Top 4 Sales Leadership Mindset Shifts Required to Succeed

Do You Have a Sales Leadership Mindset?
Sales leaders often attain their leadership position because they proved themselves as a top solution seller. But, as a sales leader, they need to stop selling and start helping others to succeed. We know from sales management training data that this typically requires significant sales leadership mindset shifts to get right.

Being no longer responsible for specific clients and individual sales targets; sales leaders are responsible for the success of the entire sales team. Sales leaders must be able to attract, develop, engage, and retain sales reps. who be successful. This requires building the solution selling capabilities of the team in a way that aligns with the overall sales strategy.

Top 4 Sales Leadership Mindset Shifts Required to Succeed
Here are the steps you need to follow to change your mindset from selling to coaching:

1. Put the Sales Team First
   Top sales leaders ensure that team members embrace the sales strategy and are intrinsically motivated to deliver. That means shifting your sales mindset from yourself, to your team by doing what it takes to ensure that team members reach their full potential personally and professionally.
   
   Are you ready to put the personal and professional needs of your team first?
   
2. Create Sales Clarity
   Our organizational alignment research found that strategic sales clarity accounts for 31% of the difference between high and low performing sales teams. Your team needs to know exactly what you expect of them and how their success will be measured. Otherwise, how can they be sure they are doing what you want of them?
   
   Are you being specific enough about the key sales behaviors, activities, and outcomes that you expect to execute against your sales strategy?
   
3. Build a Culture of Accountability
   Top sales leaders hold team member’s accountable to their sales plans. Work with the team to create sales plans, sales playbooks, and sales metrics that everyone feels good about. You will know you are on the right track when everyone agrees that the metrics and associated performance management systems are fair, relevant, transparent, accurate, timely, and just possible.
   
   Are you ensuring that sales team members are accountable to the defined sales processes and sales success metrics?
   
4. Treat Sales Coaching as Your Top Priority
   Sales coaching has the greatest impact on sales rep. performance. Our training measurement research found that sales reps who frequently and consistently coach their sales team achieve 4 times higher levels of sales performance. Invest in sales coaching training to ensure that sales leaders can coaching the right sales reps. in the right way.
   
   Can you accurately assess sales rep. effectiveness, follow a proven sales coaching model, and build individual development plans for your sales team?

The Bottom Line
Sales leadership mindset shifts are required for sales leaders to focus on their people and where they can help them to be the most successful. It may not be easy to resist the urge to dive in and rescue a sales rep. who is struggling, but remember that your job is not to sell but to enable others to be self-sufficient.

To learn more about sales leadership mindset shifts, download The Truth About the Biggest Sales Coaching Mistakes

Tristam Brown

Tristam Brown is a seasoned business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.