Last updated on August 7th, 2023
Today, we’ll cover the secret habits successful sales leaders possess and how you can adopt them yourself. This article has practical tips you can apply TODAY, to begin seeing drastic improvements in your sales leadership skills.
Let’s face it: people need leaders.
Throughout history, leaders have been an integral part of outstanding achievements — whether in technology, politics, sports, or business.
When it comes to sales, leadership is mainly essential because there’s always a million things for your team to do day in and day out. Great sales leaders make certain habits consistent to help propel their sales team to new heights.
If you’re looking to get your sales leadership skills sharp as a sword, continue reading as we break down the habits you should know.
Let’s begin by outlining what sales leadership is all about.
- What is sales leadership
- Why sales leadership is crucial
- 6 Habits of sales leaders that are killing it
- Sales leadership in meetings
- Organization & tracking is a necessity to lead
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What Is Sales Leadership In A Nutshell?
The phrase “Sales Leadership” seems pretty straightforward to understand. However, the actual definition of a sales leader has more nuance than you might think…
Sales leadership is the ability to guide, motivate, improve and manage a sales team efficiently.
Great sales leaders are aware of their position and openly take responsibility for the different parts of their team’s operations and performance.
Just from this description of an effective sales leader, you can tell a few things:
- They don’t blame outside circumstances as excuses for their team’s poor performance
- They’re accountable
- They have profound knowledge of selling/the product
- They have interpersonal skills
And those are just a few takeaways.
A person can be a sales leader without actually being the sales manager.
Numerous companies appoint their best sales reps as sales leaders to help groom them into being future managers.
That brings me to my next point about the difference between sales leadership and sales management:
Sales management is about managing a sales team’s operations, implementing sales strategies, and ensuring that revenue targets are getting knocked out of the park.
Sales leadership, on the other hand, takes it a step further:
You see intangibles like empowering a team, setting a strong example, critically-thinking, and coaching reps to success.
You have many sales managers out there, but only a fraction of them are true sales leaders.
Sales managers must first see the importance of sales leadership to shift their mindset effectively.
So let’s cover that now.
Why Sales Leadership Is Significant For Your Team
Why is it significant, you ask?
Well, it all comes down to the impact that sales leadership has on a team.
The world’s top sales leaders can identify their rep’s strengths and weaknesses and guide them to improve.
Sales leaders incorporate this feedback in their team’s sales coaching program consistently, which allows reps to stay sharp along with the sales leader him/herself.
Pro Tip: Role-play with your team during morning meetings before they do deals to start them off on the right track. (We’ll cover this more later.)
Real estate mogul Grant Cardone, the founder of Cardone Capital, does this with his sales team EVERY morning and sees the difference it makes in team performance.
You should note that companies with dynamic sales coaching programs achieve 28% higher win-rates!
And:
Sales reps with 30 minutes or less of sales coaching per week receive win rates of 43%, and those that receive at least 2 hours of coaching per week have a win rate of 56%.
Numbers just don’t lie.
Contrast this with bad sales leadership, which would be a lack of sales coaching, yelling at your reps for “not performing well,” and meeting their numbers.
If you’re a sales manager, reflect on how consistently you’re coaching your team, and you might be surprised about the areas you could improve.
(There will be a whole section dedicated to the top habits of sales leaders in this article, so stay tuned.)
When a sales team is missing useful guidance, chaos ensues like an earthquake.
Reps may feel disempowered by their performance numbers and, without a strong leader, may continue to get worse.
Yikes.
A sales manager that isn’t leading well may even lack the transparency and involvement needed for the sales team’s overall success.
By transparency, I mean voicing concerns about a situation before your concern gets heavier and leads to anger.
By involvement, I mean selling in front of your reps for them to model after you and improve, sometimes known as learning through osmosis.
Overall, the company’s growth can get negatively affected by a lack of sales leadership presence.
If you’re the CEO, president, or founder of your company, be sure to look for sound sales leadership cues when hiring a sales manager, as it will directly influence the company revenue.
Never forget the quality of critical thinking, as I stated earlier.
Critical thinking plays a role in how you use the right leadership style for your sales team.
The truth is, reps respond to leadership styles differently.
Here are a few kinds of sales leadership styles:
- A Structured Style – Rigid, to the point, adhering to scripts, numbers-based, “By the book.”
- A Free-Flowing Style – Numbers are emphasized, but reps have more leeway, allows for creativity, sales fluidity, “Less strict on rules.”
- Visionary Leadership Style – Looking at your sales department’s future, growth mindset rather than what things look like now, projections, optimism.
- Mentor Leadership Style – Having a close relationship with your reps, giving ideas, hearing people out, “dissecting.”
All these styles have their pros and cons, of course; maybe you don’t fall into a specific category but a mixture of them.
Some team members may want you to be vocal about how they can improve, some may prefer action-based sales role-play, and others may prefer just watching you sell.
Be sure to mix these methods with each rep and see which one works best.
Overall, there are findings that role play is the best way for reps to get better, so later in this article, we’ll talk about the BEST time to sales role-play.
Seeing Sales Leadership As A Skill
“Sales Leader” isn’t just a title.
