As a leader, you’re either selling or un-selling.

Leadership is about helping people express their vision for their career, plus the potential within them that they hadn’t even seen.  The same happens in selling.  Help your buyer support the vision they have for your product in their life.  That’s why leadership and sales go hand in hand.  Tune in to this episode of the Manager Mojo Podcast and listen  an insightful discussion of leadership, sales and developing people with our guest, Keith Eades.

 

TRANSCRIPT: You’re Either Selling or Un-selling Mr. Leader!

Steve:                       Welcome everyone to the Manager Mojo podcast and it is my privilege to have on the show today, Mr. Keith Eades. Keith is the founder and CEO of Sales Performance International which is headquartered in Charlotte, I believe. Isn’t that correct? Charlotte, North Carolina?

 

Keith:                        That’s correct. That’s correct.

 

Steve:                       Keith has been active in his career. He’s grown SPI into one of the largest sales and marketing improvement companies in the world. They currently do business in more  than 54 countries. He and his company have helped over a million sales and marketing professionals understand how to transition from selling products to marketing and high value solutions. He’s also the author of four books, The New Solution Selling, The Solution Selling Field Book, The Solution Centric Organization, and The Collaborative Sales. He is a 1976 graduate of Clemson University and in 2001, Clemson honored him with the Alumni Fellow Award for outstanding career accomplishments. Keith, thank you so very much for being on the show today.

 

Keith:                        Steve, you’re welcome. It’s really a privilege and an honor to be here.

 

Steve:                       Well I know we’re going to have a great time today with you sharing your wisdom for us. And as we get started, if you don’t mind, I’d like for you to share with our listeners a little bit more about Sales Performance International and what you guys do — a couple of things that you would like people to know.

 

Keith:                        Sure Steve.  Sales Performance International was founded in 1988 so we’ve been in business now for 25 years. And our sole purpose is to help drive improved business results for organizations, but specifically for sales organizations. And how we do that is through three primary vehicles. We have an assessment group that helps determine based on a set of competencies that we can link to business results, organizations, where they fit within that. That can be used for both their existing organization or for their new hires. So it’s really about helping them determine if they have the right people if you will.

 

The second big part of our business is what we call development. This is where we help define sales process, sales process models, and we link a lot of what we call intellectual property or content methodology training to sales forces globally. And the third piece is what we call our enablement group and this is a group of people that help automate sales forces around the world where they specifically link sales process and methodology into playbooks and apply that into the very CRM applications that are being used there. So our mantra is we help make sure that people have the right people, the right process and methods, and the right enablement tools to be more effective. That’s what we do in a nutshell.

 

Steve:                       Very cool, that’s a good nutshell and a great summary. I expected that from a sales professional like yourself so well done!

 

Keith:                        Good, thank you.

 

Steve:                       Well, one of the things that I’d like to start with today though is more personal.  I would like for you to share, I know that you started in sales and you had a great interest in sales but at some point, you transitioned from just selling yourself over into management. And so if you would, would you share a little bit about that story?

 

Keith:                        Sure, well Steve I think there are a lot of people in the world today when they think of becoming or wanting to be a manager, that’s kind of the dream or whatever function you start at, sales or any other functional area of the business. We tend to think we want that additional air of responsibility. I was a little bit unique in the sense that I knew very early in my life that I wanted to be in the sales profession. I had a great model in my father who started a business, ran a business, and it was very successful. And I really in many ways both admired him and wanted to emulate. But he built a company, in addition to selling things, he had to have good management skills. So I had a very, very good role model in my early primitive years.

 

So when I began my sales career, I was very successful as that individual contributor. But as most sales organizations go, what we do a lot of times with our very best sales people is that we try to promote them to management. What we’ve learned from that, what I’ve learned in many cases, is that just promoting salespeople to be managers is not always the best thing right? Because they lack the skills or they don’t have the kind of competencies that are needed to really be a good manager. But I was very fortunate in that I was working in high-tech, in the software business, where a lot of processes and methods were defined and management was one of those. So when it came my time or they felt like I was ready, I was given some good training and some good development on basic management skills that really made my transition into management, if you will, much easier.

