Sales Leadership Quotes

You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop - the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative - wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry - stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.

Leadership is being the first to put others second. Wait, that’s not right. That’s politics.

Instead of waiting for a leader you can believe in, try this: Become a leader you can believe in.

You can’t sell it outside if you can’t sell it inside.

The purpose of leadership is to change the world around you in the name of your values, so you can live those values more fully.

When you’re a manager, you work for your company. When you’re a leader, your company works for you.

Work/life balance is not about escaping work. It’s about living exactly the way you want to when you’re at work.

Profitability. Growth. Quality. Exceeding customer expectations. These are not examples of values. These are examples of corporate strategies being sold to you as values.

The first step to solving any problem is to accept one’s own accountability for creating it.

True leaders live their values everywhere, not just in the workplace.

What first separates a leader from a normal human being? A leader knows who they are as a human being.

The first step out of the gate has to be knowing where you want to end up. What do you really want from your company?

When rewards come from an external source instead of an internal source, they’re unreliable, which means they’re dangerous if you grow to depend on them.

At the heart of all sales and marketing is the ability to create demand even in the absence of logic.

Be yourself! Don’t try to fabricate your personality in the guise of impressing others.

Values are deeply held personal beliefs that form your own priority code for living.

Values are the individual biases that allow you to decide which actions are true for you alone.

The worst thing in your own development as a leader is not to do it wrong. It’s to do it for the wrong reasons.

Being relevant to your customers only when you’re trying to sell something means choosing to be irrelevant to them for the rest of the time.

A manager’s emotional commitment is the ultimate trigger for their discretionary effort, worth more than financial, intellectual & physical commitment combined.

Your values are your essence: an undistorted mirror showing you at your pure, attractive best.

Careful now: even a financially rewarding, intellectually stimulating work environment isn’t the same as living your own values.

It’s impossible for a company to get what it wants most if managers have to make a choice between their own values and company priorities.

Success means: I want to know the work I do means something to somebody and helps make the world, if not a Better place, not a worse one.

Success for Managers means: I want to be in healthy relationships. I want a real connection with people I spend so much time with.

The myth of management is that your personal values are irrelevant or inappropriate at work.

All the time and effort put into networking can be all for naught if there is no follow-through. The same goes for sales. And leadership. And … well, everything.

In the end, every startup is different. But in the beginning every startup is the same.

What’s the most important thing you can do today? If you can answer that question, morning after morning, you are in an elite group of professionals.

Some problems are imaginary and not real.

How one treats another one, determines success.

Conflicts are expensive.

Actions undertaken in anger, only result in pain, sorrow, and regret.

Change is constant.

Time well-spent is life well-lived.

Leaders prioritize what they want.

Compromise makes relationships survive.

Sometimes, changing circumstances also changes relationships.

Relationships are built on trust.

Good times don’t last and bad times don’t stay forever.

A company can’t buy true emotional commitment from managers no matter how much it’s willing to spend; this is something too valuable to have a price tag. And yet a company can’t afford not to have it.

If your Idea cannot CHANGE the INDUSTRY, you have added no VALUE

A hunter’s meal is in proportion to his skill.

Management controls performance in people because it impacts skills; it’s a matter of monitoring, analyzing and directing.

Leadership creates performance in people because it impacts willingness; it’s a matter of modeling, inspiring, and reinforcing.

Any expert will tell you that if you want emotionally committed relationships then people must be allowed to be true to who they are.

Companies should be the best possible place to practice fulfillment, to live out values and to realize deep connectivity and purpose.

When you’re not on your own agenda, you’re prey to the agenda of others.

When you don’t know what true for you, everyone else has unusual influence.

Why live my personal values at work? This is an excellent question to ask. If your attorneys are planning an insanity defense.

This is your one and only precious life. Somebody’s going to decide how it’s going to be lived and that person had better be you.

Let’s get right on top of the bottom line: You must live your personal values at work.

There will be plenty of other problems in the future. This is as good a time as any to get ahead of them.

Try not to take this the wrong way, but your brain is smarter than you are.

Human behavior is only unpredictable and dangerous if you don’t start from humanity in the first place.

You can stuff yourself with emotional fulfillment until it’s dribbling down your chin & your ego will quickly chomp it down and demand more.

The economy is in ruins! Bottom line? Good management will defeat a bad economy.

You don't have to fear your own company being perceived as human. You want it. People don't trust companies; they trust people.

In my experience, the skill of success breaks down into three things. The skill of marketing. The skill of sales. And the skill of leadership.

If you try to be everything to everyone, you become nothing.

When we’re self-employed, much of what has been typical of business, marketing, and sales has creeped us out. We want to do business in ways that feel good to us.

If the difficult tasks are completed first, then the remaining tasks seem easy.

Conflicts have small beginnings.

The wise communicate in subtle ways.

Angry issues need settling time.

Anger management requires understanding.

Calmness subdues anger.

A clear mind achieves success.

Over time, repetition brings perfection, which brings success.