It’s also a skill you improve and embody.
There’s an old adage that goes, “How you do one thing is how you do everything.”
The ability to hone your leadership skills across your life, in general, will bleed into your sales leadership positively.
That means practicing your leadership skills on the weekend when you’re not “working,” which will pay off 10x in the future.
It’s all about continued learning and the honing of skills.
Here are a couple of ways you can improve your leadership skills holistically:
- Organizing major multi-day plans, fundraisers, groups, and trips outside of work.
- Taking in-depth leadership courses
- Attending multi-day leadership conferences
- Working with an experienced leadership mentor
If you pick just one of these suggestions, you’ll find yourself improving.
Improving your Emotional intelligence (Emotional Quotient – EQ ) & Intelligence Quotient (IQ) are other significant advantages when becoming an unstoppable sales leader.
EQ will help with your “soft” skills, such as gauging your sales rep’s mood, emotional state and understanding their reactions and weaknesses better.
On the other hand, IQ helps with your ability to infer and forecast your sales efforts, handle mental complexity, and recognize team performance patterns.
As you become aware of and improve your EQ and IQ, you’ll be able to help your colleagues do the same thing, which only spells G-R-O-W-T-H for your company.
There are countless resources for you to do just this, and they’re a Google search away.
The Proactive Mindset of Sales Leaders
As I just stated, the best sales leaders excel in EQ and IQ, which allows them to have a more “proactive mindset” than most individuals.
Let’s say you were a war general on a battlefield, and one of your soldiers always gave intelligent war insights and helpfully led your troops.
He always seems to think 10-steps ahead compared to the average soldier on your campaign.
Doesn’t he stand out way more as a leader?
The same thing is the case for outstanding sales leadership.
If you want to be an elite-level sales leader, you have to be proactive in conducting business.
Have a long-term vision for your team’s sales numbers and backward engineer the steps to get there.
Even if you’re not a “sales manager,” taking this initiative will stand you out like the soldier example I highlighted earlier.
With today’s crazy technology, proactive sales leaders use the BEST sales CRM to track their won/lost deals and revenue.
VipeCloud’s Sales CRM is being used by many sales leaders right now, and you can start using it today for FREE.
Sales reporting tools like this make your job easier, allowing you to prioritize tasks, stay organized, and create action plans for improvement based on the numbers.
Now that we know the right tool to use, let’s understand the proper habits.
The 6 Habits Of A Successful Sales Leader
After reading and adopting these six habits, you might not even recognize how far you’ve come.
Let’s cover these habits and why you need to adopt them today!
Habit #1: Giving & Receiving Feedback
Top sales leaders are exceptional at giving and receiving feedback from colleagues.
They are observant and use the right words to help reps and colleagues improve. They understand that feedback is an opportunity for betterment; thus, they seek it themselves.
An excellent way to get feedback on your leadership is to have your reps fill out an anonymous survey about your performance every quarter or two. They can explain what they like about your leadership style and mention any suggestions they have.
Leadership surveys will give you ideas on what to work on on your behalf.
If you’re seeing the same critique mentioned: “Jim isn’t direct enough” by reps and even your mentor, that should be something you work on.
Feedback is ESSENTIAL.
Habit #2: Empathy
Empathy is the ability to feel and understand how another person is feeling.
It doesn’t mean you have the exact same reaction as others, but you know what they’re going through.
Empathy comes easier to some than others, so be aware of how empathetic you are when dealing with customers, higher-ups, sales reps, and even yourself.
Again, this is emotional intelligence (EQ).
Empathy allows you to lead others with their best interest at heart.
Humans tend to reciprocate what is given, so others are more likely to be empathetic towards you.
This is a slightly more rare habit/trait because it’s unfortunately on the decline in today’s age.
Empathy will separate you as a leader.
Habit #3: Solid Listening Skills
Next is solid listening skills–the ability to receive and interpret the information given to you.
Great sales leaders have this skill because they are flooded with information consistently. Things like customer inquiries, product knowledge, presentations, and general communication all require a reasonable degree of listening skills.
On top of that:
Having good listening skills help you receive feedback better (as mentioned in habit #1).
Practice being present in conversations and fully allow the person speaking with you to finish their sentence and frame of thought.
Be sure to pause before responding from time to time to process what was said and think about what you’re going to say.
People will begin to enjoy speaking with you because they feel like they’re being heard. It’s important to note that almost everyone loves hearing themselves talk, so they also like someone that’s a good listener.
Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, took his company to new heights by listening to feedback.
He created the idea of a “boundaryless organization.” This meant that everyone was free to think of GE’s innovative ideas–instead of waiting for higher-ups in the bureaucracy to think of them first.
From the lowest line workers to senior managers, everyone appreciated his openness to hearing different perspectives.
By using his sharp business acumen and team ideas, GE became an extremely successful company during his tenure as CEO.
Habit #4: Sales Team Accountability
This one is major.
There is no growth in a company or organization without accountability — the ability to ensure that everyone is doing their tasks correctly and efficiently.
