Leadership styles that transform sales teams

Leadership style is easy to talk about and surprisingly hard to live out when targets are tight, deals are complex and your team is watching your every move. We take a clear, practical look at common leadership styles and what they mean day to day in sales leadership: authoritative direction when you need a shared vision, coaching when you want people to grow, and the moments where a firm decision matters more than endless consensus.

We also get into the commercial reality that sits underneath “great selling”. If your team controls pricing, they need to understand margin, costs and profitability, otherwise you can win business that actually loses money. From setting expectations on discounting to reviewing the health of deals, we talk about what a good leader pays attention to and what a weak leader often misses.

Finally, we tackle the people side: empowerment, trust and the fine line between supporting someone and micromanaging them. You’ll hear a simple post-call review approach that builds confidence instead of fear, plus ways to balance team development with performance pressure so the business becomes sustainable, not just busy.

If you found this useful, subscribe for more on leadership and sales management, share the episode with someone stepping into management, and leave a review with the leadership style you’re trying to strengthen next.

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Transcript

Why Leadership Style Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

As I'm talking about leadership in this series of podcasts, I thought it'd be good to look at different leadership styles. Now, this might be something that you've thought about, it might be something you haven't thought about. If you are going for interviews in a leadership role, you may well be asked to describe your leadership style. And as usual, I do a bit of research on the web before I do these things, and it gives me ideas as well about what to talk about. And one of the um an article I found online talked about different leadership styles. So I thought it was worth first of all talking through them, maybe to give you an idea where you fit or how you see yourself fitting, and perhaps as a comparison, finding out how the people that you lead, how they see your style, if that's uh a conversation you're able to have with some or all of them. Uh, because it's always very helpful to know how you sit and how effective you are. And I also believe in everything we do, um the best people, in my opinion, are the people who are always learning, always trying to improve. And one of the ways to improve is to recognize where we might be weak or not as effective as perhaps we think we are. So I thought it was definitely worth looking at these leadership styles, maybe to put some granularity in it, if you like. Uh, look at different ways that people lead, and for you to maybe look at which styles you have. And the point about this is that most leaders will have more than one style. We uh we will generally do a blend, I guess not everybody, but most people will will be a blend of different styles. And it may be that we use different styles in different situations. So the first one I'm going to talk about is authoritative, and uh that's basically designed

Authoritative Leadership And Clear Targets

SPEAKER_00 1:58

as mobilizing towards a particular vision. So if you're running a group, and and uh in this series, because it's associated with my sales training course, I'm particularly look particularly looking at this uh with regard to sales leadership. Often when you're leading a sales team, one of the very clear visions that you have, one of the very clear goals you have is a particular revenue target that you need to hit um uh in terms of sales as a group. And there may also be a profitability target associated with that, depending on exactly how you manage that aspect with your sales team. So some companies I'd worked for in my uh career, uh I would be given a price list. I had no idea what the margins were, I was just given a price list, maybe the authority to discount to a certain percentage level. And beyond that, I would need to then go to my sales manager to get authorization. But I didn't know how profitable those sales were. So that's how some companies like to work it. Other companies I've worked at, I've been giving uh been given a list price, basically, which would essentially be our buy price. This is more the case when I was working for a distributor. So we would have a buy price from our supplier, and we would then we would then put up create our own pricing basically for more or less every deal uh to be competitive, but also to make sure that that deal was profitable. So what that amounted to in terms of a percentage would normally work in the percentage. So this is probably not relevant to what you do because I don't know what you're doing, but just to give you an idea, where I was selling um relatively high value equipment, so let's say um $30,000 to $50,000 to $100,000 per item, I'd really be looking at around a 33% margin where possible. So I'd be marking up to generate that level of margin, and that gave us as a business good profitability. So that was sort of the target. So we were coached at least as to that degree as salespeople, and that would be as a sales manager, I'd be I would be providing that guidance to the sales team that that's the kind of margin to go for. In other areas where it was more consumables, we might be looking at 12 to 15 percent, and that might be more competitive, so we had to work on thinner margins. So coming back to the leadership style, though, and this, as you'll see, will become part of other leadership styles too. But when you're looking at the authoritative style, you're heading towards a particular vision, so that is a particular goal. And one of the things I like about that is that it's very easy to see whether or not you're on track, whether or not you're likely to hit that goal. And in the environments I worked in, I like to have everybody together once a month. It might not be physical, you might do Zoom calls because I might have salespeople in another country, for example. And not only was it not always uh practical to fly them to head office once a month, but honestly, it probably wasn't that desirable either because you, uh, depending on where they were, you'd be disrupting their activities for at least a few days, plus home life, plus everything else. So, although it's good to get together once or twice a year, which was something I'd normally aim for, I don't see it as necessarily something that's desirable to do every month, but you would obviously need to make that call yourself. So authoritative, moving towards a vision, moving towards a goal. The next one I have here is coaching, and this also that leadership style falls

