Video
Complimentary Resource
Episode Transcript
Alex Chan | Paul O’Donohue
I have a question for you, and this is a question I ask at the start of every episode in this video series. What’s that? The question is, if you’re a business owner or CEO, Are You Recession Ready? Now, this session covers step number five of the SalesStar nine Step High-Performance Pathway: Leadership and Management. Paul O’Donohue is SalesStar’s Founder and CEO, and I’m welcoming him back right now to discuss this really important matter with us. Paul, hi and welcome back. Leadership and management in a time of crisis. This is a leader’s chance to shine, is it not?
Leaders are found in times of war, Alex. Not in times of peace. So sales managers, sales leaders that have looked good and have led teams through good economic times will definitely get found out through an economic crisis. And those good leaders, the ones with the good mindsets, a good strategy that can let their team manage effectively, they will rise to the occasion.
Yeah. You know, during the global financial crisis of 2008, I saw a lot of cases where a lot of business leaders got their team together and they really rallied them and they addressed the elephant in the room. They said, Hey, look, things are going really difficult. Things are really challenging at the moment. And they start calling for ideas and get the staff to really buy in to be part of the solution. I wonder how many of our viewers are getting their staff to buy in to be part of the solution?
Well, it’s a sign of good leadership. First and foremost, what I noticed through the global financial crisis, there was a few prospects that I called on that were actually doing really well through a recession. And I always ask, you know, hey, what’s the secret sauce? And several of them gave me this answer “We’re just not buying into the recession.” So the number one thing is mindset, right? If you don’t buy into it and you don’t believe it’s there, you’re not going to poison your people with negative thoughts of recession. Because when we have those negative thoughts, we often manifest and lean into the story that we hear in our own voice. Like, if you think we’re in a recession and you think no one’s going to buy from you, you kind of look for evidence to support that story. So that’s one thing we need to be mindful of as a leader when we’re leading through tough economic conditions.
So a leader at all times needs to be really self-aware and to really model positive behavior. But this is absolutely paramount at a time of crisis, isn’t it?
Sort one of the other things that’s paramount, Alex, is getting everyone on the same page, getting your team to build the plan. And I always say that those who plan the fight, don’t fight the plan. So talk about running your team. Like if you get the one page sales plan that we mentioned of in an earlier video, that’s a fantastic asset to work through with your entire sales team to get everyone on the same page. Have a rethink about the target markets that you need to that are more attractive through an economic crisis. Think about your strategic messaging and how you’re going to differentiate yourself and get everyone to buy in to those leading KPIs. It’s way easier to hold people accountable when they’ve come up with the KPIs for themselves. And it’s almost giving you permission as a leader to hold them accountable.
Right. So KPIs for accountability to make sure that everybody does what needs to be done in a time of crisis laced with leadership so that people actually follow you and buy into being part of the plan to navigate the situation.
And don’t forget management as well. Like now it’s time to have really high performance sales meetings like, best practice is weekly. Your sales team should be looking forward to the sales meeting – it should be the best meeting of the week. So it shouldn’t be more than an hour. It should be motivational and should be also holding them accountable in a healthy way as a group, and maybe an element of certainly an element of dealing with a challenge or giving them something new in terms of sales, training or coaching like performance coach them. Then there’s also the one on ones we should institute. We should be having a one on one with every sales person to look at the pipeline. And that’s why it’s so important. And the previous video we talked about is the right systems, your pipeline management system. We as managers need to really manage that in order to really forecast accurately through those times.
Great. Paul, that’s great leadership and great management. Thank you very much for sharing that. Is there something that our viewers can download to help them on their journey?
There’s a fantastic e-book and it’s called How to Lead Your Team to Success. So there’s a link down below somewhere download that. I’m sure you’ll get a ton of value from it.
Okay. Thanks for sharing those thoughts with us today. Paul. To our viewers, as always, if you want to know more, reach out to a SalesStar High-Performance coach. We are here to help and remember to continue following the series to get the full overview of how to be Recession Ready as we continue with our journey through the SalesStar nine step high-performance pathway. Once again, remember to watch out for the key strategic moves that a manager can make later in the series. Thanks very much for joining us. We’ll see you next time
