The issue of “power” was front and center with me all this weekend. With two violent winter storms converging, the coast of NH was slammed with hurricane level, sheering winds and three days of flooding rain. All of which resulted in the loss of power at the house from Thursday through Saturday.

In our very busy, maxed out lives, no one really thinks about power.  It’s just simply switch on-switch off, and that very uninteresting, never-think-about-it surge of instant electricity immediately performs to cook my toast and pulse my iPod. The question of “Who thinks about power?” is answered with “no one”…until, of course, it isn’t there, and the immediate result is no heat, no lights, no water, no nothing.

Three days without power may have been a bit inconvenient, and, yes, it frustrated me that I had to sit in the car charging my iPhone in order to get emails, but, in the scheme of things…like Haiti…this was certainly no biggie.

With this issue of the loss of power rummaging around in my mind for three days, I was constantly tugged to think about the sales managers that I’ve known who have exhibited ”power” and those that did not and what the differences have been.

Dave, one of my best heads of Sales, has considerable power.  His 90 person team knows it and respects it.  There’s a strong sense of leadership there balanced with enough fear that the troops first, “Do what Dave says to do”, and then (only the top-performers) may ask questions later.  His peers understand his power attributes and acknowledge them…assuming, of course, that he’s hitting his numbers and supporting their departments as well.  And, his boss uses that sense of power, which often comes down to personal achievement, to push, to cajole, and to stretch to even more and more performance and better and better metrics. 

All a very good definition of what constitutes “power” in an experienced sales manager.  But, this sense of exhibiting “power”, does not necessarily come with experience.  Ray, one of our better up-and-coming heads of sales, had never run sales prior to this current position which he assumed last January.  In fact, Ray had never been much of a salesguy and assumed this role as VP of Sales & Marketing as an internal battlefield promotion when the prior head of sales resigned as a result of  continuous misses to the sales forecast, to the business plan and pretty much everything else.   The difference is that the prior manager never really had much “power” at all; whereas, from Day 1, Ray has exhibited personal confidence and strong direction along with a strong mix of questioning, listening and making decisions to quickly move the ball forward.  The prior manager, a solid individual and a nice enough guy, was an excellent strategist, but too often lacked the tactical decisiveness to act which created too many strikeouts each time he went to bat.

In the case of Dave, some of his power comes from his 30 years of running successful sales organizations.  With Ray, he has the experience of the industry, albeit from the operations and customer side of the business.  But in both of these cases there’s a number of common traits that make both of these managers successful.

First, they both listen well to all sides of the puzzle whether it’s a complex sales opportunity, a personnel problem, or an overall business issue affecting the company.

Second, they are both process guys.  They are religous about their sales and marketing processes.  They are both quants and steeped in the math and the resulting metrics plus they demand adherance to the system.   They are equally religious about adherance to their CRM systems-not surprisingly, in both cases, SFDC.

Third, their personal attributes of success are measured by drive, perserverance, confidence, work ethic and strong leadership focused on making their entire teams successful.   Attributes which were bred into their behaviors decades ago and are now being exhibited in gluing together their somewhat independent salespeople into solid performing teams.

And last, they are not afraid to make decisions.  To move ahead.  To do solid planning…but just enough…and then move quickly forward to execution especially when it comes down to the 20 workdays of any given month.

Does your own head of sales, have the power to consitently lead?  What about your individual salespeople in their ability to move quickly from Disovery to Close?   The next time that you come across what you consider to be a successful sales manager, stop for a minute and think about what it is that you perceive in their skills and attributes that exhibit ”power”, or perhaps, it’s just “success”, and begin to formally define exactly what you want in your own sales leaders.

Good Selling !

Jack