I had an opportunity to attend the Selling Power Sales Leadership Conference the other day and wanted to share some of my take aways!
Note: For those of you who might think Sales Leadership doesn’t apply to sales representatives, I would invite you to think differently. Leadership is not only exercised on a personal level . . . it begins there!
Selling Power’s Founder Gerhard Gschwandtner set the tone for the conference by outlining 6 key areas that we need to focus on:
1) Innovate or Die: We need to be continually looking for better ways to serve our customers (internal and external) Castain’s spin on this: Its no longer optional. We had better be questioning our process, our strategy, the customer experience etc.
2) Join The Conversation: If there’s been one recurring theme over and over on this blog, its been for us to join the conversation. What conversation? The one that’s happening, right now that you might not be participating in because you don’t believe there’s value in Linkedin or Twitter. One thing that’s becoming abundantly clear to me is that these conversations exist whether you and I join them or not. More importantly, this isn’t about whether you and I agree with social media. Its about communicating and conversing with our prospects and clients in a manner that they have embraced.
3) Grow Faster or Get Run Over: Take a company like Dell computer which launched in 1984 and is now over 40 Billion in revenue. Dell was willing to run faster, run smarter and took the lead over many competitors who were around before them. Want to know something else? They were also willing to run faster than those eager young pups that arrived after them. Today, business is moving at the speed of light and getting run over can happen in a blink of an eye. My suggestion is that we start by challenging the status quo. Challenge the things that you find the team saying “We’ve always done it that way” and most of all . . . when we get these ideas, let’s execute faster!
4) Adopt Sales 2.0 Or Become A Victim Of Change!: Customers have more choices instantly and they have the upper hand. The customer has now, in essence become our best sales force so we need to manage the customer experience. Sales 2.0 technology can help us do that. Gerhard pointed out that smart companies are jumping all over this as evidenced by new titles popping up on Linkedin. Titles such as “Chief Listening Officer” “Chief Success Officer” etc reflect a cultural sales shift that has been long overdue in my humble opinion!
5) Manage The Customer Experience: Gerhard suggests we begin by appraising the quality of the interactions, communications, and conversations with the customer across all customer touch points. Many of you might be thinking “Already know that one Uncle Paul” Perhaps, but are we really managing the experience across ALL the touch points from the receptionist, to your online presence to the driver of the truck delivering the product. Side note: I saw something cool the other day (and I’ve heard about this in many companies) A Hilton Hotel in Philadalphia has a sign on the employee entrance that reads “Through these doors are our greatest asset . . . our employees” . . . not only is that a cool acknowledgement of their employees . . . it sets the stage for each and every one of them to become brand ambassadors. That’s where the customer experience begins . . . not the equipment in the factory, or the spreadsheet or cool executive planning session.
6) Create a Customer Centric Business: The top 3 priorities for most businesses are usually all about them and not the customer.
To give you an idea of the massive of amount of take aways I had, those are just my notes from the opening remarks!
The topics were timely, informative and delivered interactively with the audience. We discussed things like:
Sales Development
How To Use Technology To Optimize Sales Results
Leveraging Social Media/Creating Customer Communities
Continuous Learning & Sustained Coaching
Seth Godin delivered an amazing keynote and talked about the need for “tribal” leadership. All of us want to belong and instead of creating sales we should create “movements” The CMO is now “Chief Movement Officer! To me this is one of the most powerful acceleration strategies a business can embrace today. And this isn’t some bright shiny object as far as strategy. We’ve seen this in music with movements like “Dead Heads” and “The Kiss Army”, we’ve seen it with fans of Apple products and believe it or not, you have been witnessing it with my sales playbook community which is hovering 15,000 strong! Figure this one out and you smoke your competition big time!
Side note: I had an opportunity to meet and chat with Seth briefly after his speech (awesome guy by the way). Naturally, I wanted his autograph. He signed it “Ship it Paul” Which is one of Seth’s recurring messages in his work. The concept simply means . . . don’t just think of great ideas . . . Execute! How’s your “shipping department” doing these days?
Last, but not least, I found tremendous value in the side bar discussions and networking opportunities during the breaks.
These conferences are so important to our development. The best part is not just the high caliber speakers and topics . . . it’s the take aways you get from your peers in the audience expressing their opinions!
So to Selling Power Magazine and all those who made this event awesome . . . You get the Uncle Paul double rock horn seal of approval!
Join Selling Power for their Sales & Marketing 2.0 conference this November in San Francisco. Details here .
Disclaimer: From time to time I am given books to review free of charge and I’m invited to events like this one as a guest. I am under no obligation to say nice things or even say anything at all. And while we’re disclosing things, back in 1979, I tore the tag off my pillow that said “Do not remove”.
