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March 2010
Defining the Three Pillars of Success

The question: Does leadership apply only to managers? The answer: No, leadership is everyone’s business. The thought that followed: The pillars of success are Leadership, Teamwork, and Sales.

The question came up in last month’s leadership seminar. (For info on the next seminar in May, click: http://www.on2url.com/app/adtrack.asp?MerchantID=55031&AdID=473741.)

And it’s one I hear quite frequently, usually in terms of whether non-management employees should work on leadership issues.

The answer, that leadership is everyone’s business, is almost intuitive. So is the idea that teamwork is everyone’s business.  But the third pillar of success, sales, is less obvious.

We usually think of leadership and teamwork as being internal to an organization, and sales as being external, but we need enough creativity to flip that thinking.

We need to lead our direct reports, and we need to get company people to work together on teams. But we also need to lead people outside the organization, and get people outside the
organization (suppliers, customers, and others) to work together.

Now let’s apply that same principle to sales, but flip in the opposite direction, from external to internal.

We need to use sales skills with customers, but we also need to use sales skills inside the organization, with people we’re trying to lead, and people we’re trying to get to work together
in teams.

Internally, we’re trying to sell ideas—for a new product, or new process, or even a new way of looking at our culture, the way we operate. And in trying to sell these ideas, we need the same
sales skills that work with customers.

So, we need to understand employees’ and direct reports’ wants and needs, their motivation, the emotional component to buying, and what will influence them to “buy” our ideas. And, we need
to apply the same principles, rigor, and discipline to internal sales, as we do to external sales.

For internal customers, we must have a sales strategy, and a sales process, and we need to understand how to close the internal sale. We should recognize the importance of developing
and maintaining relationships before and after closing the sale.

All the sales principles we use with external customers, we must use internally.

Think of the three pillars as three circles that partially overlap. The part that is common to all three circles is people, more specifically the ability to influence people in some positive way.

Leadership is everyone’s business. Teamwork is everyone’s business. Sales is everyone’s business.

And if you’re like most people, you work to improve leadership and teamwork, but ignore the need to improve sales skills. Or, we forget to apply sound sales skills internally.

If those three pillars support the platform of success, and we neglect the sales pillar, our success-- at fulfilling our noble purpose, at serving our customers--crumbles. At the very least, it’s not as great as it could be.

What are you doing to develop all three pillars? What do you need to do to improve that third pillar of sales?

Until next edition, keep leading the way!

Copyright (C) 2010 by Terry Wall

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