What is a Sales Leader? A Guide to Successful Leadership in Sales

Every second person on LinkedIn has a view on Sales Leadership. You can even look up “What are the key elements of Sales Leadership?” in an AI engine. Most of the major CRM providers also have plenty of information on “Being a Sales Leader”.

Sales Leader Meaning: How the Role Has Evolved

The role has changed, and it continues to evolve. In the past, the traditional employment havens of sales training (like IBM) invested in building sales team from trained engineers.  This is becoming rarer as companies look to hire rather than train in the sales arena. Hence a lot of sales training companies out there.

When it comes to Sales Leadership, there is far less available training for this role, and most companies target a new hire, or promote from within the sales team and then provide generic leadership training.

Sales Leader Definition: Traits That Signal Future Leadership

If you are going to promote from within, before you start, there are a few key indicators in the sales rep marked for future Sales Leadership success.

1. The candidate should be recognised as a great sales rep – performance does not always have to be number 1, but they should be consistently in the top 5% of performers. It is best if they are pushed up to the role from their peers, rather than plucked by the execs from above. That is, they should be recognised by the sales team as one of, if not their very best.
2. They must live the company values and promote a positive culture. You already know the issue with a bad culture so don’t compromise culture over performance for you Sales Leader.
3. They must be willing to learn. Being the best sales rep is often due to singlemindedness on hitting their own target. Nothing else matters. Being a great sales leader is about everyone in your team hitting their targets and your success is tied to the performance of the team, not you as an individual. Sales Leadership is far more of a giving role, giving of yourself to others.

As a newly promoted Sales Leader, now responsible for the whole team’s performance, you need to shift your focus immediately from you to them, from individual contribution to team success.

The Core Pillars of Successful Sales Leadership

The pillars of Sales Leadership that the founders of Sales Director Central have used to drive their own success, and now the success of over 100 sales leaders across our client base, are listed below.

Generosity – the Sales Leadership role is successful based on the success of the team as a whole, which itself is based on the success of each individual team member. There is a mentoring role with each salesperson which requires a generosity of time and energy to help ensure their success. It is a real investment in someone else that is very different to the direct sales rep role.

Structure – Sales Leadership success is not a fluke, it is not hoped for, it is planned and structured. The idiosyncrasies of each team member must be channelled through a proven sales framework to enable you to manage the team, manage your time and drive predictable sustainable results. We use PAMICE/Value as the sales framework for all our clients. It has been developed over thousands of sales meetings, hundreds of sales reps managed, thousands of proposals, hundreds of sales plans…

Customer – Sales Leadership does not take your focus away from the customer. You’ll have to become more adept at getting to the customer truth (not an internal truth we like to believe about a deal) and separate facts from opinions. The sales framework will provide many opportunities over the deal cycle to learn about the facts and it is useful for keeping the customer at the heart of internal discussions about a deal.

Building the Next Generation of Sales Leaders

In summary, the Sales Rep 🡪 Sales Leader journey is an exciting one. Business owners and Founders are encouraged to make that decision to promote from within. Make sure you provide the new Sales Leader with support, with an experienced Sales Leadership mentor and a Sales Framework to guide their progress and growth.

When in doubt, it helps to defer to experts in Sales and Sales Leadership, such as Sales Director Central. Professional Sales Leadership development services provide structured and proven approaches to improving sales management. To get on the right track, consider reaching out to Sales Director Central out for a consultation, or access to their Sales Leadership resources.