individual fields can all be customized and made mandatory as needed. No other system in the world has this kind of flexibility.
When freedom is properly paired with responsibility, only then do you have a win-win situation within a company. Because then both the sales rep and the company are winning.
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