“This book will open your eyes, your mind, your time and your calendar, so you can get control of your day, create company‐wide alignment, and focus on the most important activity for every sales leader – the ongoing support and development of your team through consistent coaching.”
Tony Owens, President at Salesforce
“Keith guides you on the path to become an exceptional leader who communicates, coaches and creates sales champions, as well as the future leaders of your organization. Read it. Practice it. Apply it. Then, keep it on your desk as your personal playbook to continually develop your most important leadership habit – effective coaching.”
Nathan Stone, Country Manager – Canada, New Business Sales, Google
“A succinct and practical guide for getting the best from others and yourself that every people leader needs to refer to daily. If you want to become a transformational leader, this book paves the path for you.”
David Jullo, Country Leader EMEA, Microsoft
“Keith focuses on both the skill set and the mindset to create a simple, clear and intuitive path to become a transformational leader, and provides simple, yet highly effective questions that are sure to deliver value in every interaction. His intuitive, LEADS Coaching Framework needs to be the starting point in every conversation, and can easily become your entire organization's rhythm of business so coaching becomes a natural, healthy and essential habit for every leader!”
Channing Ferrer, VP, Sales Strategy and Operations, HubSpot
“Culture is not just important, it is everything. It is the code that binds every company together in the toughest of times; when our true character stands out. Sales Leadership is your fundamental guide to the journey of becoming a great leader that will lead to building a top performing team. This book is a compelling – comprehensive manual guide for building a high performance commercial team. I felt like Keith was reading my mind, as the content answers my most relevant leadership questions.”
Julio Cesar Silva, Head of Sales, AstraZeneca
“There's the typical communication that dominates most organizations, then there's communicating like a compassionate, influential leader. Keith's book teaches you to become not only a strategic, coach and thinker, but a strategic, intentional communicator who truly inspires positive change. Even after decades of my own experience as a senior executive, Sales Leadership has provided new insights in how to best support my team and organization to more effectively achieve our business objectives.”
Scott Bell, Regional Vice President, Volkswagen Group of America
“Keith's framework around the ‘Art of Enrollment' particularly jumped out as a critical conversation to creating the alignment and buy‐in needed around sales coaching, as well as the company vision, business objectives and agile change. By weaving in some proven leadership strategies through artful storytelling and practical examples, Sales Leadership is a book for the sales manager who truly wants to create a thriving sales culture and make a difference.””
Robert A. David, Berkley, Director of Corporate Education, University of California, Berkeley
“Sales Leadership is not just for sales leaders. This is a visionary book for every leader and salesperson. Keith is spot on regarding how the next generation of top salespeople are going to coach their customers, and this book shows you how. It's packed with concrete steps on what it takes to transform from a spreadsheet manager and into an authentic sales leader, how to effectively coach to each person's individuality and motivations that align personal goals with our business objectives, and so much more. Truly a game changer.”
Al Guido, President at San Francisco 49ers and CEO of Elevate Sports Ventures
“This book is even more insightful, more specific with the “how to's”, and even more enlightened. Keith's global tours and vast amount of direct experience in this coaching arena have made him an expert and a bit of an oracle on the concepts. One should not doubt him, one should pay attention and execute to what he offers.”
Mitch Little, V.P. WW Sales & Applications, Microchip Technology Inc., Author of Shiftability
“Keith's personal experiences made the book relevant, and accurately reflected a global leadership point of view that is refreshingly effective.”
Thomas de Buhr, Managing Director, Twitter Germany
“As a sales leader, I have sought to help my teams in a simple direct and pragmatic way to guide them to their success. But coaching sales organizations that is simple conceptually is not always easy to implement, or at least until I met Keith Rosen. With this new book and the evolution of Keith's approach to sales coaching, this complex but necessary skill is even simpler and easier to implement and use all day, every day, supporting your sales teams to be motivated and successful.”
Giuseppe Rossi, Vice President, Solution Sales EMEA, CA Technologies
“Anyone who wants to help their team do the best work of their careers not only needs to read this book but should have it on the corner of their desk for daily reference. If you want to know how to exponentially transform your team, culture and results, follow Keith's prescriptive coaching advice and templates without hesitation. I have, and it's evident in the success of our company's results and engagement scores. With this follow on to Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions, the new playbook is complete, thorough, exact and off‐the‐chart insightful.”