 

Now nothing is ever perfect in my opinion in terms of—or they can’t tell you everything that’s going to happen as a manager. But certainly in my case I had some really good mentors who helped me along the way.

 

Steve:                       Well it’s very cool you were able to get a little bit of training. I’m just curious though, it’s been my experience that most managers really don’t ever get any training. They take top performing salespeople and stick them right into a management position with no training at all. Has your experience been similar to that?

 

Keith:                        Exactly and it’s not just the sales to sales management. It’s really any discipline into management. Without any question, management training and management leadership is one of the weakest links in the supply chain. When we work with our clients around the world who go to implement, whether it be sales process and methodology or automation, we work with them and we have methodologies to help them see. I’m going to say this with some reservation but it’s very factual, that the management link is the weakest link in that supply chain.

 

Why? Because they haven’t been given the tools to really be good managers. And in our case for example, to be a little bit more specific than that, if our company’s trying to transform itself or implement and they expect management to lead that. Well in many cases, the managers will take the easy road and say, “Well let’s send them to training for example,” and they’re supposed to get it. Well the reality is what we really need management to do is lead the transformation and help the people that they are managing see how to achieve that and give them the tools to do it with. Rather than, if you will, deferring that to someone else. We see management as a whole not taking full responsibility and that’s a real weak link.

 

Steve:                       Yeah, no question about it. When you don’t own the responsibility of mentoring and training your people, just expecting them to learn it on their own seems to be just a silly way to think. But yet companies are doing it all over the world.

 

Keith:                        Yeah or another example that happens with managers who are not given good models or good training.  In many cases, it happens again in many disciplines, is that they will in essence take the role or responsibility away rather than enabling the person that they need to help. They basically do it for them and that’s just as bad as well.

 

Steve:                       Oh yeah no question about it. There’s no learning whatsoever going on in that case.

 

Keith:                        Right. Right there’s no empowerment of the individual.

 

Steve:                       You know and as we’re talking about this, you and I have the benefit of having watched this and experienced it for many years. But what would you say to a young person that’s out there in the field and they’re being successful in sales and yet they also know that they have this desire to move into management from their career. How would you advise them? What would you tell them to be thinking about and doing to further their career?

 

Keith:                        Well that’s a really, really good question. I think that the number one thing, and I would say this, is that you’ve got to be true to yourself.  And even though people think they want to become managers or they want additional responsibility, some people are just really good at being an individual contributor. Now I’m not saying that you might not want to experiment with it but you’ve got to be really honest with yourself. Do I really want to lead people? Do I really want to be the person that creates the vision? Do I want to take on the responsibility? I really think that’s an important question that we have to ask ourselves as we begin to think we want to become managers.

 

I have seen people in multiple disciplines think they want it, they go for it, and then they fail miserably when they were great individual contributors.  So I think the big thing is really being honest and true to yourself. Not to say that it’s not okay to try it, but if it’s not your thing then be a good individual contributor.

 

Steve:                       There’s nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, a lot of people think they want to handle other peoples’ problems until they get in and have to deal with it. And then it’s really, really trying on them and when they quit, when they move away from that, in most organizations it’s almost impossible for that great person who was a phenomenal, individual contributor to go back into that direct sales role. So they wind up leaving the company. Have you seen the exact same thing?

 

Keith:                        Over and over and over. Even in my own company. I’ll tell you for example what we’ve seen specifically. People think they want to do something different. Had we seen it here that we thought they had that in those abilities to become that, we think we’re pretty good at promoting people, that we would’ve already done that. So sometimes when they say, “I want it or I’m going to leave,” right? “So I can go get that because I’m not getting it here.” I personally say that, “If we made a mistake, I’m sorry,” but I’ll oftentimes tell them, “We didn’t do it because we didn’t see the skills or competencies needed to be that.” We’ve had multiple people leave, go try it, they call me back and say, “Hey can I have my old job back.” And I promise you I tell them all the time more often than not, “Absolutely. If we have any opening at all, it’s yours.” Right? Because we know what they’re good at.

