The Exceptional Sales Leader Podcast

One of the key responsibilities of a sales leader is to encourage their team to get back on track when performance starts to dip. Unfortunately many sales leaders simply look to the surface level fixes such as making more calls, attending more meetings or growing the opportunity pipeline even further. This rarely works. There can be a whole host of reasons as to why a sales person’s performa...

One of the key differentiators in modern day selling is authenticity. We know that people buy from people they know, they like and they trust. We also know that the product or service is not what the customer is looking for – they are looking for a solution to a problem. Whether you are in enterprise sales, SME sales or in fact in the start up phase of a business, authenticity is a critical...

I absolutely love the leadership philosophies of John Wooden – the most successful college basketball coach in history. Not only did he create and maintain a super successful and engaged team culture, he also became a mentor and coach to many highly successful sporting coaches and business people over his lifetime. In today’s episode, I reflect on John’s 5 keys to exceptional tea...

Despite sales people possessing incredible talent and reporting to a Sales Leader who believes in them, it is staggering to observe the number of sales people who lack confidence. A lack of confidence –  To identify tangible opportunities. To reach out to Senior Executives within their portfolio. To make new connections in a target Account. To challenge the status quo and think outside...

It is fascinating the number of sales leaders who find it very difficult to delegate. Many of them feel they can get things done quicker if they do it themselves, or it will be done more effectively, and in many cases they do not have a high level of trust and confidence in their team to get things done to the level of satisfaction required. Great sales leaders understand that a key to becoming ex...

Sales is a fascinating study in human behaviour and psychology and can often be 100% predictable. So many sales leaders and their teams get caught up in how good they think their products and services are, that they literally get drunk on their company Kool Aid, and yet wonder why their sales results are not where they could be or should be. Exceptional Sales Leaders do not – they understand...

When it comes to negotiating, many sales teams and their leaders are hell bent on jumping into the detail up front, often based on either inferred pressure or direct pressure to get the deal done. When this happens, often the deal that gets done is not as good as it could have been, and sometimes the result is no deal at all. Having worked with sales teams for many years, negotiations need not be...

If you have been in sales for any length of time, you would have come across the slick sales person and sales leader – constantly operating with a sense of urgency and focusing on closing, closing, closing. Whilst they are hungry to get the deals done, they also have more of a short term focus, almost instant gratification. If the deal can’t be closed today, it won’t be closed at all –...

When it comes to leadership there are many theories and many perspectives. A lot of people like focusing their attention on leadership strategies, emotional intelligence, building trust, coaching and mentoring, to name a few. Unfortunately not enough leaders focus their attention on identifying and then demonstrating core characteristics of leadership, and yet wonder why they are not achieving the...

Many sales leaders, when they transition from individual contributor to sales leader, continue the same behaviours they demonstrated as a sales person. They love the hunt and get excited by the prospect of winning the deal. Very often this can lead to disengagement & de-positioning of the sales team.  When it comes to leading your team, do you find yourself solving the team’s problems, be...

One of the biggest principles of leadership is trust – without it, it is impossible to lead and achieve exceptional results. In today’s episode I delve into an element of trust, reliability, and share some insights on personal branding and trust when reliability is not up to the mark. It is from personal experience, and goes along way to answering the question in the title of the episo...

Over the last week, we have seen a number of high profile sportspeople getting themselves into the spotlight, many of them for the wrong reasons. With a high profile comes big responsibility and unfortunately a few of them will look back on the last week with a level of regret. Many people look to these sportspeople to role model great behaviours all the time and when they don’t, the ‘knives’ come...

A key question that sales leaders and their teams often overlook to ask is ‘What makes their customers attractive?’. On the surface this may sound like an obvious question & I often hear sales leaders saying things like ‘we have a great relationship’ or ‘this customer is always happy to attend events’. We need to go deeper. We need to plan upfront and really...

Last week I spoke about the importance of understanding key stakeholders within your customer’s organisation, as part of your Account Plan, so that we can identify the formal hierarchy, as well as the informal decision & influencing hierarchy. Today, I cover the importance of gaining a deeper understanding of your customer’s business by looking at your customer through 4 different...

Coaching for many sales leaders is a real challenge – predominantly because either they do not know how to effectively coach, or do not have access to a simple structure to follow. For sales leaders who are dedicated to driving exceptional performance with their team, coaching is non-negotiable and a priority. And utilising a simple yet powerful coaching model only enhances their ability to...

In looking at what drives outstanding sales performance, irrespective of industry, it is very easy to look at the surface level metrics, such as conversion rates, sales numbers, even the quality and experience of the sales executives. Whilst these metrics may be legitimate indicators of performance, we can often ignore  key triggers that enable sales leaders to unleash the potential of their sales...

In working with sales leaders and their teams, I’m amazed at how many leave their sales success to chance. Whilst some find themselves catching lightning in a bottle, where they come across a customer just at the right moment, and in the right step in the buying process, the vast majority do not. In selling, especially strategic selling, it is crucial that we plan, and not just a selling str...

If there is one certainty in leadership it is that change is inevitable and will only continue to accelerate, and as leaders, it’s critical that we understand change and continue to adapt to it. A key element of this is understanding and becoming intentional around our leadership shadow, essentially the impressions we are creating every single day. Is our shadow a shallow one, or are we cast...

When the results are flowing, and it feels like everything we touch is turning to gold, sales and sales leadership is super exciting. It can often create a feeling that the results will simply continue, and that we are unstoppable. This can create a false sense of security. And this can lead to a drop off in discretionary effort – it only takes a few percentage points in reduced application...

As a leader, you have many levers to pull and buttons to push in order to drive sustainable and exceptional performance. A key element of this is building leadership awareness, being conscious of your own strengths and blind spots, as well as being conscious of the teams key characteristics, strengths and blind spots, so that you can utilise these for best advantage to drive the team forward. In t...

Not sure about you, but I often found myself and my team being the ‘catch all’ in business, being asked to undertake activities that were not directly linked to driving positive customer revenue, but because we ‘owned’ the customer relationship, the business thought it appropriate to load up the responsibility. This can be not only frustrating, it can also lead to business...

One of the key principles to understand as a leader is this – your team is and always will be a reflection of you. It is therefore so important to become the role model that your team requires and demonstrate the behaviours that you would like to see play out in your team. Which begs the question – Are you a glass half full leader, or a glass half empty leader? The answer to that quest...

Sales Leaders and their teams the world over are constantly searching for the secret elixir that will differentiate themselves, their products and services, from the competition. Many of them look at the product and service space and try to create tangible differentiation in terms of features and benefits. Others perhaps focus on post sales implementation and relationships to separate themselves....

If you analyse every successful person, whether they be in sport, business, and especially sales, every single one of them has at least one mentor. They recognise that in order to achieve great things, they cannot do it alone, so they consciously choose to sit on the shoulders of giants. Navid Momeni is a perfect example of this. Having been identified as a ‘great salesman’ at the age...

I absolutely love community sport and I have the privilege of overseeing the female AFL football program for 2 clubs here in Gisborne- our Junior & Senior club. We are 2 weeks into the season and already the girls are finding the competition significantly harder compared to last season. The reason being is that, as a club, we decided to move into a different league, where the standard is much...