I covered the importance of a sales CRM to track valuable KPIs like revenue, won/lost deals, leads, and so much more. Check out our insights on setting up a sales tracking system if you are looking for details to improve accountability.
Great sales leaders hold themselves to a high standard and their team as well.
Yes, let reps know if they aren’t performing well. But also praise them when they are doing well because good performance accountability should be recognized.
Habit #5: Leading By Example
Leading by example doesn’t seem to be spoken about enough.
Sales leaders model their expectations through their actions.
An example of this would be recording your own sales call and going over it with your team.
As you go over it, dissect the good and bad, and allow your team to ask questions. By doing this, you’re making it easy for people to follow you and recognize you as a trustworthy leader who is human, just like them.
Going over your wins and mistakes also allows your feedback to hold more weight because your sales team can tangible see that you know what it takes to get better.
This is missed by many sales managers who rely on “computer training” to help their sales reps sell.
If you’re a sales rep looking to get promoted, leading by example will help you stand out from your co-workers just based on your numbers and your ability to show good sales leadership skills highlighted earlier.
Habit #6: Self-Reflection & Improvement
Last but certainly not least is critical self-reflection and improvement.
This is a top habit of sales leaders because self-reflection allows you to be aware of your leadership capabilities, and well, improvement makes you better.
Earlier I talked about how sales leadership was a skill, not just a job title or description.
Like all other skills, it requires practice and iteration:
For example, write down your strengths and weaknesses and then jot down what you can do to improve on them by next quarter.
This habit requires high degrees of self-honesty.
Before you know it, it will be a regular practice, and your ability to lead an organization reach a new level.
The Most Important Ingredient of Good Sales Leadership
Experience is a significant contributor to sales leadership success.
As you implement the right principles, you learn from mentors, conferences, and articles like this one; experience will allow you to get sharper and sharper.
You’ll know how to respond to situations like hiring reps, customer service, product demoing, training, and organizing your department.
Experience leads to wisdom because you learn to apply the right knowledge at the right time.
Wisdom is known as the “Quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgment.”
Experience is powerful in this sense because others can have the same knowledge as you, but you’ll be more impactful when you have more wisdom.
Think of wisdom as having the right tools (measuring cup, spatula, mixer) for baking a chocolate coconut cake, whereas knowledge is only having the ingredients but no tools.
The cake of the wise person and that of the knowledgeable person will come out differently.
Remember that experience only happens when you take action. There will always be lessons that you can only learn through experience.
To recap: Gain knowledge through sales leadership resources and couple that with experience and taking massive action to gain wisdom.
Wisdom allows you to know when to apply certain leadership principles at the right times.
Where Sales Leadership Meets Management: Team Meetings
One of the habits I highlighted earlier was Sales Team accountability.
Accountability is a must because it keeps everyone on the right track. Team meetings are the perfect environment for Sales team accountability.
Sure, you can have SOPs, emails, phone calls — but meetings are the real winner here.
Great sales leaders like Grant Cardone, Neil Patel, Dan Lok, Sam Ovens have leveraged sales meetings in order to improve team performance.
Team meetings allow you to role play, mention expectations, go over sales recordings, answer questions, and make holistic changes to your sales process.
It also allows you to praise your team for a job well done too! When reps feel appreciated for their efforts, the team morale goes up, and they want to continue to work well—being consistent with how you view them.
As stated earlier, team meetings are great early in the morning when everyone is fresh and ready to work.
Some companies may do them also at the end of the day.
As a sales leader, use this time to pump your team up — almost like a pep rally, to start and finish the day off strong.
Make sure the time is also efficient; you don’t want to spend 40 minutes of the day just hyping everyone up. You can segment the agenda of the meeting, so everyone knows what to expect.
67% of salespeople say that having a clear plan is critical for having a good, productive meeting.
The Bottom Line When It Comes To Impactful Sales Leadership
Let’s recap, outstanding sales leadership is all about leading your sales team to success by honing the six habits of good sales leadership:
#1: Giving and receiving feedback
#2: Empathy
#3: Good listening skills
#4: Sales Team Accountability
#5: Leading By Example
#6: Self-reflection and improvement
From there, experience plays a role in sharpening your skills—5 years, ten years, twenty years, and beyond.
It’s more than just management, but a way of thinking and being.
The best sales leaders utilize the best tools for their team’s success; it only makes sense.
That’s why they’re using VipeCloud’s top-of-the-line Sales CRM for managing clients, sales reporting, communication channels, and more.
Your next step as a sales leader starts with this. Try it today FREE for 15 days by clicking here.
Sales Leadership FAQ
Sales leadership is important for every sales organization because it helps the company generate significant revenues using tried and tested approaches. When the whole team trusts their sales leader, it promotes an efficient organizational sales structure.
A good sales leader must have personality traits like communication, compassion, and drive. They also have to be great at planning and managing a sales team, as well as strategies. Of course, the sales leader must have experience in the sales industry and follow current trends.
The main difference between sales management and sales leadership is a different kind of communication.
Sales managers consider communication to be something they must provide to their sales reps in order for them to know what to do and what not to do.
Sales leaders, on the other hand, understand that good communication is a two-way street between a manager and an employee.
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