 

Steve:                       Right and yet so many companies don’t have that attitude where they would take those people back and they wind up basically giving great talent to their competitor.

 

Keith:                        Right.

 

Steve:                       Yeah it’s an amazing scenario. Well let’s change for a little bit. I’d like for you, if you would, tell us a little bit about your philosophy. I know you’ve written four books on solution selling and you know I grew up in a time where I really am familiar with solution selling. And yet today that’s not really the buzzword. So tell us a little bit about that.

 

Keith:                        Well first of all, thanks again.  I appreciate this question a lot. The origin of solution selling is so sound that solution, by definition, is an answer to a problem. And the philosophy behind that, if you really adopt that you know centristic kind of concept in both the company or as an individual, your job really is to help someone who has a problem and find a way of solving it. I will tell you that is age-old, that’s not new age thinking, that’s not old thinking. That’s genuinely good customer-centric thinking. Trying to help somebody solve a problem.

 

Now that problem in this case, it doesn’t mean that car’s in the ditch.  It may be that the company’s growing faster than light and they’re trying to figure out how to keep that going. So it may be that the positive side of that, that the problem is how do we take advantage of an opportunity, right? So it has kind of both a negative and a positive side of the context.

 

But from that point what we’re saying is that today, and this is while we introduce the new book called The Collaborative Sale I encourage people to pick it up by the way, is that in The Collaborative Sale, what we take a look at is the new buyer.   What we’re saying is that with new buyers today, and what statistics and our research shows, that more than 50% of most buyers are more than 50% through their buying process when they engage salespeople. So when that engagement starts, if we’re looking at it through a set of lenses like this is the way we’ve always done it, we miss the opportunity with that buyer. Right?

 

So there’s definitely new ways to look at the buyer and understand where they’re coming from and how we approach them has to be a little bit differently. I’ve got to relate one quick story from a physician just yesterday. His name is Dr. Kevin Molan here in Charlotte and he’s a podiatrist and a friend.  He called me at home last night to say, “Hey Keith, I picked up your book. I read it.” And I said, “Kevin that’s great. I didn’t realize you were interested in that sort of thing.” And he said, “Well I have a real interest in growing and learning,” and he said, “Somebody told me about the book. They told me about the new buyers.  When I read it, it became so apparent to me that when my patients come in to see me, they already have a point of view. They’ve done their homework, they’ve been online. They know almost as much about their problem as I probably will. So my approach to them now has to be different.” So I was very excited to hear the application of The Collaborative Sale right into a physician’s office.

 

Steve:                       Well you know I think that’s an awesome story myself and very related to what I see in management and leadership all the time. You know there seems to have been from forever anyway, this tension a lot of times between what people consider management in sales. And there’s so many managers that don’t really believe that they’re in sales. And yet here’s a podiatrist that’s saying, “You know what? I realize people I’m seeing are coming in with a point of view.” Sales is going on all the time isn’t it?

 

Keith:                        Totally. I say everyday whether you’re selling or un-selling, we just got to consciously make the decision.

 

Steve:                       I like that. That’s great, selling or un-selling we just have to make the decision.

 

Keith:                        Right. We’re all selling right? We’re all selling.

 

Steve:                       No question.

 

Keith:                        Can I allude to something as it relates to the management aspect here? It just seems relevant to me. You know the idea of management, and I really believe in this link to the concept of leadership because I think management and leadership go hand in hand. But one of the key aspects of leadership and/or management is the ability to help other people see things right? In other words, people without visions perish. So workers without leadership, workers without good managers, they’re not as productive. And part of what we have to do as the manager, or the leader, is help them see things they maybe couldn’t see before.

 

So both in The Collaborative Sale and in our philosophy,  we basically see the management and the leadership everyday we have to help people, right? See the situation they’re in and enhance it, right? Give them a vision of where they need to go or reengineer it if it’s going the other way. So it’s almost like making sure when a manager or leader sees a situation, he or she has three things they have to do. They have to support the vision that’s there, they have to enhance the vision that’s there, or they have to reengineer the vision that’s there. It’s just kind of simple. It’s one of those three choices that we need to make situationally based on the currents of the situation that we’re dealing with.

