Hey, what’s up? I’m Sam Taggart, your sales expert. I’m gonna dive into some leadership training. What are the five main mistakes people make as leaders that actually fail their sales teams? Now, I have a ton of free content on leadership and recruiting and training that you can have access to just by clicking the link. I’d love to give you more.
They Don’t Listen
I’m gonna dive right in. The first mistake is they don’t listen. People in this leadership position tend to be the ones that just preach. They’re like, look, you should do this. You should do this. You should do this. Instead of making an agreement, they set the expectations. It’s better to create an agreement with people and say, tell me where you are. Where could we get you? What can you agree with? Where can I help you? Then let’s come up with an agreement of how I can push and motivate you to take it to the next level. But, until you listen to your sales rep, you’re never going to be able to actually impact that individual. They’re now feeling like an employee. They’re feeling like a peon in your game of do this, do this, do this. You’re now the dictator. Never become the dictator. Be somebody that’s willing to listen with them and figure out what their needs and wants are, so that you can cater your program to them.
They Don’t Cater
That leads me to the second one. They don’t cater. What I mean by that is simply many leaders think a blanket approach is going to really help their salespeople. The reality is this guy might be really motivated with money. This guy could care less and he’s like, I just need enough to survive. But, he’s so motivated by travel. This guy’s motivated by little gadgets and gizmos. The reality is every one of your sales reps have different hot buttons to press on. They also have different dopamine hits. The powerful leaders that really do well in this business are ones that know how to play the dopamine hits. What I mean by that is they get them addicted to success of recognition. When many leaders don’t cater this recognition and praise to what people are seeking, they just say, oh, I think everybody’s going to be stoked with this thousand dollars incentive. I was out in Florida last week with a guy. He’s like, Hey, the most core group gets a thousand dollars this week or this weekend. I’m sitting there. I’m like, well, that was really cool, but you might have just wasted your thousand dollars if you would’ve set it up the right way. If he had catered it a little bit more to our specific competition.If he had catered it to the specific needs and wants of what people are asking for and he actually understood them, he might have only had to give out $300. They would’ve been just as excited, just as jacked. It would’ve gone a lot further than you throwing out a thousand dollars incentive. Make sure to cater the program, cater the incentives, cater the dopamine hits. Cater all the rewards to who you’re actually serving. Some people might love a big company trip and other people are like, I hate traveling. I just really want time off or whatever that is.
They Don’t Empathize
Now, the third one is they don’t empathize. They don’t ever put themself back to when they were a rookie. We probably have some tenure here, right? We spent time in the trenches. We were really bad, but we hustled our butts off and we got to where we’re at now. Sometimes we fail to remember our first week, our first month, our first year. We say, oh, back when I was doing this we actually had to knock uphill both ways. We try to almost like put ourselves here and they’re still there. We fail to realize these guys are struggling. It’s a new muscle that they’ve never used. It is new content. It is a new product. This is new everything to them. It is a new language. If I asked you right now to go speak Chinese, you’d be like, uh, me? How? That’s as far as you get and I would have to empathize with you and be like, dude, when I learned a new language, I remember my first time in making some dumb mistakes, saying some dumb things to people and telling people that they were fat when I meant to say something else. I now can empathize with you. I get it. It’s tough. But, with time, consistency, practice, and training, you’ll get there. Oftentimes we, you know, our sales reps are actually going to look up to us and think, oh man, that guy’s a dick because he’s, doesn’t get what I get. But, in the reality, we always start somewhere. Just realize that.
They Don’t Lead From The Front
The fourth one is, they don’t lead from the front. What I mean by this is, I train hundreds of companies. I get train companies and consult them. I see the owners. A lot of times, this organization that maybe has five, ten sales reps and the owners are sitting there going well, I’m on my throne. They want their peons to go out and hunt for them, bring them back food. They want to sit there fat and happy in today’s society. People want to see the leader actually leading from the front. I promise you. I had a client up in Chicago and it was really interesting because I did a two week follow up after our initial consulting visit. I simply looked at him and I said, Hey, are you still out there hustling? How’s the team going? He’s like, no, I’m trying to implement all these things. Our team’s actually dipped after you’ve come out. I go, remember what I said, your job is to duplicate yourself. You do this by leading from the front, you can delegate all the other tedious stuff like organizing content, print, you know, some delegating ops stuff. I’m like, if you’re truly wanting to be a sales leader, you’ve got to delegate the stuff that’s tedious and realize your money maker is duplicating yourself. You can only do that by leading from the front. At one point, maybe when you’ve got a 1000 guys or 800 sales guys under you, maybe you found yourself work your way out of the guy that’s actually leading from the front. You have an individual that’s competent to do that. But, until you have that, the biggest mistake is people try to get themselves out from the field, instead of diving deeper into it, leading from the trenches.
They Don’t Hold Anyone Accountable
Number five is they don’t hold them accountable. So, what I mean by that is leaders just think that they can just send them out in the field or send them in the trenches and they’re just going to somehow magically be dialed in with their goals and know their scorecards and know their KPIs and prove themselves. The reality is, in today’s society, they need a leader. That’s saying, look, what’s your goal? I’m gonna be with you every day, every week, every month, whatever it takes to make sure you hit your goal. I’m willing to call you out because, I care about you. When you’re not on track, many leaders don’t even know their reps aren’t on track for their goal. They send them out there and they don’t pay attention. They’re so busy doing so much other stuff.
In order to hold people accountable, you have to have a scorecard. Whether that’s a numbers board in your office, whether that’s a CRM, whether that’s a dashboard, you have to have some way to keep score. That rep has to be super visible to that information. You have to be there and you have to be clear on what people are trying to accomplish. Now, if you’re a good leader, you’re able to say, stay on the path, stay consistent, cause you’re falling back. I’m going to inspire you to actually go and hit your numbers. Right? The biggest thing with holding people accountable is saying I’m on your team. Many people, when they are holding reps accountable, a big mistake that leaders make is they feel like they’re on a different team. He’s thinking, stop bugging me about my numbers.
If they feel that you’re sitting there cracking a whip and you’re on the opposite team, they’re not going to be that motivated by their goals and numbers. You’re actually demotivating them. You want to say, look, what’s your goals. I’m listening to you. I’m catering and I’m going to be there on your team. Do I have permission to hold you accountable to that? Because, I care about you and I want you to succeed. Those are some really powerful leadership techniques.
Let me recap. They don’t listen. They don’t cater. They don’t empathize. They don’t lead from the front and they don’t hold their people accountable. So, if you want to be a great leader, here are the things where most leaders make mistakes. Just don’t do these. I have a ton of free content on leadership. Just click this link. If you want to schedule a demo and really deep dive into the techniques of how to have coaching conversations, how to have recruiting conversations, how to inspire, how to motivate, but the nuts and bolts, we have all that on an online university. Click for a free demo and we can schedule a time to go through some of the content that we have. Love to see you. Hope you like this video and continue watching more. Go ahead and share this stuff.
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