Coaching Your Team For The Future

SPEAKER_00 6:01

into the kind of example I was talking about there with how do you set your pricing if you're in an environment where the salesperson needs to set pricing. And um, in fact, I saw in one company somebody I was working with who wasn't reporting to me for this particular uh group of activities, but he started to get a reputation uh for making his margins too low, and his manager was not tracking it to make sure that what he was offering, the offer price he was putting out there, was actually good for the business. And in several of his sales, he won the business, but it actually cost the company money. So these are things where, as a leader, and there are good leaders and there are bad leaders. This was an example of a bad leader who was letting this guy do these quotes without looking at all of the costs associated, and we would come back, um, or the business would come back at the end of the uh the deal at a loss. Uh, you've got to make sure your people understand the business aspects of what they're doing uh if you're in that sort of an environment. So that's one aspect of coaching. Another thing I like to do was to get a feel for where everybody was at in terms of how they were selling, what they were comfortable with, what they weren't comfortable with. Now, um, just again, speaking from my own experience as a sales manager, I recognized that not all salespeople like to have their manager come out with them to visit clients, uh, but they kind of got to get over it. Uh, because that really it needs to be seen. You if you're in that kind of situation as a leader, as a sales manager, or whatever, however, you you're leading your team, that needs to be seen as something that's of benefit. And frankly, when I was a salesperson, sales engineer earlier on in my career, I would tend to take my manager to the either the tricky customers, um, partly really for two reasons. One is if it did start to get bogged down into areas that I wasn't authorized to make decisions on, then I had somebody with me who could do that. But also it allowed me to see him in this case in action with what to me was a difficult client because I would do everything I could think of, but if I was still struggling a little bit, and on occasion I would ask my manager to come in with me if I was in that situation, because I wanted to learn, I wanted to get things resolved, I wanted to get the business done, uh, but also I wanted to learn and find other ways of dealing with situations that I, in that instance, was struggling with. So, again, as a leader, when your style of leadership includes coaching, that's where you need to be available. You're you're there to develop your team for the future. And this is one way it's uh defined a particular definition for a coaching style of leadership is to develop people for the future. Now, there are definitely a fair number of managers actually I've worked for over my career who were quite um, let's say, intimidated by the potential of the people under them. Um another way of saying that is that they felt challenged by the people below them and they would try to keep them um under control, if you like, but limit them so that they became less a challenge to them. Now, that to me is a really good definition of a weak leader. That's not a leader, in my opinion, that's simply a manager who is managing processes and not a particularly good one at that. So one of the definitions I've seen is a good of a good leader is somebody who creates more leaders. That's really what we want to be thinking of. So hopefully you're not in that position where you're feeling a little bit threatened by your people. And um, if you are, well, that's a whole other conversation, really, I guess. But uh, one of the things I like to say to my salespeople as a as a sales manager, uh, was that my intention was to be the worst salesperson in that group. And what I meant by that was that my intention was to teach those people everything I could teach them based on my experience, my knowledge, the years I had in sales, and so that they were at that point on an equal level to me. We could, if we were up against one another, that one wasn't likely to outsell the other. But if they added their twists, their personality, things that they'd learnt, what I could teach them, then they would move up and be the better salesperson. And if that sounds strange to you, well, the reason that I'm happy to do that is I was pretty confident I was still the better leader. And if I wasn't, well, you know, these people need to come through anyway. And I also feel it's one of the responsibilities we have if we are in that, let's say, more experienced group, maybe the old maybe older than the people that we're managing. But I believe quite strongly that is something that we need to do to keep these people developing. It also means being pragmatic from a business point of view. If something was to happen to me as a leader, uh the business could go on. That group that I was running could continue. And I was definitely on the lookout for people who were obvious candidates for a more senior role, and I would develop them into that role. And um, strangely enough, in one company, uh, the person that I coached into that role and actually promoted into that role was one of the younger people in the group. Uh, but he definitely had the ability, and um he was in a position where everyone was basically told if they needed a decision on something that they weren't authorized to make and they couldn't get hold of me, then to contact this guy and he would make a decision. And then the conversation I had with him was simply to say, look, you know, do your best. You might get it right, you might get it wrong. The the truth is you're likely to get it wrong at some point, maybe at several points. And if that's the case, what we'll do, we'll take the decision apart. I'm not going to take you apart because this is how we grow. But I think empowerment is really important in your inner leadership position. People need to feel empowered, they need to feel heard. So coaching is an important one. Um, coercive or maybe even commanding might be another description of another leadership style, and that's demanding compliance.