 

Steve:                       No question about it and that’s a great way to describe it is just to say you’ve got three choices to make. But, you know the numbers of people around the world that are unhappy in their jobs really tells us that management is not going this. They are missing this point of focusing on the other person. And I like what you’re talking about when you start saying that you’re solving a problem.  Well you can look at that in every perspective. Not just that you’re solving a problem with a sale but you’re solving a problem for the employee or yourself or the company aren’t you?

 

Keith:                        That’s right, that’s right. I’ll put a little different spin on that, the theme is the same. But I think this is true in all relationships and then I’ll relate it to the management philosophy. It sounds like this, that as a manager I’m not responsible for your happiness right? As an employee, I’m really not. I am responsible though for making an environment where you can achieve and be all that you can be. Right? So under that scenario, just like your relationship with your children or your spouse or anything else our job is to not make them happy. Our job is to put that environment around them where that person can be all that they can be and I really, really, sincerely mean that for people. I think it’s a critical element for management.

 

Steve:                       No question that the best leaders are always going to be those that are trying to create the environment consistently. And yet so many managers, they just want to—I know myself I struggled with this early on as I thought my job was to just tell everybody what to do. And I couldn’t have been any further away from the truth of what people needed. What they needed was for me to help encourage and provide a platform where they could succeed.

 

Keith:                        It’s just like any buyer, you should do that with employees right? The minute we start dictating what they want, remember this is a world where this buyer and this employee is so much more astute. They’re so much smarter, intelligent, they have a lot more experience about things. They can research lots of things. These people are informed. We have informed employees, we have informed buyers. Our job is to help them either support what their vision is, enhance it, or reengineer it right? That’s our job.

 

Steve:                       Beautifully said, I love that. You know I just would like it, if you would, to share a little bit about how you have seen the sales process change with the advent of all of the social networks today and how has that actually either made it more difficult for the sales professional or maybe even a little less difficult.

 

Keith:                        Well first of all I think it’s a fabulous environment that we have out there with social networks. I’ll take you down a little different path here. I’m not a firm believer that all industries are going to just go on social networks and sell a lot more of their stuff. We just need to be realistic about that. However in the new Collaborative Sale, we define a new sales persona that we think is emerging and very important in today’s world. And that’s this new sales persona we call a “micro marketer.”

 

Now for example statistics that will show you that most marketing departments globally generate statistically about 30% of the amount of interest or leads that the sales organization needs to actually generate the revenues or the numbers that they’re supposed to hit. So that leaves a gap of about 70%. Well where is that going to come from? Well the sales persona role that we call the micro marketer, what we’re saying is that salespeople, we want you to embrace the idea of being a micro marketer where you become a micro marketer of one. And you begin to establish, if you haven’t already, a personal brand for yourself and that you develop your own situational fluency in such a way that you have an opinion about things okay? You become a situational expert. And with that, one way then that you begin to utilize this level of expertise and knowledge that you have is through the world of social media. So that your participating in conversations in social media when the buyers are not defensive, when the buyers are truly trying to figure out without a salesperson involved in essence what they should be doing. It’s where they’re forming their opinions.

 

So whether you blog or whether you write or participate in a conversation but you share your thoughts and your feelings. You’re not trying to push a product right? But that’s a great way to utilize social media in a way that you become what we call a micro marketer which helps stimulate or generates leads for you personally and for your business.

 

Steve:                       Absolutely Keith. I totally agree with this philosophy. And you may already be aware of this but this discussion is becoming more and more prevalent. I have heard John Jantsch with Duct Tape Marketing also talk about salespeople that needed to be working on their own brand and I totally agree with that. But yet so many companies today really, they still haven’t embraced that yet. They’re still struggling with how they do that.

