Leadership seems like a simple concept, but it frequently perplexes us.
Many of us confuse the concept of leadership with the role of management, while the two are completely distinct. Leadership is often thought of as a person’s rank or the seniority of someone’s role in an organization, but that is really just management. To make things more confusing, many people define leaders as those who possess charisma, make powerful speeches and have personal attributes such as charm.
But none of these definitions really gets to the point. Perhaps my favorite definition of leadership comes from Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because HE wants to do it.” Another great definition comes from Peter Drucker, the dean of modern management, who stated: “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes.” Sales leadership is similarly about getting the sales team to achieve results (to Drucker’s point) by leading the team in a way that THEY want to follow and not because they are told to do so (to Eisenhower’s point).
Leaders Inspire, Managers Improve
Sales leadership is very different from sales management. Management is more about setting a vision and direction and — ultimately –about the entire sales organization genuinely wanting to follow their leader to success. In this sense, sales leadership is more strategic and comes as a result of a sales leader setting the vision and strategy, as well as about defining the culture of the sales organization. This comes as a result of setting goals, objectives and top priorities for the sales organization and then empowering the sales managers and sales reps to succeed. Sales leaders do this by creating the organization’s Sales Strategy. They also author the Annual Sales Plan. The sales leader defines and communicates the Sales Process and the Sales Effectiveness Drivers. They author the Sales Playbook where they communicate the Vision, Strategy, Culture, Sales Process, Sales Effectiveness Drivers and also the tactical Sales System which the sales team must use (and must be trained on consistently). Then the sales leader empowers their sales managers to drive the sales team to succeed. As a result, the Sales Leader is the person who leads the sales organization to generate predictable and repeatable revenue for the company.
There is one last critical point that must be made — today’s top sale leader have a common denominator: they are data-driven. For the sales strategy to be effective and for the sales leader to lead the sales team in the right direction, they must be analytical and thus make decision based on real data — not just on gut instinct.
The Value of a Sales Leader
Everyone wants to follow a true Sales Leader. The sales team wants to follow him or her because THEY want to and because they know that this will bring about a positive crhange, both to the organization and to themselves. There are few organizations today that have sufficient Sales Leadership. Many companies have good sales managers, but they don’t always have powerful sales leaders. As I wrote in a post about sales management, it is much more about day-to-day execution and about coaching their sales teams to help them sell more effectively. Also, Ken Thoreson, a renowned sales management expert, defined this difference between a sales leader and a sales manager in Sales Management Interview with Ken Thoreson this Expert Series interview. It’s worth noting that every sales manager has an opportunity to become a leader and will thus bring about a positive change to the organization and to themselves.
Here are some of my favorite leadership quotes to further clarify the meaning of leadership and hopefully inspire sales managers to strive to be leaders:
Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal. —Vince Lombardi
The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born – that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born. —Warren Bennis
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. — Jack Welch
A leader is best when people barely know he exists – when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. — Lao Tzu
The supreme quality of leadership is integrity. – Dwight Eisenhower
You don’t lead by hitting people over the head — that’s assault, not leadership. – Dwight Eisenhower
A leader is a dealer in hope. — Napoleon Bonaparte
My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence. — General Montgomery
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. — John Maxwell
A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit. — John Maxwell
Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations. — Peter Drucker
You manage things; you lead people. — Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out. — Stephen Covey
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand. — General Colin Powell
Share some of your favorite and most inspirational leadership quotes below.
