6 Effective Leadership Principles That Make a Successful Salesperson

In order to become a successful salesperson, you need to have a winning personality, the right skills, experience and a set of principles you’ll continually work on. It takes a lot of effort and sales coaching to become a great salesperson that easily reaches their goals and understands how to help other team members. 

Leadership may come easier to some people, but our actionable guide will help you figure out which principles you need to work on to grow as a salesperson. The principles you rely on are almost a list of morals you want your team to follow. That way, you’re not only reaching your goals but are also helping your team members grow as people. 

When everyone follows the same leadership principles, the company culture becomes positive and teamwork is encouraged. That means that no one comes to work with a pit in their stomach, which is essential for salespeople. 

Openly admit your mistakes

A great salesperson isn’t afraid to admit to their mistakes, especially while there is still time to correct them. While no one wants to make mistakes on purpose, when they happen, you should be proactive and look for ways to fix them. 

There are several reasons why you should transparently admit your mistakes:

• It’s the only way to get back on the right track and make sure you salvage the project and fix the relationship with the client.
  
• Admitting your mistakes helps build your team’s confidence in you. No one wants to work with a person whose ego is so big that they can never admit they’re wrong.
  
• It helps you and your team learn. Not everyone has to make all the same mistakes, you can all learn from each other. 

Being transparent about your mistakes actually makes you a better team member. Remember that all of you are working towards the same goal, which is why all of your team members will be eager to help you out. 

Fixing each other's mistakes can help strengthen the team since it allows people to get vulnerable. Once everyone in the team feels comfortable enough to ask for help, they all start working as one. 

Think outside the box

Once you’ve been working in a specific role for a while, you’ve surely had ideas on how to better specific aspects of the sales process. Knowing how to pitch your idea and go through with it is an essential sales principle. 

Although it may not seem like it, sales is a creative process and you need to continuously look for ways to optimize it and better your results. That way, you’ll never get stuck in a rut and your motivation won’t suffer. 

Being self-motivated is an extremely important skill for salespeople. You can not rely on other people to be your cheerleaders and make sure your spirits are high. That’s why we recommend being proactive about your motivation even before the need arises. 

Find ways to make your job exciting for both you and the client. It could mean changing the way you communicate - opting for meetings instead of calls and emails or finding a new way to explain the benefits of your solution. 

If just numbers (like ROI and an estimated increase in sales) aren’t packing enough of a punch, try opting for an infographic or a storytelling approach. That way your clients will get a better understanding of the benefits you can bring them and how partnering up with you will affect their brand and standing in the market. 

You need to stay relevant and know how to react to new changes in the market. Creativity can help you deal with those situations. Make sure your sales coaching includes different ways one could proactively work on their approach in order to change with the market.

Lead by example

A successful salesperson knows how to lead by example. This is a skill that is often believed not to be a part of the sales coaching process, however, it should be worked on. 

The biggest tip we can give you is to always explain to your team members why you want them to do something. If you’re only telling them what to do, but aren’t looking at them like equals and aren’t sharing the reasons behind the changes, you’re not a good leader. 

The definition of a good sales leader is knowing how to motivate your team to work towards the bigger picture. Communication and approach are essential in sales. You need to be able to present your goals in a way that makes your team members excited to work on them. 

Once you understand how to communicate with your team, you’ll see how it reflects on their actions. 

Another big part of leading by example is knowing when it’s time to work and when you can take it easy. If you’re constantly complaining about your job and finding flaws in everyone around you, you won’t set a good example for your team. 

Your work ethic needs to be inspirational for others. If you’re a hard worker, dedicated and a good team player, you’ve mastered the art of leading by example. 

Make sure to think about those values while you’re giving feedback as well. If you can dish it but can’t take it, you’re a weak member of the team. Make sure that communication with your team members goes both ways and that you are open to constructive criticism. After all, no one is exempt from sales coaching.

Focus on teamwork

Teamwork is dream work and never has it been as easy as it is today. Since the biggest shift to remote work we’ve ever seen, it’s been easier than ever to hire and collaborate with people from all over the world. 

With this shift in culture, you have little to no excuses for not having a good team collaboration. We’ve seen the boom of remote work tools happen in real-time and seeing how they’ve been used and loved by millions of people, you can rest assured they work amazingly. 

Since the companies have a lot of data, they can even help you address potential issues you never even knew existed.

So whether you’re working from an office or home, make sure you’re using the best tools to help you collab with your team members. 

