None of the skills detailed and explained on this site mean anything unless they are combined with integrity and leadership.
So, Louis has asked me to ensure you receive a continuous flow of proven best-practices and advice from real leaders and industry experts.
We will try to examine every aspect of leadership, including, profiles of some of history’s greatest leaders.
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Please enter the key-words for your desired topic and you will see a list of everything on this site, plus a few general listings from the web.
For example, if you want to find content about leading a sales team please enter "sales leadership" in the search box below:
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APPROVED ARTICLES
Hire a 10 - a Sales Management Myth
As an advisor to businesses and professional service firms on how to build an effective sales team, I would also council my clients to hire “tens.” Big mistake! - MORE
5 Keys to Hiring the Right Sales Manager
There are few decisions more critical for a company than the hiring of the leadership of their sales organization. Yet, few know how to do it well. - MORE
Leadership Skills and Leadership Qualities
Leadership qualities matter in business, in education. Yet the doctoral student can't find information on leadership skills. If the discipline isn't leadership she has to cry for help: What're leadership qualities?! Others would like to know too what are the personal qualities of leadership! Business leadership is important. Educational leadership is in demand. But, what are leadership skills, qualities? - MORE
25 Leadership Maxims
Maxims have an illustrious history in the annuals of leadership.
Applying the less-is-more principle of expression, maxims can trigger action, guide behavior and promote values. A renown leadership expert offers 25 maxims that he has composed, maxims that can enrich your leadership awareness and effectiveness. - MORE
6 Important Aspects Of Sales Training
When it comes to sales training, the right sales training for your sales team can make all the difference. It can teach new techniques, motivate, and help your team to handle objections and obstacles that come their way with ease and finesse. However, if you’re going to implement a successful sales training program, it’s important that you keep these six important aspects of sales training in mind: - MORE
Have You Prepared For Success In Sales?
I've seen sales people take little time to understand the product or service they are selling. Sit down to make phone calls with no idea what to say. Head out on sales appointments and wing-it. Then go home at five o'clock and wonder why they can barely pay their bills. - MORE
Boost Your Sales Through Sales Trainings
Many people regard sales as the most effective way of earning unlimited income. In fact, 7 out of 10 salespeople who were interviewed why they preferred sales as their job, they have contended that in sales, they can earn income on tap. This goes to show that they can either earn more or earn less. - MORE
5 Reasons To Use Sales Motivational Speakers To Pump Up Your Sales Team
Motivational speakers can be a great way to boost a lagging sales team, teach new tips, and turn prospects into actual customers. But before you write off a motivational speaker as a waste of money, consider the following reasons why you should use a motivational speaker to pump up your sales team: - MORE
5 Secrets to Exercising Authority
If you are a sales manager or business owner, then you probably know and understand that fine line between being a leader and exercising authority, and trying to fit in as part of the team and wanting people to like you. Managers struggle with this all the time, and many would be leaders lose their ability to successfully direct their teams because they are afraid of exercising this authority for fear of alienating other team members. - MORE
Leadership Lessons For Sales Managers
Leadership, like class, is hard to define, but easy to spot.