Commanding Versus Democratic Decisions

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Now, um, yeah, to me, that's something that is certainly less a part of how I choose to lead and manage. However, while I'll and I'll talk about um another couple in a moment that that kind of tie into this. So while I will listen to everybody and make sure they feel heard, where there needs to be absolute clarity is that there is one leader, and I will make the final decision. The buck stops with me, it's my decision, I'll own it. Um, but um I think that's very important. So it needs to be clear who is in command, um, who is leading the show, and um I think the danger with with um being too commanding is that you can kind of run rush over everybody, not listen to them, and that's where people don't feel heard, and this is where you start to get problems with people um either undermining what's going on in in some form or simply going. Probably the better ones would just leave because it's not a healthy environment for them. Um, democracy or democratic style of uh leadership is um one of consensus, so that's one of the options I was alluding to there, although having uh more of a democratic style of leadership or or way of dealing with people can be beneficial. There needs to be a clear leader, I think that's really important. Uh pace sent pace setting is another one. Uh, demanding excellence and self-direction. So, what you're doing with pace setting, or at least this is my understanding

Pace Setting And Leading From Front

SPEAKER_00 14:06

of that method, is to really push people to go for it, but that's through motivation. And I think what a big part of motivation is leading from the front. So it's all very well telling people they need to make a certain number of calls a day or a certain revenue every month or whatever it is. But if you're not willing to go out and do the same and demonstrate that you are absolutely capable of doing that too, demonstrate that it is achievable, then you're likely to come unstuck a little bit. So I think leading from the front is a good example. It's not always practical to do that because uh something I found as a sales manager was um in um I'd normally have a target, but in the end I dropped that because what I was finding was that I was spending a lot of time developing the team I had, and that gave me less time to work on the um opportunities that I had and the the target that I'd set myself, and that meant that I was tending to drop behind targets. So the only the only way to handle that was to step back from my team and just really focus hard on getting my deals in, but there's it's about finding the balance that's needed, uh, how much time do you need to spend with people, what what's the right amount of time when you're developing them, and and these maybe well be questions that you're asking. And I think it gum it does very much come down to where everybody's at. I definitely want to coach potential. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time with someone who's not gonna cut it. So I'm not talking about spending endless hours and essentially doing somebody else's job for them. Uh, that's not a positive uh thing to do, and not something I would encourage, but um you do need to make sure that people have the time that they require in order to build up their own confidence, recognize they could do it, have a place where they can ask questions if they're struggling with something. You ideally want a manager you can go to or a leader you can go to, rather than feeling that if you put your hand up, or if they put their hand up and say this isn't going well, they're going to get torn apart and made a fool of and maybe lose their job, all this kind of stuff. So I think that is important. Then the final one is affiliative, which is building emotional bonds. So again, I