David Turner, CEO, Contegix
“Every leadership book does not apply to sales leadership. Salespeople are uniquely special, and the lifeline of every business. They need to be trained, coached, respected and supported in a way that aligns with their sales DNA and individuality. Keith has created a coaching code designed by and for salespeople that's sure to optimize performance, loyalty, and retention. Clearly the best book on sales leadership I've seen in a decade.”
Gerhard Gschwandtner, Founder and CEO, Selling Power
“This is the most practical coaching framework I've seen, especially for busy sales leaders. No filler, or abstract theory that you have to decipher to apply. You'll find the questions and tools can be easily applied in every conversation, every day. An insightful and knowledgeable guide, full of everything you need to know on how to coach your team to excellence – and become the leader you want to be.”
Frédéric Chauvire, Vice President EMEA North General Business and Channel at SAP
“Keith has beautifully captured what caring, busy managers can do to avoid impatience, frustration and instead, to make coaching actually easy and impactful, and their own jobs more fulfilling. Exceptional companies and leaders realize that to ignite engagement, innovation and growth, the ability to execute and over‐perform requires the right coaching conversations and a supportive culture. Keith lays out in practical detail, not only how to implement a successful coaching initiative but also provides practical guidance to ensure you and your company are adequately prepared to do so.”
Simon Frewer, Global Director of Sales & Marketing Solutions (“Challenger” practice) and Talent Development Practices at CEB/Gartner
“Implementing Keith's Sales Leadership playbook will drive the success and scalability of your team to achieve superior results, while making every manager's job easier. The templates and coaching talk tracks to handle the essential management conversations, especially the difficult ones, will help you develop happy, productive people who enjoy coming to work.”
Colleen Honan, Chief Sales Officer, Brainshark
“Keith Rosen has written a must‐read guide for every sales leader regardless of industry or organization. In our fast‐paced business, being able to productively coach anyone in 15 minutes, 5 minutes or using just one defining question, Sales Leadership accelerates greater results.”
Vincent Lombardo, Chief Sales Officer at Heartland Payment Systems
“When everyone is effectively coaching and unconditionally supporting each other That's when you know a healthy coaching culture has emerged. Sales Leadership is the best book ever written on how to do it well. This book is the ultimate reference guide to drive maximum performance and engagement.”
Conor Gleeson, VP Alliances and Channel, Oracle Direct, EMEA
“The days of, “I promoted my top rep to manager and they're struggling” are over, when you make your salespeople great coaches. The way companies make purchasing decisions is continually evolving, which is why your salespeople and managers need to transform into influential, outstanding coaches. Keith shares a simple, yet effective strategies every leader needs to become a great coach, and his magic is in showing the how around what great coaching sounds like – with proven tactics and techniques to make you a better leader, whether you're a salesperson, new manager or a seasoned veteran.”
Tony Rodoni, Executive Vice President, Salesforce
“As a Vice President of Sales for both Oracle and Microsoft for over 20 years, I've had the fortune of leading the greatest sales teams in the technology industry. I've read all the sales leadership books you can think of and have sponsored all the sales and leadership trainings you can imagine. Many of these books and workshops were written or delivered by people who never lived in the trenches. Zero scars. Keith is different. He gets it. As VP of Sales at Microsoft, I hosted Keith multiple times to work with my sales leaders. He connected with them with his unique approach that inspired and motivated them into taking action. Results? He turned my sales leaders into great coaches that developed sales champions. Our C‐ level relationships and revenue results during this time speak for themselves. Number one team in the country multiple times. His new book, Sales Leadership, takes this critical role and coaching conversation to another level. I'm proud to say that Keith has been an Executive Sales Coach for me. I strongly recommend this book. His coaching and workshops changed the game for our teams at Microsoft. Lastly, his approach is not limited to sales Leaders. Keith's approach is for anyone who has the honor, privilege and responsibility to help others grow and succeed.”