Someone once defined management as “the effective coordination of the efforts of the individuals in a group to accomplish that stated objectives of the organization.” Managers get results by establishing goals and working with and through people to achieve those goals. - MORE
Sales Management And Leadership – They Aren’t The Same!©
Today Sales Managers usually have two roles. First, they have to manage and administer the sales team. Second, they are also expected to demonstrate Leadership of the sales team. These are two different roles. - MORE
How To Quickly Establish Authority
Sometimes a new Sales Manager has to face awkward, contentious, embarrassing or tough issues. Difficult situations, you may have noticed, dont tend to get easier if delayed or ignored. For the manager, dealing with such problems goes with the territory. - MORE
What's Bothering Managers
Every company has management issues, and your outdoor business is probably no exception. Managers catch flack from both sides - upper management and the people they 'manage'. Managers often become tired of being one of the first to blame when things go wrong and frustrated by the lack of back up and support from the upper echelons who expect them to perform the daily miracles required to produce excellent results. - MORE
Staff Development: How to Coach Your Employees for Success
Is Coaching the New Management?World-class athletes, public performers, indeed winners in nearly every profession, know that without the right coach, they won't perform at their peak. - MORE
Sales Management And Leadership – They Aren’t The Same!©
Today Sales Managers usually have two roles. First, they have to manage and administer the sales team. Second, they are also expected to demonstrate Leadership of the sales team. These are two different roles. - MORE
How To Use A Powerful Leadership Tool To Step Up Sales Results
Good sales people can close, but few "step up" for even more sales from that close. Yet stepping up should be one of the easiest accomplishments in sales — that is if you know how to build the staircase. - MORE
How To Turn Your Sales Team Into Champion Producers So You Can Double Your Company’s Sales
Most business leaders don't know how to structure their sales organizations or even themselves for maximum productivity. They don't know how to change, adapt and re-organize for new stages of growth. That’s why they spend thousands of dollars looking for the magic secret to get their sales team to perform like champion racehorses. - MORE
Leadership For Deep Results: Without Them Are You Wasting Your Leadership And Your Life? (part One)
Summary: The author asserts there are two kinds of results leaders achieve, standard results and deep results. All leaders know what standard results are, but few leaders know what deep results are. In the long run, standard results, though necessary, are far less important than deep results. - MORE
Creating A Sales Team
Someone asked me to do a condensed version of how I build a sales team. So, here it is! - MORE
9 Management Philosophies to Develop Teams Into Elite High Performers
I met with a prospect the other day and he asked me "What do high performance managers do differently than average managers?"
I paused for a moment, scanned the long list of behaviors in my mind; distilled my answer down to the critical few things and told my prospect... - MORE
Improving Sales Productivity Begins and Ends with the Sales Manager
The Sales Manager's role should be to develop a management system that continuously improves the performance of themselves, the team and the individual sales professionals, in addition to managing the business. - MORE
Leadership For Deep Results: Without Them Are You Wasting Your Leadership And Your Life? (part Two)
How does one go about getting deep results? There are many paths up this mountain. But one path is straight and steep and clear. That is the path of the Leadership Imperative. - MORE
Further Developing Leadership Skills
This article is designed to provide guidance for executives, managers, and specialists, who are involved in leading the strategic direction of their organisations. The articles will cover all the main areas of expertise, knowledge, and understanding, that are need to successfully lead an organisation in today’s complex and fast-changing world. - MORE
Managing the performance of teams
John is confused. He prides himself as being a fair and reasonably good manager. This is not his first assignment as a manager, but it is certainly turning out to be his most challenging. - MORE
Five Easy Pieces to Performance Measurement
It's time for a change in thinking. The truth is that the measurement starting line is very wide and the race is not reserved for the genetically gifted few. Ordinary people with no special training are conducting meaningful measurement and revolutionizing their organizations in the process. You can, too. - MORE
The Leader's Speech
True leadership, is the ability to move people to change. The ability to lead comes from within and great leaders, those with whom people connect with on an emotional level and who can inspire change, emerge only after experiencing things as they are in the real world. That is why great world leaders, such as Martin Luther King, were able to inspire. The same applies in business. - MORE
Turning managers into coaches
As a trainer, turning managers into coaches is a real challenge. We'd probably all like to think that all managers can become coaches - but can they? - MORE
Change only comes from honest coaching
Honest coaching leads to change because change only comes when sales people feel uncomfortable. Ironically, you will feel uncomfortable giving that coaching - if you do it the right way. - MORE
The Art of Encouragement
So, why does encouragement matter? What are the benefits of encouragement? I gave it some thought, and have listed here some of the key benefits for everyone involved. - MORE
10 Ways To Stimulate Employee Motivation
Today’s fast-moving business environment demands that the effective manager be both a well-organized administrator and highly adept in understanding people’s basic needs and behaviour in the workplace. - MORE
Five Essential Principles to Improve Your Leadership Skills
This may seem like a great spoiler; but certainly, there is no such thing as a hard and fast rule when it comes to leadership. - MORE
How To Hire The Right Person For The Right Job
Part of good leadership requires skill in the hiring process. Good leaders know that retention of productive employees affects the bottom line as well as morale and growth. - MORE
Employee Communication: 3 Ways To Create Transformation In Organizations
There are two distinct ways to use employee communication; one is to inform employees about what is happening in an organization, the other is to engage employees in the process of change. In this article we are going to highlight 3 case studies that demonstrate clearly the different techniques and approaches to ensure that your employee communication strategies bring about transformation in your organization. - MORE
Strategies for Leading Through Change
I need to make a change in my company How do I do it, and how do I manage it?