Affiliative Leadership And Team Bonds

SPEAKER_00 16:20

do believe in having that kind of a structure within a team. I do like team building in some form. Uh, I think some of the team building activities, you know, you need to know your group. Some of them really don't work, they they become a bit silly, but there definitely needs to be an opportunity to bond that people feel they can ask one another for support. It's not all about you as the leader and the manager about who's talking to who, but what you are doing is creating an environment uh for those people to work in. Now, that environment will either be supportive or they will feel under a lot of pressure all the time. And look, people need a certain amount of pressure. I absolutely go along with that, but I've certainly worked for sales managers who were very bad. Um, in fact, one guy even told the internal salespeople not to tell salespeople when they'd had an order come in unless they specifically asked about it, which to me was just ridiculous. But there you go. So they're the the groups that um the the types of leadership or an example of types of leadership, and you have your might have your own, or there might be another style you can think of that I haven't covered. All of that is good, but I think the the important thing, what it really comes down to is what kind of a blend of those different style alternatives uh are appropriate for the environment you're in, uh the business you're in, the type of salespeople that you have, how experienced they are, um what they need individually in terms of support and training and coaching. So all of those are things that you'll need to make a decision on. Um I think empowerment, I've spoken about that, it's really important. Uh the other, the final thing I wanted to just talk about is um a mistake that I think a lot of, and I made this mistake too. So um I'm not standing here saying that I've been perfect because I definitely haven't. And in fact, I've learned more by

Avoiding Micromanagement With Better Reviews

SPEAKER_00 18:21

messing things up, although I try to minimize that. But um certainly people who are new to sales management, or if you're new to leadership, one of the dangers is to micromanage people. And again, just flip things around about how would you feel in their shoes if your your your manager, your leader is micromanaging everything you do, you don't feel supportive, uh supported, you don't feel trusted, you're definitely not empowered. I mean, this is not a good environment to be in. So if you are somebody who's quite new to all of this, in a management position, uh be very conscious of not micromanaging people. Let people um do their thing, ask them about what they're having, you know, maybe where they would like some sport or some training or that kind of thing. I'm a big believer in having regular reviews with people, uh, maybe formal reviews every once, twice a year. But uh one of the things I would always do was spend time with each of my salespeople in their area, uh, partly because it was an opportunity to meet the clients, get some sense of the potential business in that area and with that customer group. Um, and that was looking forward because I always had always had an eye on growing the business. But it was also an opportunity to just sit down with them for over a course of might be two or three days, sit and have a cup of coffee after each call, chat about how the call went, um, maybe ask them how how one of the most powerful things I think you can do as a as a sales manager, as a leader, is to ask people how they felt it went. Don't dive straight in with a critique. A lot of people like to do that. You'll get out of a meeting, sit down, then you tell them everything they did wrong. Um, I'm not a believer in that. I think a much more effective way of working with people is to sit down and just ask them how they felt it went and see what they say, ask them what they felt went well, what did they feel could have been better. And with those kind of conversations, you can identify areas of strength, you can identify areas of weakness, and you can identify what you need to do to build those areas of weakness up. And this is to me all part of it because at the end of it, at the end of the day, you want to have a sales team that functions really well. That you have people out there who are professional, they're good at their jobs, and you've got um a successful business, they're open, they're looking for opportunity, you're in the a position where this team can really build a business into uh something that's very sustainable. And of course, part of that vision, so going back to the authoritative, the the very first one I spoke about,

Balancing Team Goals And Individual Growth

SPEAKER_00 21:15

is that comes back to it's not just about hitting the number, but you can also look at well, what's in it for the individuals in the team? Is there opportunity to specialise with a particular group of clients or a particular type of product? Is there the opportunity to go into some sort of management? Um, is there the opportunity for them to grow into a role where they can have their own team? Uh, maybe one, two, three, whatever it might be, people reporting to them in that particular part of business. So the the the balance is always finding what you do with the the group as a whole and also looking at how you work with the individuals. And um we all want to have individuals working uh in as salespeople who have. Very good and very motivated. And you want them there for a while because it's it's very disruptive taking new people on as a as a leader. You have to spend a lot of time with them, getting the or more time than you you would with the others. Uh, and depending on how good they are, you might have to spend more time or less time. You might well be investing in training for them. Uh, there's all these other things, but it all takes you away from your day-to-day business, which is having a really good sales um outcome uh each year, and something that you can you can develop. So I'm gonna stop talking about that, but I hope you've found that um useful. Maybe something to reflect on, to think about. Maybe there are tips in there that you can pick up with and use yourself and help your team to get a lot more effective. So I'll talk to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.