The Professionalization of Sales… According to This Sales Scientist
Dr. Jeremy Noad is a leadership coach, a sales scientist, and an effective communicator. With more than 20 years’ experience in sales and marketing management, Jeremy is fortunate to work with Leaders and teams across the globe. He helps improve sales performance by engaging leaders and their teams to recognize the value they could bring to the organization.
What are you passionate about and what are you doing to deliver on your passion?
I am passionate about the professionalization of sales. People can sometimes drift into sales roles then stay in that type of job for a long period of time. We see that buyers are getting much better, while salespeople’s’ skills are not improving at the same speed in terms of the level of professionalism, and I see this replicating across the globe.
I would like to see sales become more professional, having a career path and recognition for salespeople who create value. I use several methods mainly focusing on engagement by doing a lot of talking to people, sharing ideas, and seeking to influence them. I think we should start moving towards a professional accredited standing.
How did you come to the realization that not only is it a gap, but it’s a gap that needs to be filled, and you are going to help fill this gap by creating the certification body around the sales profession?
I’ve spent my career in several management roles, mainly in sales and marketing management. As I developed myself, I would consistently consider where I am going, and how I see things — looking for progress and change. I often see repeatable mistakes, such as lack of engagement by organizations in the value of selling as a function.
The sales organization is important to many businesses, and we need to consistently improve at selling and creating value for the customer and the organization. The salesperson’s purpose in life is to try to improve the customer’s business or lifestyle, not just to sell something. Thinking of salespeople as being change agents, creating the change to help move a customer from a problem to a solution.
The vision needs to be helping customers improve their business or fulfill their need to make their lives easier. The challenge for the sales community is to be a partner in their customer’s success, and this is an opportunity to move for the professionalization of sales.
Please tell us more about how you lead, how you manage all the various types of stakeholders as you go into your process of transforming the profession?
My leadership style focuses on asking questions and listening. I try not to prejudge anything, but I want to give people a sense of direction and opportunity that is different from where they are today. I start by listening to what is said and unsaid then think about whom I need to influence, and I apply this approach to everyone I work with and with my team.
I look to apply a coaching mentality with my team, stakeholders, and everyone. Coaching plays a big part in what we do as leaders, and I work through a systematic approach, which works for me, as it helps me not to miss anything.
Having regular coaching calls, weekly when possible, is a powerful tool, and a constant topic is working on behaviors and skills. The second topic is whether my team is coaching their teams and so on. I have found that the people in a team and the people with whom they interact see a positive benefit from coaching. A good leadership indicator is making your people attractive to others to employ and seeing them advance in their careers
Is there anything in your background that is not directly related to leadership and sales leadership but has an outsize impact on your approach to them?
Obviously, the family is a huge influence on leadership skills. I never understood my father ‘s various job roles, but I think he had a huge impact on me by demonstrating his responsibility and ethics and always making himself accessible to his team. He reminded me that a leader must not only be focused on doing the job, but living and demonstrating the desired behaviors is highly influential to your team as well as others with whom you interact.
Second, you can be influenced by things outside the workplace that you can apply to improve your leadership. Leadership influence has even come from Star Trek. It has diversity and variation in how the captains led their team. This showed me there is more than one way to work with people, to lead a team, and to interact with others. I see it as a perfect analogy for building your leadership skills by learning from others, no matter the source.
I had a good mentor in my third role. He was president of a company that was a member of UK’s equivalent of Fortune 500. When he gave me a job, his approach was to set out the rules of the game and the limits of the playing field. You had to stay on the pitch, win the game, and follow the rules, but you could own and implement the tactics. This lesson has helped me in many ways, not least in allowing me to give the same types of empowerment to colleagues and team members.
This early experience was a key part of my formative years, which has made a difference in how I think about things and how I approach them. Nowadays, I see it more as a freeway, with many different lanes and speeds, but everyone is going in the same direction. Even if you’re stuck on the side of the road and out of gas, you are at least facing the right direction, and other teams and colleagues are heading in your direction and can support you to move forward.
How do you go about selecting members and what are the other things that you do or use to manage performance?
I want to be clear about the strategic goals and objectives. I look at the requirements relating to the specific skills sets and work on assessing them in a variety of ways, including the application and the interview. From there, for key roles, I think you need to dig a bit deeper, and to do this, I can use an assessment center where we put them under pressure for a day to observe them in relational situations and how they work and interact with a variety of problems and people. This is an area where you should be structured and clear on the behaviors and desired outcomes. I understand there’s a place for compassion, but there’s also a place for understanding that something is not working.
I believe in the saying ‘Hire Slow, Fire Fast.’ I want to stress that, because someone is not successful in a role now, this does not make them a bad person; maybe his or her skills are useful for the organization in other areas.
Managing performance improvement in sales is fundamentally about the numbers. The numbers are the outcome and normally link to a series of behavioral changes that, when addressed, result in performance improvement.
As a leader, you have to build the confidence in your team. It is impossible not to make mistakes, especially in a big organization, but it is possible to improve and learn to get better. A leader must give their visible support, even though the outcome is not particularly fantastic, empowering those around them, providing guidance, and taking an interest in what they are doing without micromanaging, so they have the responsibility and accountability to deliver the desired outcomes.
A leader needs to be clear and understand what success looks like. This includes making sure the metrics for the behavioral inputs, outputs, and outcomes are readily available.
What do you think are the biggest mistakes these leaders are making and how do you go about fixing them?
Based on my observation of many leaders, many lack humility. That is possibly the biggest mistake they make.
As a good leader, you choose whether to pull or push. Hopefully, this decision is driven by the situation. A leader can pull their team forward or push the team ahead of you.
To lead people, you must engage and bring them on the journey that you all want to take. With a lack of humility and understanding, you run the risks of making mistakes that disconnect you from the team and the outcomes. Humanity and understanding are part of being a leader.
On Personal Branding
If you’re humble, considerate, and clear about what you’re doing, you can influence those around you in a way that creates a big impact. I want to be consistent about what I do and say. My value to others and my expertise has been built over 25 years. Having consistency and clarity about what you stand for, what you focus on, needs to be actively managed by you, the leader. What you stand for, your Personal Brand, should not be about you. It is about what you can do for others. I like this powerful message from Michael Hyatt,
“It should be 10% about you and 90% about what you can do for people.”
This is a good way to think about leadership. It is not important who you are; it’s about the good you can do for others. When you must talk about you, talk about yourself last, while you endeavor to talk about others first. Take the mindset to think about what you can do for others, and you will benefit in all you are doing
Do you see any other opportunities for leadership in the future?
There are many opportunities for leaders to improve. Nowadays, everything is more available, more information, more thought leaders, more advice, more, more, more!
Things change quickly, and as leaders, there is much more to be done about this idea of community and networking, and being a leader is a responsibility. Irrespective of career and employment, one can do more to lead one’s self to achieve goals, as well as lead, as part of a bigger community or organization.
When leading others, focus on taking people with you, not trying to push them in front of you because you want them to go the way you want them to go.
Any final words of wisdom for other Everyday Leaders?
We make things complicated. We put extraneous effort in complicating things, maybe to make them seem more special or challenging. I think we must focus on what is essential to achieve the goals we set. It is important to be simplistic in this highly complicated age.
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Are you a superstar performer at work but feeling stuck?
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…would you take me up on this offer?