John Fikany, CEO The Fikany Group, previous VP of Sales for Microsoft and Oracle
“Being a great leader takes much more than leveraging a coaching framework and developing your coaching acumen. It's the inner game of leadership, the mindset and way of being that expands your thinking to create that coaching magic and exceptional results you never thought possible. Before you change your behavior and the outcome, you need to change your mindset, and this book coaches you to do so flawlessly. Keith's authentic, honest, candid and caring approach to coaching is exactly how to coach individuals rather than manage a team uncover powerful coaching moments that often go unnoticed.”
Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce
Copyright © 2018 by Keith Rosen. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
If you want to buy a bunch of these books to share this gift with others, we can help. We can also co‐brand and customize this book specifically for you or your organization and you may even qualify for a complimentary workshop with Keith.
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data:
Names: Rosen, Keith, author.
Title: Sales leadership: The essential leadership framework to coach sales champions, inspire excellence, and exceed your business goals / Keith Rosen.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2018] | Includes index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018022526 (print) | LCCN 2018025346 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119483243 (Adobe PDF) | ISBN 9781119483274 (ePub) | ISBN 9781119483250 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Sales force management. | Employees—Coaching of. Classification: LCC HF5439.5 (ebook) | LCC HF5439.5 .R669 2018 (print) | DDC 658.3/1245—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018022526
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: © kyoshino / iStockphoto
To my extraordinary wife, best friend, and soul mate, Lori, and my three miraculous children, Jessica, Nicole, and Jett, you are the center of my universe and fill my life with meaning, laughter, joy, fulfillment, peace, and purpose. My life is truly perfect because of you. Thank you for your patience, support, and for tolerating me through this writing process so that I can honor my commitment and passion to making the world a better place, one person at a time.
You will forever be my guiding light, my inspiration, my reason for living, and what keeps me focused on the priorities that truly matter most in life. I love you deeply and forever.
Years ago, there lived a wise and noble king. The king lived a happy life with his beautiful wife. A few years after their marriage, his wife got sick and died soon after. Unfortunately, this tragedy occurred before having children, leaving the king to rule the kingdom alone.
While devastated by the loss of his wife, the king stayed true to his commitment to rule with honor and take care of the people in his kingdom.
The love for his wife was so strong, the king couldn't bear the thought of ever getting married again. As the years passed, having no children of his own, the king knew the time would come when he would have to find the right man who, upon his death, would take his place as king. Since there was no bloodline and no son who could rightfully take the king's place, he called upon the people of the kingdom to help him find a suitable heir to the throne. The king knew there would have to be a test of some sort that would help identify the most promising candidate.
One day, while the king was taking a stroll through the countryside, he came upon a massive sinkhole that must have been about 750 meters long and 100 meters wide. “I've got it!” exclaimed the king. “I know the test that would help me identify the next king.” And with that, he quickly returned to the castle to share his idea with his advisors. The very next day, the king issued a decree throughout the kingdom. “Come one, come all. In three weeks' time, those who feel worthy enough to take my place will meet in the town square to demonstrate why they should be heir to the kingdom.”
The day finally arrived. Thousands of people had traveled for miles from every corner of the kingdom to reach the town square, each carrying the dream of being chosen as the heir to the throne.
The king took these promising candidates out to the countryside to show them what he had found. “Here is the question that, if answered correctly, will earn you the rightful place as our next king.”
Pointing to the massive hole, he simply asked, “What should I do?”
After several days and hundreds of responses later, no one had yet to come up with the right answer. Repeatedly, the king would hear the same responses. “Fill it with rocks and dirt.” “Fill it with water.” “Build a bridge across the sinkhole.” “Build a wall around it.” “Put warning signs around the sinkhole.” “Make it a graveyard.” “Fortify it.” “Camouflage the sinkhole to protect us from our enemies.” While some of these may be interesting ideas, none of them were the answer the king was hoping for.
Two days went by. The king was getting discouraged, wondering if anyone was capable of thinking and acting like a successful king. As the number of candidates dwindled to a remaining few, it was time for one young man to answer the king's question; a poor farm boy from the countryside who was ridiculed by those older and wiser than he for even considering the possibility of becoming king. “So,” the king began with a disheartened and skeptical tone. “What should I do?”
The young man hesitated for a moment and then responded with, “Why do anything?”