Perseverance guarantees success.

Change is difficult, since it challenges the status quo.

Time management is essential for a work-life balance.

A positive change in approach improves quality.

Knowledge is something that fire cannot burn, water cannot wet, air cannot dry, thieves cannot steal, and the more you spend the more it increases.

Experience is costly knowledge.

Conflicts need to be resolved at the earliest.

Here’s what you need to know most about leadership: Lead your own life first. The only thing in this world that will dependably happen from the top down is the digging of your grave.

The moral of the story: promote only those you would hire. Put your SDRs through the same hiring and evaluation process you would for external candidates. No one benefits—not you, your company, sales leadership, or the SDRs themselves—when a promotion sets reps up to fail.

It's important for executives to be mindful of the risk of reduced sales. The appropriate leadership team needs to consider - how much of a drop in sales could the company withstand before expenses overtake income? The company needs to be resilient to a shock in reduced sales.

The process is about leadership and about taking people to places that they cannot get to on their own, while they are still feeling comfortably in control of a buying decision

Emotional commitment means unchecked, unvarnished devotion to the company and its success; any legendary organizational performance is the result of emotionally committed managers.

Providing the ultimate solution to work/life balance: not escaping from work but living the way you want to at work.

Don't burn your bridges until you build better ones.

A value-driven professional sees themself as a hero on a mission, not a victim.

Before launching a product, I ask the marketing department to build a landing page (marketing page) for that product so I can survey interest in the product itself.

The heart of a company’s performance is hardwired to the hearts of its managers.

The high quality of a company’s customer experience rarely has anything to do with the high price of their product.

To integrate one’s experiences around a coherent and enduring sense of self lies at the core of creating a user’s guide to life.

Leaders are people who know exactly who they are. They know exactly where they want to go. They’re hell-bent on getting there.

What companies want most from their managers is what they most stop their managers from giving. What managers want most from their jobs is what they most stop themselves from getting.

In 2007, Stanford Business School Advisory committee asserted that self awareness was the most important attribute a leader should develop. The challenge for the modern entrepreneur is to take that path.

Your competitors have the same idea of how unique, special, vital, and relevant they are with everyone spending a lot of money using the same words, messages, and promises to convince prospects how unique they each are.

Attention deficit is no longer the supposed domain of Generation Y’s who were brought up on a diet of social media and new technology. A recent study revealed 65 percent of 55-64 year olds surf, text and watch television simultaneously.

The number one job of a leader is to wake up every morning, point to the horizon, and let everybody on the team know where the organization is going. The number two job of a leader is to explain, in clear and simple terms, why the story of going to and arriving at that specific destination matters. The number three job of a leader is to analyze the skills and abilities of each team member and find them an important role to play in that story. All human beings long for a mission. We are all born self-identifying as heroes in a story and we know, even as children, that our existence on this planet matters. Not only this, but as communal beings, every person longs to join a team on a serious and important mission. This is why dynamic leaders are able to attract top talent. Every dynamic leader you know or have ever heard of had a mission burning inside them that other people wanted to join. Great leaders become great because their mission makes them great. There are no exceptions.

A pyramid scheme is illegal and is where no product or service is sold; the business exists just to bring in recruiting fees. These still pop up from time to time and are an illegal cousin to the Ponzi or Madoff scheme because of the last-man rule. The last-man rule is, if you were to extend the company’s success until the last man on earth joined the business, would it be over because they only make money from recruiting and never the sale of a product or service? If it would, this is illegal.

1. Did you conduct one-to-one meetings with each salesperson on your team? 2. Did you ask each of them how they like to be managed? Are they coachable? 3. Did you inquire about their prior experience with their past manager? Was it positive or negative? 4. Did you set the expectations of your relationship with them? Did you ask them what they needed and expected from their manager? What changes do they want to see? 5. Did you inform them about how you like to manage and your style of management? This would open up the space for a discussion regarding how you may manage differently from your predecessor. 6. Did you let them know you just completed a coaching course that would enable you to support them even further and maximize their talents? 7. Did you explain to them the difference between coaching and traditional management? 8. Did you enroll them in the benefits of coaching? That is, what would be in it for them? 9. Did you let them know about your intentions, goals, expectations, and aspirations for each of them and for the team as a whole? 10. How have you gone about learning the ins and outs of the company?Are you familiar with the internal workings, culture, leadership team, and subtleties that make the company unique? Have you considered that your team may be the best source of knowledge and intelligence for this? Did you communicate your willingness and desire to learn from them as well, so that the learning and development process can be mutually reciprocated?

