In this Expert Insight Interview, Nigel Green discusses what it takes to build a successful sales team. Nigel Green trains leaders to build high-performing sales teams, and he is the author of Revenue Harvest: A Sales Leader’s Almanac For Planning The Perfect Year.
This Expert Insight Interview discusses:
- What it takes to build a high-performing sales team
- Why the best sales representatives often don’t make great sales leaders
- The similarities between sales leaders and farmers
Building a Sales Team
High-performing sales teams don’t just happen on their own. They take their cues from the leader, so it is a pivotal role. One of the issues with sales leaders is that many people default into the position or are promoted into it, not because they wanted to be sales leaders, but because they were the best salesperson.
We are also very restricted in providing career paths to people, tending to focus on what the next step “should” be rather than looking at what a person is actually good at.
Great Salespeople vs. Great Sales Leaders
If you’re in sales, you’re only as good as you’re the worst person on the team. Funnily enough, the best sales representative can quickly become the worst person on the team if they are promoted into a position that they don’t belong in.
Being a great salesperson doesn’t automatically qualify someone to tell others how to do their jobs. Without a framework, process, and structure, you can’t teach, coach, or lead. This is why even the best salespeople often fail as sales leaders, dragging the entire team down with them.
Farmers and Sales Leaders
To start building a high-performing team, leaders need to recognize that hitting their numbers year in and year out will not be accomplished by some technology, fad, or gimmick. Sales leaders have a lot of uncertainty and things that they can’t control in their day-to-day.
Building a successful sales team takes structure, rigor, planning, and accountability.
Unfortunately, none of these concepts are particularly “sexy,” so many sales leaders don’t want to focus on these aspects. However, the reality is that, just like farmers, sales teams have to produce a “crop” year in and year out, and they’re faced with things that they cannot control every year, but if there’s no harvest, you can’t be a sales leader, no matter how much you pose as one.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
Comments