Are you managing your team or leading them?

Are you managing your team or leading them? No this isn’t a case of semantics: management & leadership are two very different activities!

Managing a sales team means you are supervising their activity.

Management has you inspecting what you’ve told them you expect. Important yes BUT it is looking at the past and trying to predict the future.

If you focus on managing you are spending time:

• dictating how your inside salespeople behave (instead of understanding why they are doing what they do)
• talking about statistics like phone time & dials  (instead of helping them understand the link between behaviors and success)
• making it about what you want them to do (instead of helping them see why they want to do the activity)
• looking over their shoulder (instead of working with them to become better at what they do)

Don’t misunderstand, there is a level of ‘management’ in any sales leadership position – but what if you create an environment where the individuals on your team manage themselves? Then you can spend your time leading…

Leading an inside sales team has you providing direction & guidance.

Leadership has you starting by looking forward at what each member of your team wants to achieve. You then define what success looks like together and work toward it as a team.

When you focus on leading you are spending time:

• improving the skills inside salespeople need to be BETTER salespeople
• mentoring them on how other people have done their job and achieved success
• understanding what their goals are and working with them to get there
• coaching on the ‘inside stuff’ that is holding people on your team back

You will develop a team that believes you have their success at the heart of everything you do. They will follow you as you all walk forward down the road to improved performance and success.

Their success – becomes your success!