Selling With Noble Purpose. Lisa Earle McLeod

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СКАЧАТЬ every decision you make and every action you take. It becomes the underpinning for all your sales activities.

      For example, one of our clients provides IT services for small businesses. Their NSP is simply, “We help small businesses be more successful.” It's not elaborate or sexy or poetic. Instead, it's clear and effective. It drives everything they do. Every decision, large or small, must pass through that filter: “Will this help us make small businesses more successful?” If the answer is no, they don't do it. Every new product and service they create—every sales call—is focused on how they can make their customers' small businesses more successful. You'll read more about how this team used their NSP to drive a decade worth of growth later in the book.

      For now, notice how this simple statement goes beyond the standard value proposition or product description. It doesn't include “and our community” or “through our values like integrity and hard work” or anything like that. It's simple. And clear. That's why it works.

      Their NSP describes the impact they aim to have on customers. It serves as the North Star for the organization.

      The leadership team first began implementing their NSP in 2009, during the height of the recession. In a tough economy, when customers were cutting back on outside IT services, the NSP approach helped the company post double‐digit sales growth. While other firms were descending into transactional sales to get business, they stayed true to their NSP and won clients away from competitors. As the economy improved, their NSP drove even more growth. Their reputation grew, and their customers became their best sales ambassadors.

       Profits are the result of your work, not the sole purpose of your efforts.

      The evidence tells us that purpose is the secret to driving more revenue. As one of my favorite purpose colleagues, Roy Spence—who has worked in the purpose space for decades—says, “Purpose is your reason for being; [it] goes beyond making money, and it almost always results in making more money than you ever thought possible.”

      An NSP approach can be counterintuitive for leaders schooled in a “managing to the money” style. For some, it's almost heresy. Yet the results speak for themselves.

Our client Doug Williams, the CEO of Atlantic Capital Bank, articulated it best when he said, “I've realized I need to manage to the numbers, but I need to lead to the Noble Purpose.” Later in the book, you'll read about how Williams and his team used their NSP—“We fuel prosperity”—to transform their organization, grow income from continuing operations by 81%, and be voted a Best Place to Work based on anonymous employee surveys. Eighteen months after they began their Noble Purpose journey, Williams was on the cover of American Banker Magazine as one of the top bankers in America for his team's remarkable turnaround.

      An NSP drives more revenue than financial goals alone because an NSP taps into a human instinct even more powerful than our desire for money.

Reframing the Sales Profession

      As the famous saying goes, nothing happens until somebody sells something. Salespeople are linchpins; they're the ones who bring in the revenue that keeps everything else running. If you want to create a prosperous organization, you need to sell. Personally, I believe a role in sales is one of the highest callings you can have in an organization.

      Unfortunately, not everyone feels this way. There are two widespread misperceptions about sales:

      1 Sales is sleazy.

      2 Sales is easy.

      Scott Jensen, a former sales coach at Deloitte, tells a story about being a young sales manager with another company. Upon walking into an internal departmental company meeting, he heard one of the other department heads say, “Here comes the commission whore.” The rest of the group laughed at the joke.

      This story makes my head spin. How can an organization create differentiation and pride if they believe their sales team is only self‐interested? The simple answer is, you can't. Differentiation and pride come from a deep‐seated belief that your work is actually helping people. That's where you come in: your job as a leader is to build that belief across your organization.

What's Gained from Approaching Sales with Purpose

Your Noble Sales Purpose points you in a nobler and, ultimately, more profitable direction. It's the starting point for a series of changes that can dramatically improve your sales force and the bottom line.

      An NSP:

       Brings the customer voice to the front and center of the conversation

       Provides an organizing framework for planning and decision-making

       Improves the quality of your existing sales training

       Helps mid‐level performers set more ambitious goals

       Helps top performers stay focused on delivering value

       Differentiates your conversations with customers in a way products and specs cannot

       Acts as a reset button during times of challenge and change

      This book is written for sales leaders because you set the tone for your organization. Whether you're the Chief Revenue Officer, a sales manager, an aspiring sales leader, or a CEO who wants to change the way your team approaches customers, your mindset, language, and strategy are where everything starts.

      An NSP is not a tactic. It's a strategic shift in the way you approach your business. It's more than a simple sales technique; it's a sales leadership philosophy that turbocharges all other techniques. It's the missing ingredient a sales force needs to take their performance to the next level.

      You gain the following from approaching sales with an NSP mindset:

       Your sales team becomes more resourceful since they're always looking for ways to help customers' businesses.

       Clients take you to the higher‐level people in their organizations because they see you as a resource and not someone in it only for their own quota.

       You shorten the sales cycle. You ask more robust and second‐tier questions, delving into critical customer business issues and creating urgency.

       You bring the customer's voice into your organization, which helps you create better products, services, and marketing.

       You create proposals and presentations that are more compelling and persuasive because they're organized around the client's goals, not focused on your product's or service's features and benefits.

       You don't have to “act like” you care about your customers, because you really do care.

       You love your job because you have a more noble purpose than just “selling stuff to make money.”

       You're more likely to talk about your job in social situations, and when you do, people are more likely to be interested in hearing about it—since making a difference in people's lives is exciting.

       Sales coaching improves because leaders speak in depth about client situations and goals.

       You're СКАЧАТЬ