This is a question I hear from business leaders every day . . . yet the question often comes to me after the fact . . . when people are up in arms and ready to bolt. A change can be something as simple as new stationery or as tumultuous as a merger or acquisition, and while the change is often seen by top leadership as necessary to move ahead of aggressive competitors, this is not always the case for employees. Why? - MORE
Hire the Right Sales Manager
Although every organization is different, hiring a sales manager is not as simple as it looks. In fact, the wrong sales manager can quickly damage morale, if not scare away the sales reps and potentially injure the firm. - MORE
Top Ten Team Building Exercises
You’ve recruited the individual members of your team. You’ve established your goal. You’ve developed a plan and a timeline. Now the trick is to get all those unique individuals working together toward the same goal. Given the varied personalities, communication skills and personal agendas individual members bring with them to the team, getting your team to work cooperatively can be a challenge.- MORE
Time Management 101 for Managers
Recently, driving down the expressway I peered to my left to see a woman who in the middle of traffic was putting her lipstick on as if there just wasn't those last couple of minutes before walking out the door to do this. I thought to myself, "how often do you feel this way at work-that there just aren't enough hours in the day?"- MORE
How To Be a Sales Mentor
Almost every successful sales person I know can point to one or a few people who were instrumental to their success. They can name the mentors who encouraged them, showed them the error of their ways and helped them over the humps. - MORE
Principles of Leadership
Many wish to be leaders. Few understand the true essence of Leadership, which is a compound of four separate ingredients,each one necessary and absolutely vital to all of the others. Those ingredients are: - MORE
Developing Leadership Skills
The first area that we look at is that of Personal Attributes. This is a blend of knowledge, expertise, and competencies, encapsulated in the approach, the behaviour, of the leader. In organisations of all sizes and in all sectors, public and private, these characteristics are key to effective leadership. The essential personal attributes are as follows. - MORE
5 Tips for Finding Your Core Competencies
Imagine if during an interview process, you could tell a sales recruit what sales performance competencies are needed and measured...
and what levels are necessary to be successful at the sales poistion being considered. - MORE
Back To Back: Two Good Reads On Entry Level Leadership And Culture
This month, I read two books back to back: Soldier's Heart by Elizabeth Samet and Punching In by Alex Frankel. Both of these works are an excellent introduction into entry-level corporate culture and leadership development. - MORE
12 Ways Leaders Tell Their People They Are Important
Leaders know the old saying "How you act shouts so loudly I can't hear what you're saying" is the truth. They use it to their advantage. Leaders know the greatest sense of accomplishment and importance often comes from non – monetary rewards, and from positive recognition from the person who is the boss. And they know they can do it without "breaking the rules" or incurring big expenses. - MORE
Sales Motivation and the Role of Leadership
Leadership is Motivation, the Leader is a Motivator
We're not talking about the kind of motivator who arrives and excites everyone and then leaves. That is not motivation. Real motivation lasts longer than twenty-four hours. Real motivation is the key to effective leadership, and leadership is the key to effective motivation. - MORE
Forcing best practices by controlling competition
Competition can breathe life into any sales organization and is an essential element for sustainable growth.
What is often overlooked, though, is how competition, if managed incorrectly, can lead to both successful reps and innovative managers holding onto their BEST-PRACTICES If this hoarding of information continues unabated the gap between the productive and non-productive employees widens. As the gap widens jealousy and resentment increases and any chance of cooperation is lost. - MORE
Pure Discipline
General George S. Patton was born on November 11, 1885 on his fathers ranch and vineyard in Los Angeles County over what is today the city of Pasadena and much of the UCLA campus. Early in life he was small and weak, but raw determination and drive built up body day-by-day, piece-by-piece. - MORE
Integrity in Leadership - How we treat those closest to us
Recently, during a conversation with friends, someone wondered aloud why we are often more polite and patient with strangers than with those closest to us. It really is a great question, and one, I am sure, many of us can relate to. - MORE
10 Critical Leadership Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
You want to be an effective leader? Don't make these mistakes!