Knowing one’s emotions. Self-awareness—recognizing a feeling as it happens—is the keystone of emotional intelligence. As we will see in Chapter 4, the ability to monitor feelings from moment to moment is crucial to psychological insight and self-understanding. An inability to notice our true feelings leaves us at their mercy. People with greater certainty about their feelings are better pilots of their lives, having a surer sense of how they really feel about personal decisions from whom to marry to what job to take. 2. Managing emotions. Handling feelings so they are appropriate is an ability that builds on self-awareness. Chapter 5 will examine the capacity to soothe oneself, to shake off rampant anxiety, gloom, or irritability—and the consequences of failure at this basic emotional skill. People who are poor in this ability are constantly battling feelings of distress, while those who excel in it can bounce back far more quickly from life’s setbacks and upsets. 3. Motivating oneself. As Chapter 6 will show, marshaling emotions in the service of a goal is essential for paying attention, for self-motivation and mastery, and for creativity. Emotional self-control—delaying gratification and stifling impulsiveness—underlies accomplishment of every sort. And being able to get into the “flow” state enables outstanding performance of all kinds. People who have this skill tend to be more highly productive and effective in whatever they undertake. 4. Recognizing emotions in others. Empathy, another ability that builds on emotional self-awareness, is the fundamental “people skill.” Chapter 7 will investigate the roots of empathy, the social cost of being emotionally tone-deaf, and the reason empathy kindles altruism. People who are empathic are more attuned to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want. This makes them better at callings such as the caring professions, teaching, sales, and management. 5. Handling relationships. The art of relationships is, in large part, skill in managing emotions in others. Chapter 8 looks at social competence and incompetence, and the specific skills involved. These are the abilities that undergird popularity, leadership, and interpersonal effectiveness. People who excel in these skills do well at anything that relies on interacting smoothly with others; they are social stars.

The explosion of government and spending under Obama insured that while the rest of the nation continued to suffer stagnant job growth and slow housing sales long past the time when a recovery should have been underway, one city was booming like a five-year-long Led Zeppelin drum solo: Washington, D.C. According to the 2014 Forbes ranking of the ten richest counties in America, none were in New York, California, or Texas. Before Obama took office, five of the richest counties surrounded Washington, D.C. Now, seven years after Obama took office on his promise to rid the place of big money lobbyists, and Democrats assumed complete control of the White House and Congress for two years, six of the richest counties surround Washington, D.C. Bear in mind that unlike Texas or California, where money is generated by creating products people actually need, such as oil or computers, Washington, D.C., produces nothing but government. In other words, six of the ten richest counties in America got that rich by being parasites. A case could be made that under the current leadership, crony capitalism is more rewarding than actual capitalism. And with all that government around business people’s necks, it’s certainly a heckuva lot easier.

I DO NOT BELIEVE that such groups as these which I found my way to not long after returning from Wheaton, or Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the group they all grew out of, are perfect any more than anything human is perfect, but I believe that the Church has an enormous amount to learn from them. I also believe that what goes on in them is far closer to what Christ meant his Church to be, and what it originally was, than much of what goes on in most churches I know. These groups have no buildings or official leadership or money. They have no rummage sales, no altar guilds, no every-member canvases. They have no preachers, no choirs, no liturgy, no real estate. They have no creeds. They have no program. They make you wonder if the best thing that could happen to many a church might not be to have its building burn down and to lose all its money. Then all that the people would have left would be God and each other. The church often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the dysfunctional family. There is the authoritarian presence of the minister—the professional who knows all of the answers and calls most of the shots—whom few ever challenge either because they don’t dare to or because they feel it would do no good if they did. There is the outward camaraderie and inward loneliness of the congregation. There are the unspoken rules and hidden agendas, the doubts and disagreements that for propriety’s sake are kept more or less under cover. There are people with all sorts of enthusiasms and creativities which are not often enough made use of or even recognized because the tendency is not to rock the boat but to keep on doing things the way they have always been done.

The climate for relationships within an innovation group is shaped by the climate outside it. Having a negative instead of a positive culture can cost a company real money. During Seagate Technology’s troubled period in the mid-to-late 1990s, the company, a large manufacturer of disk drives for personal computers, had seven different design centers working on innovation, yet it had the lowest R&D productivity in the industry because the centers competed rather than cooperated. Attempts to bring them together merely led people to advocate for their own groups rather than find common ground. Not only did Seagate’s engineers and managers lack positive norms for group interaction, but they had the opposite in place: People who yelled in executive meetings received “Dog’s Head” awards for the worst conduct. Lack of product and process innovation was reflected in loss of market share, disgruntled customers, and declining sales. Seagate, with its dwindling PC sales and fading customer base, was threatening to become a commodity producer in a changing technology environment. Under a new CEO and COO, Steve Luczo and Bill Watkins, who operated as partners, Seagate developed new norms for how people should treat one another, starting with the executive group. Their raised consciousness led to a systemic process for forming and running “core teams” (cross-functional innovation groups), and Seagate employees were trained in common methodologies for team building, both in conventional training programs and through participation in difficult outdoor activities in New Zealand and other remote locations. To lead core teams, Seagate promoted people who were known for strong relationship skills above others with greater technical skills. Unlike the antagonistic committees convened during the years of decline, the core teams created dramatic process and product innovations that brought the company back to market leadership. The new Seagate was able to create innovations embedded in a wide range of new electronic devices, such as iPods and cell phones.