"The world will not belong to managers of those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders-people who not only have enormous amounts of energy, but who can energize those whom they lead."
To Jack Welch's point, any good sales manager can make the numbers dance-lots of hard work and 80 hour weeks paying attention to the activities can often change the numbers...for a short period of time.
Sales Leaders, on the other hand, are those women and those men who can create consistent change in the current course and speed of their ship. It's never easy, but it's an absolutely necessary task...and right now, at the beginning of February, it's a perfect time to make these changes since, if they are made now in Q1, they will definitely impact your 2018 results.
I had the occasion last Thursday and Friday to run a two day Leadership Summit for the 30 or so senior management of The Winn Companies. Superb company! Strong results, and an equally strong management team ! That having been said, the Winn senior management, like any strong leadership team, felt that we can always take things to the next level, which led to the planning for this summit. Taking things to the next level, is always a great motivator, and one that I am in the midst of doing myself !
Early, the next morning, I threw out the previously planned agenda, and we began the day with "Management Lessons Learned from the Commissioner". We then prioritized those as to what could we integrate into our own company with tactics and activities that would have impact in 2018. The focus was not on how to improve the top or the bottom line, but how could we take the Commissioner's ideas on accountability and leadership and provide more tools for our employees and more satisfaction for our clients.
Although what's below are just bullets of thoughts from the Commissioner that were then expanded over hours and hours the next morning, if you think about these ideas in simplistic terms of year-long strategies, and then think how they could be turned into quarterly tactics, and then bring those tactics down to the street level of monthly activities, I absolutely guarantee that, with consistent leadership, you'll be rewarded with improved performance. How do I know this? I've seen it actually work at the BPD, which is a complex organization, and this process has resulted in making Boston one of the safest cities in America.
As we left that meeting late on Friday with pages and pages of team assignments to be worked on during the next month, I, along with everyone else on the team, was highly focused and totally engaged in the mission of translating these simple truths to our own teams! Again, all fundamentals that we should think about as we kick off what will be a complex year of rapid change for our businesses.
Have a great day selling !
Derby Management...for 25 years
-Sales & Marketing Productivity experts
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-Senior Management Coaches for CEOs & VPs