 

Keith:                        Right. Yeah think about this, we see companies today that will create messages, put it out on social media, and they do that and they think they’re controlling the message okay? They don’t either trust their salespeople, and they maybe shouldn’t trust their salespeople. But at the same time if you’ll embrace the philosophy that’s like a channel for them right? And so we’ve got to make sure that those people utilize it in such a way that they support, but they’re afraid they’re going to screw the message up so they don’t let them have it. Or they send the message to them and say, “Simply retweet it.” Well guess what, if all salespeople do is retweet messages, there’s no credibility built in the social network with them.

 

Steve:                       Absolutely not. No question about it. Well said, I love that.

 

Keith:                        Now think about what you’re doing right now. You’re building a personal brand about what you do, about management and leadership. And you have an opinion.  People listen to you because not only do you have an opinion but you bring other people around that do as well. Salespeople need to engage in more of this kind of activity as experts.

 

Steve:                       Absolutely. I think that too often we tend to discount the other person’s voice and instead of understanding that everybody should have a voice and they should have a say in what they believe. It makes the company better. It makes the experience for the customer better. And that ultimately is what it’s all about when you talked about solution selling.  It’s just to solve a problem.

 

Keith:                        Exactly.  The difference here though—I don’t want people to misunderstand this—this is not about getting on in the social world and talking about the product. It’s not talking about how great you are. It’s really talking about the customer, the client’s world, situations that are happening out there, problems, opportunities, issues. And what you’re saying in ways to help solve that.  It’s not pushing product.

 

Steve:                       Absolutely not. Well Keith I want to ask one other question and that’s a little bit different but it’s along the same line. And that is what advice would you give senior leaders that they struggle with trying to really interact properly with their sales forces and their sales team. What advice would you give those senior leaders to help them do a little bit better job?

 

Keith:                        Well this is going to sound really, really simplistic. That’s terrible isn’t it? When something’s simple?

 

Steve:                       Simple means I can implement it. I like that.

 

Keith:                        Right. The real simple fact is that—sales to senior leadership. So let’s talk about sales first line, sales management, executive management. Look at that as in tiers okay? What happens is many people in executive management, many of them have never been in the world of selling. So selling is still that black box out there. They don’t understand it or they don’t’ know it. And they certainly are afraid to get involved or try to over-manage it because those are the really strange ones.  You know what I mean? So they tend to leave them alone or they go out and hire some so-called great sales leader that’s supposed to know everything.

 

But let me speak to that executive leadership team.  Sales is like any other good discipline in your business — the manufacturing process, R & D, any of those things where they feel comfortable.  You can feel just as comfortable with the sales because what you can do is you can define it as a process. Sales is a series of events. It shouldn’t be random, it should be more defined. We can define those series of events, we can link best practices to that, we can assign a management system of probability to that. So when you do that, then from an executive management perspective, you can then have a dialogue with the sales organization—both the sales leaders and sellers—around where are you within the process, right? What steps? What activities? Those kinds of things. And then you have common language around the philosophy of solutions or value. So it doesn’t have to be that foreign entity that you don’t understand. The key is defining process and methodology to it so that it becomes simple.

 

Steve:                       Absolutely. Very well done, I love that. Great summary and thank you for taking on a tough question, I appreciate it.

 

Keith:                        You’re welcome.

 

Steve:                       We are pretty well at the end here and I know that our listeners are going to want to know how can they best follow you, Keith and how can they stay in touch. What recommendations would you make?

 

Keith:                        Say that again please?

 

Steve:                       How would they best follow you or get in touch with you or find your blog or whatever. Would you explain that?

 

Keith:                        Sure. Just the simple way is visit our website, that’s www.SPISales.com. That’s S-P-I-S-A-L-E-S.com. You’ll see blog information, you’ll see information about me, but more importantly our clients and the results that they’re achieving. And what we’re doing in these various disciplines to help drive results to improve sales performance.

 

Steve:                       Thank you for doing that and I know I’ll also put a link in the post so that people can easily connect to you.  Keith, I want to thank you very much today for sharing your wisdom to the Manager Mojo audience.  We thank you very much and wish you the most success on all your endeavors.

 

Keith:                        Well you’re welcome Steve. It was a great opportunity, I thank you very much and thank you for what you’re doing to help develop people throughout the world.

The key takeaway here for you as leader is that you are either selling or un-selling.