Leadership is an art form. Even though some people are "born" leaders it is an attribute that can be learned. However, to be a truly effective leader sometimes it is more important to know what not to do than what to do. - MORE
Sun Tzu
The Art of War is an ancient Chinese text on strategy and warfare written by a Sun Tzu, a brilliant military general more than two thousand years ago. It is considered one of the oldest attempts at analyzing and documenting the specific components of strategic warfare, with wisdom that is as applicable today as it was thousands of years ago. - MORE
Six Ideas to Help You Keep Success in Succession Planning
Your team has the right players on the field. Unfortunately, they've gone into the game with an empty bench. What are their chances of success? "Slim to none," you're probably thinking. "What a ridiculous way to run a football team." Why then do so many companies operate without key personnel in the ready? - MORE
Wolf - Lone Wolf or the Narcissist
CEOs or Presidents, who attain positions of power, reach these positions for a variety of reasons. The reasons are not always a result of competency and hard work; these positions are not always earned. As a result employees find themselves under the rule of various kinds of leaders. - MORE
Why communicating the vision of top leadership is necessary
Vision is crucial for an organisation, even more than it is for an individual. Communicating the vision of the top leadership is absolutely necessary. Why is it so? There are several reasons which contribute to the importance of corporate vision's being communicated through proper channels from top to the bottom and the impact it has on people. - MORE
Developing Highly Productive and Highly Positive Teams
In all walks of life teams exist to get results. Getting results depends on teams being both productive and positive. Teams can be highly productive running at 100 miles an hour but have low levels of morale. On the flip side they might be highly optimistic but never get anything done. So what are essential ingredients of highly productive and highly positive teams? - MORE
Leadership Character Traits -21 Core Qualities to Guarantee Success (Part 1 of 4)
Your character is comprised of 21 distinct qualities that distinguish you from other people. Character is a constant standard that enables you to evaluate your daily performance and helps you to determine to what extent you have control, discipline, order, and precision in your life. This report is part one (1 of 4) of a four part series, which explains 21 distinct character traits.- MORE
Coaching, Coaxing or Counselling ? A blueprint for a successful corporate coaching partnership
Three clients in the space of a week asked me if I'd seen the Harvard Business Review article by Steven Berglas on "The Very Real Dangers of Executive Coaching (June 2002)." One client was particularly interested in my reaction to the article's contention that coaching services provided by people who were not psychologically trained, experienced or skilled, could be destructive. - MORE
Seven Personal Characteristics Of A Good Leader
How often have you heard the comment, "He or she is a born leader?" There are certain characteristics found in some people that seem to naturally put them in a position where they're looked up to as a leader. - MORE
Character Traits of Extraordinary Leaders
When people make a decision (either consciously or unconsciously) to follow your leadership, they do it primarily because of one of two things: Your Character or your Skills. They want to know if you are the kind of person they want to follow and if you have the skills to take them further. Yes, there are other variables but these are the bulk of the matter. This week we focus on the kind of character that causes people to follow your leadership. - MORE
Leadership Character Traits - 21 Core Qualities to Guarantee Success (Part 2 of 4)
Honesty is conduct that is trustworthy. It is conduct that is upright, fair, sincere, and truthful. It is saying what you mean and doing what you say. Honesty is more than not telling a lie… it is telling the truth. It is living up to the spirit of an agreement, word or bond between responsible parties. - MORE
Leadership Character Traits - 21 Core Qualities to Guarantee Success (Part 3 of 4)
Dependability is conduct, which is reliable and trustworthy. It is consistently performing when others are relying on your conduct, your products, or service. It is measuring up. When others rely on you, it is simply being there when you are needed. - MORE
Leadership Character Traits - 21 Core Qualities to Guarantee Success (Part 4 of 4)
Spirituality is an understanding that there is a higher order to life and that life has meaning. It is an expression of your attitude and disposition to the essence and meaning of life. Spirituality, regardless of its origin, is meant to convey a lifestyle of charity, fellowship and goodness. - MORE
