Management & Leadership

Was every penny you ever spent on Training a waste of money?

In Sales Training we are often challenged to explain the expected return on investment on the training we’re invited to deliver. It’s a fair question, but an incredibly difficult one to answer.

We could, of course, use the simplest of measures.

A simple division of the upfront investment into the results returned as an outcome of the training.

For example: taking the incremental revenue growth over an agreed period and divide that by the training investment. The hope being that a bigger number than the investment presents itself.

R: £100,000 incremental revenue shift / I: £10,000 training = 10X ROI

That’s risky though. There are no ‘silver bullets’. Instant gratification does not exist and if it did, it would be incredibly expensive to buy.

Did you know the average person makes 35,000 decisions a day?

Let’s say you enjoy 7 blissfully decision-free hours of sleep a day, that still means you are making 2,000 decisions per hour, that’s a decision every 2 seconds.

Many of those rapid-fire decisions are based on your beliefs.

10 Skills that Make the Best Sales Leaders Stand Out

Many sales leaders attempt to manage their team simply by looking at the team’s numbers.

They constantly look at how many opportunities are in the pipeline.

They track the number of appointments, proposals and, of course, the number of sales made for the month.

Then, the manager will attempt to hold their team accountable for maintaining some pre-determined level of results.

The problem is you can track numbers, but you can’t manage them.

You can observe your team’s results but, by that point, there is nothing you can do about them. Worse still, numbers can be a very poor indicator of actual growth and progress.

In these 'Business Unusual' times the spotlight has shone directly on leadership.

Expectations are high, but change has been slow.

Too many are stuck in the preceding model of leadership. You know, the top-down, silo-driven, 'command and control' mode of thinking.

It will not cut it; if in fact it ever truly did.

In the current environment leaders need to accept that the success of their teams will rely heavily on striking a truly collaborative, sharply coordinated balance between creative strategic thinking and effective implementation.

Here are 5 steps we are seeing collaborative leaders take right now.

Some might have you believe that ‘Leadership’ can be taught. That it can be learnt. 

That if you just emulate the taught characteristics and habits of Leadership, then you will become effective.

Others will have you believe that you must be ‘Born’ with it. That it is a natural trait.

Managers wear Four decidedly different hats in their Leadership role.

Supervisor | Trainer | Coach | Mentor

Distinguish the Cognitive, Attitudinal, and Behavioural aspects of effective Leadership

Any body of knowledge has three different but complimentary paths to mastery.

Leadership development is no different!

There are Cognitive aspects.

Those things you need to know in order to be a good leader.

The Attitudinal aspects.

The attitude you need to carry – or develop – in order to be a good leader.

The Behavioural aspects.

Those things you need to do in order to be a good leader.

You can’t begin to transform a team or an organisation until you’ve transformed yourself.

With that in mind, there are 7 critical Leadership principles that support great Leaders, great Careers and create great Teams.

1) Personal Power
2) Conviction
3) Charisma
4) People Skills
5) Courage
6) Ethics
7) Expertise

Truly transformational Leadership starts with you, then radiates outwards.

Let’s take a look at those 7 principles... 

Quite often as a Leader in our organisation we can face blind-spots.

These blind spots are things we are all battling at different points in time.

What is a Viable Growth Model?

Everybody wants one, right?

But, what does a viable growth model mean?

Well, a viable growth model will be different for every one of us.

What I might want as growth for my business is likely to be different to what you want as growth for your business.

The model I will share with you can be replicated regardless of the type, or size, of business that you’re in. It is called the Organizational Excellence model.

The growth model says, ‘determine where is your growth?’

• Where do you want to be in 2,3,4,5 years?
• What does that look like?
• What does the environment look like?
• Where do you want your business to be in 2,3,4,5 years?
• What do you want your business to look like?
• Where do you want to be personally, in addition to your business?

Once we have the answers to those questions, we can start to understand what growth looks like for you.