How much do you own the interaction and relationship with your prospective customers on their path to becoming a customer of your company?

I am not talking about control – from a dominating perspective. Not the type of control that usually the output of manipulation, tricks, lies, bribes, etc.

I am referring to control from a leadership perspective.

Sales Equals Leadership

In previous blogs, I have shared that sales = leadership. As a sales professional your prospects are looking to you for leadership and guidance. They are in desperate need of wisdom, even if most won’t admit it out loud to you (mostly from fear of you using their need against them, like the bad salespeople do).

True leadership is about owning the journey and vision of the destination. It’s about understanding where they are going with the confidence to overcome anything that gets in the way of that destination. Yes – some say that life is about the journey, but leadership is about a destination and the ownership to make it happen.

Your Role as a Sales Leader

That is the same thing with your role as a sales professional.

You are the leader of the interaction, journey and destination of and with your customer. The final outcome for them will depend on your level of leadership and control.

Now…just to be clear (since you might be thinking it already) – you can’t make anyone do anything. We aren’t talking about forcing them to do anything – which doesn’t work anyway. It’s not about manipulating them into the decision you want them to make. It’s not even about manipulating them into the decision they said they wanted to make.

It’s truly about being a leader and controlling what you can control.

Leadership in Sales: A Road Trip Analogy

During a long road trip, you can’t control everything that happens (traffic, cars that change lanes without a signal and make you swerve, flat tire, excessive bathroom breaks, pit stop to clean up a spilled coffee) but you can control a lot of things – like your preparations, planning, and responses to those things that pop up.

In sales, as a leader – how much ownership do you take over the relationship, journey, and destination/outcome?

Are you a WIT Person? Will you do Whatever It Takes? (and, I must note…WIT without crossing the line.)

Or, do you take a surface approach to sales? Doing what you think you can do but when the prospect doesn’t move forward you don’t take ownership of what you could do more of? Do you default to pointing the finger at other factors, than yourself? When your manager asks about your non-closed deal interactions, do you get defensive, or do you own what you could have done more/better?

Do you play the numbers game where some part of your brain knows there are other prospects out there and that by not closing this one it doesn’t really matter to you?

A Shift Toward Complete Ownership

Here’s my deal with this – it’s okay if you aren’t taking ownership of your leadership role with each and every prospect. You can change that as soon as you realize it and take ownership of what you have been doing vs. what you could be doing differently.

I used to be that way. I took a light, surfacy approach to ‘sales’. Mostly because I didn’t think I was a salesperson, and I was raised to distrust and dislike salespeople – so the last thing I wanted to be was that guy. I also didn’t like confrontation and rejection (still don’t).

Then I had a CEO/boss who taught me about complete ownership of the prospect journey and relationship. He pushed me to do MORE and do WIT each and every time. He taught me that if I lost a sale but I could say that I did all that I could, that it was okay. If I left it all on the field and lost and/or got beat…that is just life. It’s important to analyze each sales interaction – success or loss – but the key is I set myself up to have very little regret if things didn’t go the way I wanted.

Lessons in Ownership and Leadership

I learned ownership and leadership. I learned that when I thought I had “done all I could” that there was always another layer I could move to – additional things I could say/do.

For you – the key is to find a reason to lead that prospect and to own the relation and sales experience/journey. What would it mean to that person (for themselves and/or their business) if they do not buy? What is the worst outcome that could occur if they don’t let you help them? Where could their lives go without your help?

Mission-Driven Sales Leadership

Get in touch with that as your mission – to keep from letting your prospects down – and that will lead you to a greater level of ownership of the relationship (for the right reasons, in the right ways) and leadership of each prospective customer.

Remember, that is what they are hoping you will provide for them.

[Note – if the answer to the “what value does your product/service provide?” is ‘nothing really, their life wouldn’t be affected much by not buying’ – then you are probably selling useless stuff, and this doesn’t apply to you. Hopefully you are helping buy something that will actually affect them and help them in some way.]