Leadership is a major factor in determining the success of any organization. Effective leadership requires more than just achieving ultimate goals; it also involves inspiring and motivating employees to bring out their best efforts. As we move through 2023, many organizations are seeking new ways to drive team performance and ensure reliable results well beyond the current year. Here are valuable pieces of advice for executive managers on how they can lead their teams to success in 2023 and beyond.
Comprehensive Product & Solution Knowledge
As any successful team or company knows, product knowledge is power. With a comprehensive understanding of your organization’s product or solution comes the confidence to explain its features, advantages, and most importantly, its benefits effectively and authentically in any type of presentation.
“Comprehensive product/solution knowledge and sales excellence (from training and field experience) will lead to confidence in presenting your company’s value proposition,” said Jeffrey Tourek, an executive sales leader based in the Dallas, Texas area. “Confidence is critical in terms of gaining credibility with your prospects and moving deals forward.”
As Tourek mentions, to reach this level of expertise it is important to provide product training and field experience for every team member so they can use their newfound knowledge to help win over customers, gain market share, and increase overall client satisfaction. Doing this will ensure that your product or solution stands out as one of the best in the field.
Alongside (and possibly more important than) upholding a comprehensive knowledge of the product is having a strong grasp of your company’s mission statement to add power to your overall value proposition.
“Understanding your company’s mission statement and sales/growth initiatives and being able to effectively communicate them to your team is important as well,” said Tourek. “It requires strategic thinking/planning in developing and implementing sales strategies and sharing best practices to help grow your company and meet your corporate initiatives.”
Fostering and Upholding Teamwork
Teamwork in the workplace is invaluable for the achievement of common organizational goals. Upholding teamwork helps cultivate an atmosphere of empowerment, emphasizing that everyone has a part to play in contributing to the common cause. It is also beneficial in fostering collaboration among different departments while encouraging communication, understanding, and trust between peers. Encouraging teamwork is key to ensuring success and helping your organization reach their desired outcomes.
“Fostering teamwork as a leader is important to instilling success within your team,” said Tourek. “Your team is only as strong as its weakest link; therefore, everyone working together and helping each other towards a common goal will strengthen weaknesses and increase the likelihood of success for all.”
Upholding a cooperative working environment doesn’t end with departmental teams. Rather, it extends cross-functionally to strengthen processes, shared goals, and company culture and outcomes.
“Encouraging the sharing of information (ideas, best practices, and successes) is critical as we can all learn from others, and incorporating this added information gives you power,” said Tourek.
Recognizing and Developing Your Team
Recognizing the accomplishments of your team and promoting training and professional development are key aspects of robust leadership. By fostering a collaborative working environment, presenting training opportunities, and providing constructive feedback, leaders can create a climate of growth that encourages internal success while also demonstrating to external stakeholders the organization’s capability for excellence.
“Taking time to recognize your team’s accomplishments is probably the most beneficial thing you can do as a leader to improve team morale and motivate them,” said Tourek. “It just makes good sense as we all work hard to achieve our goals and meet expectations so taking some time to ‘smell the roses’ is well deserved and gratifying.”
Furthermore, valuing achievements with recognition motivates workers to continue to strive for new and greater accomplishments—which can ultimately translate into more reliable overall organizational performance. This can take on my different forms.
“Publishing stack rankings of your staff’s performance is one way to let your staff see how they stack-up against their peers and is a great tool you can use to recognize individual and team accomplishments,” said Tourek. “If you are recognizing someone for a deal won, take time to understand the effort taken to win it so that you can highlight the effort along with the win. This includes recognizing those that contributed to the win from other departments as well. This will help to build those relationships too.”
Tourek also notes companywide or division wide announcements during meetings and company events as a noteworthy way to recognize staff on a routine basis.
Investing in training and development of your employees is essential for the success of any organization. Leaders must ensure that their employees have access to custom training plans, as well as routine feedback on performance. When it comes to product training, the focus needs to be on how to sell the products, not just the features, advantages and benefits of the products. This includes identifying the most desirable prospects and persons within their organizations to approach, establishing the value proposition for them, and learning how to handle possible objections. SWOT analyses on the competition in the marketplace should also be created and discussed.
“This is one of the most important leadership principles and probably the most difficult to pull-off effectively,” said Tourek. “It takes time and requires a fair amount of effort to establish an understanding of everyone’s developmental needs, provide them with helpful feedback to address their needs, and monitor their progress against it.”
Tourek proposes a multifaceted approach of clearly establishing goals and objectives for the position, working directly with team members to assess performance, providing honest and direct feedback aligned to the expectations already established, and creating a customized development plan dependent on the individual’s strengths, weaknesses, and professional goals.
Additionally, receiving input from your staff’s peers is helpful as it will provide you with a different perspective in creating your development plan for your staff members.
“The entire reason for going through this process is to help your staff be more productive and successful and help them with promotional opportunities. It’s all about them, not you!” said Tourek.
Such initiatives can be critical to the growth of employees on an individual level, while also allowing the business to maintain a competitive edge. Offering training and development to employees will pay big dividends, not only for those at lower levels, but ultimately for the whole organization’s success.
Taking these tips into consideration can benefit an organization immensely, aligning your personnel with your organization’s mission in an effective way. We invite you to implement these recommendations to grow and develop your team so that you may build upon a strong foundation of success for both your organization and its members.