Selling With Noble Purpose. Lisa Earle McLeod

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Introduction

      What Is Selling with Noble Purpose?

       Hearts are the strongest when they beat in response to noble ideals.

      —Ralph Bunche, winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize

      “The words selling and noble are rarely seen together. Most people believe that money is the primary motivator for top salespeople and that doing good by the world runs a distant second. That belief is wrong.”

      When I first wrote those words in 2012, I had no way of knowing the first edition of Selling with Noble Purpose would upend traditional beliefs about sales and spur a global movement. At the time, the notion that you could galvanize a sales force around something more meaningful than money was a new, and not always welcome, idea. Thankfully, times have changed. At least in part.

      We started writing this new edition of Selling with Noble Purpose before the COVID crisis began. By the time we were finishing this book, the weight of the crisis was upon us. Markets had become volatile, businesses were closing, and people all over the world were afraid. They were afraid for their health, afraid for their livelihood, and afraid of what the future might hold.

      We are experiencing a reset like never before. Business norms are being challenged, and teams are being called upon to innovate, reinventing what they sell and how they sell on daily basis. A growing chorus of customers are asking: Is your sales team here to help me? Or are they just trying to close me?

      Here's what we know to be true: amid disruption, one thing that can keep a salesforce motived and committed to delivering the highest results is a sense of purpose.

The teams you'll read about in this book use their purpose as a North Star to guide them during times of uncertainty and unrest. Purpose enables them to make quick decisions and to put their highest ideals into action.

      Over the last five years, purpose has become a hot topic in business. Organizations proudly announce their purpose across social media. Leaders talk about their purpose during the annual meeting. Yet what the COVID crisis has revealed with stark clarity is that purpose must be more than a mantra or management technique: during disruption, purpose is a lifeline to your customers and your team.

      The core idea of this book is that sales teams with a noble purpose bigger than money—whose aim is to improve life for customers—outsell transactional teams who focus on internal targets and quotas. During a crisis, the contrast between transactional sellers and noble purpose sellers is on display.

      It's long been assumed that sales teams are primarily driven by economic incentives alone—when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

      We stand in a place and time where the role of business in the world is being questioned. The pressure for short‐term profit is a constant, yet there is equally forceful pressure to do right by our people and customers and make the workplace more meaningful for all. Sales is where money and meaning come together. It's time for us to harness the fierce urgency of now to transform the way we conduct business and restore nobility to the sales profession.

The Curbside Conversation Where Selling with Noble Purpose Was Born

      A decade ago, I was part of a consulting team asked by a major biotech firm to conduct a six‐month double‐blind study of its sales force. The purpose of the study was to determine what behaviors separated top salespeople from average ones. The study revealed something no one expected: the top performers all had a far more pronounced sense of purpose than their average counterparts.

      The salespeople who sold with Noble Purpose—who truly wanted to make a difference to customers—consistently СКАЧАТЬ