Suddenly, the king's disposition changed. He looked at the young man and asked with hope, “Why? When everyone else advised me what I could do with the sinkhole, why are you the only one not to advise me at all, nor tell me what I should do? Why do you come to me with only a simple question?”
The young man respectfully answered. “Because I cannot answer your question, my king. I don't know your why. Until I understand not only what you want to do, but also why you want to do anything and what your intentions are, only then can we start to formulate the vision of your desired outcome and how we can go about creating it, even if you decide to do nothing.”
How insightful! Instead of telling the king what he would do, this young man simply presented the king with one question, a question so simple yet so powerful and often overlooked.
Why? After all, how could this young man align and collaborate effectively with the king if he didn't understand the king's motivations, intentions, and the why behind his beliefs, actions, opinions, decisions, behavior, goals, or values?
“Congratulations,” exclaimed the king. “You are the next heir to the throne of our kingdom.”
The town was shocked. The elders of the town questioned the king. “Why this boy?”
To which the king replied, “I never wanted to fix anything. That was not my intention. Everyone came to me with a solution to fix what they assumed was a problem that needed fixing. They never took the time to uncover and understand my why or my desired intentions and point of view.
“This young man was the only one who was insightful enough to seek out my intention—my point of view—and uncover my why,” the king concluded.
The key to being a great leader is understanding what your people want and expect from you, but more important, why they want it. When leading your team to a shared goal and vision, they need to understand not only what they need to do but also why they are doing it and what's in it for them, so they can see how they personally benefit.
To set and manage people's expectations and create alignment in thinking and action requires understanding people's why, who they are, their values, goals, and their intentions, while ensuring they are aligned with the company's why. This is what it takes to transform the culture and performance of any organization. What would it mean to you, your team, and to your organization if you could achieve companywide, unified alignment in thinking and action?
These leadership principles apply in every area of our lives. And when leading an organization or a team, when you can discover and articulate your collective why, only then can you harness the power of coaching as a cornerstone to develop your champion team and create a shared vision and a healthy, top‐performing culture.
What you do, what you sell, and what value you provide is the by‐product. The journey to cultural greatness begins with why, your one clear thing or vision. Your beacon. Why you do what you do is the essence of who you and your company are—your values, goals, and priorities as an individual and as a unified organization.
Which eloquently transitions our conversation to the first of many self‐reflective questions I'll be asking you.
It's one of the first questions I ask when working with a management team. On one end of the spectrum, managers tell me, “Keith, one day my boss came to me and asked if I wanted to be a manager. And poof! Just like that, I became a manager. No training or onboarding, of course. Just a scorecard, a quota, and a whole bunch of responsibilities.”
On the other end of the spectrum, regardless of what country or company I'm in, managers in every position report that they became a leader because the following priorities and core values are important to them.
When asked what values they compromise most due to the pressure to perform and do their job well, they listed:
There's a big problem. Managers are super conflicted in their role between what's asked of them and what's expected, while honoring who they are and their values.
New systems, processes, or technology do not transform your organization; they help manage it. That's why you must start by transforming your people. To create collective alignment and a shared vision and direction, you need to understand, respect, and support everyone's why. It is the impetus to a successful cultural transformation and to opening the door to your ideal kingdom. Here's to becoming the king of your domain. Well, maybe not king, but definitely a world‐class leader.
Since writing Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions in 2008, I've had the privilege of working with managers on five continents and in over 75 countries. This inspired me to further develop and refine what is now considered to be the top, universally applied coaching model used by the world's leading sales organizations.
Sales Leadership is the result of my 10‐year global quest to discover how to ignite unprecedented human achievement by developing leadership titans. Coaching Salespeople into Sales Champions was the first book of its kind that poured the foundation for coaching mastery. Sales Leadership further supports your journey to become an elite leader and trailblazing coach, reinforced by stories from across the world. In fact, you'll be thrilled to know that this book and the revised L.E.A.D.S. coaching framework will enable every busy, caring manager to have effective coaching conversations in 10 minutes or less!
Regardless of your position, experience, or industry, implementing the strategies throughout this book will make you part of the next generation of leaders who do remarkable things.
This leads us into the first chapter of our journey, where we begin to answer the question: Why is coaching the lynchpin that will either lead you and your company to greatness or toward mediocrity and inevitable failure?