Here is a list of reliable sales tools that can help you focus on teamwork and transform your sales coaching process.

Slack for communication

Since remote working usually includes partnering up with people in different time zones, it’s important to choose the right communication tools. Slack is amazing because it supports asynchronous communication. 

That refers to communication that doesn’t happen in real-time. So instead of talking to your colleagues on the phone, in person or on a video call, you send them a message and wait for them to find the right time to respond. 

Asynchronous communication allows your team members to focus on their work without interruptions. That way, no one's productivity is lowered by sudden meetings, calls etc. 

Slack is a great tool for your team because it lets them connect with individuals as well as various teams without being intrusive. That means you can workshop ideas, and share insight and the newest data.

Sharing information openly with your team reinforces a principle we already mentioned - leading by example. The more transparent you are with your team, the easier it will be for everyone to focus on their work and reach their goals. 

Otherwise, they will spend their time speculating about internal affairs. 

Better Proposals for closing deals

Creating business proposals doesn’t have to be a dull and lonely process. With Better Proposals, you can create a beautiful proposal your client will want to read in no time. 

Our rich library of proposal templates will help you find the right one to customize to your needs. In order to further speed up your proposal process, we integrated a digital signature into our sales documents. 

All your client has to do is type in their name and it will get turned into a legally binding signature that can be traced by time stamps and their IP address. 

That way, your clients won’t have to print out your proposal, which would significantly slow down the agreement process. 

As you can see in our proposal report, printing decreases your chances of conversion by a whopping 88%. 

Furthermore, our payment integrations let you collect fees through the proposal itself. You can choose between PayPal, Stripe and GoCardless. When you start collecting payments through the proposal, you’ll see a significant decrease in the time it takes you to get paid. 

The best thing about our proposals? You can work on them collaboratively. Since we’re a web-based platform, your team members with the right access can check in on each other's proposals before they get sent out. 

Furthermore, our reports help you keep an eye on the conversion rate, the number of proposals sent and more.

Be open to collaborations

In order for your team to grow, sometimes you need to join forces with other departments. Make sure you create a successful work environment, meaning, your company shouldn’t foster the every-person-for-themselves mentality. 

If you all have the same goal and want to see other departments succeed, you’ll find it logical to collaborate with the marketing and product department as well as customer service and designers. 

We recommend looking into creating a revenue team that consists of multiple different departments. Sharing data, customer feedback and everyone's skills and expertise will help you better understand your audience and how to engage them at different points in your sales pipeline. 

You should also provide everyone with sales coaching, just to help them better understand the whole process.

Creating such a team could help you: 

• Better qualify your leads
• Build loyal relationships with existing customers
• Shorter sales cycles
• Have higher conversion rates
• Experience faster growth and more

Since the marketing team is great at creating content, let them make the type of blogs, books, guides and other content you’ll need to share with leads at different times. Make sure you’re addressing the right benefits and issues by getting that data from your customer success team. 

Collaborating with the right people will help you become more successful at gaining new customers, and addressing the needs of current ones. 

Hold your team accountable

Everybody on the sales team has their own roles and responsibilities, as well as goals. In order for the team to function as one, everyone needs to be responsible and make sure they’re meeting their deadlines. 

The best way to achieve that is by holding each other accountable. This could be done in a number of different ways: 

• By holding weekly meetings in which you discuss what was done, what’s in progress and what needs to be worked on next.
  
• With reports that your team members write at the end of every day/week/month.
  
• By utilizing a project management software like Asana or Jira. Compare some Asana competitors if you don’t know where to start.
• And, of course with regular check-ins.

It’s important to find a way to do this without micromanaging. If the team feels like sales coaching is hindering their growth, you’ll experience a high turnover rate. Knowing when to let the team figure things out on their own is a sign of a true sales leader. 

A good step toward the right direction is making sure everyone in the team feels valued. If they know that their efforts are being met with positive reinforcement, then the team members will be more inclined to do a good job. 

While awarding employees is important, it’s also important to have repercussions for the ones that are bringing the team down. If the customer support is late with their responses and doesn’t provide potential customers with accurate answers, then the efforts of the sales team might be in vain. 

Holding everyone accountable might fix these issues and create a better functioning sales team. 

Conclusion

Now that you know which leadership principles you need to work on in order to better your sales coaching process, all there’s left to do is make sure you’re equipped with the right tools. 

Sign up for our free trial and experience the ease of writing, sending and tracking business proposals that help you win more deals. Increase your conversion rate and get paid faster with Better Proposals.