What It Means to Be an Inspiring Sales Leader

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You’ve just been promoted to a leadership position. You’ve worked hard to get here, but, now that you have, you’ve started worrying about your new responsibilities. You don’t just want to be a leader — you want to be an inspiring leader.

But where do you start?

To find out, we went to the expert: Mark Ebert, SVP at 6sense, who joined us to go over exactly what makes a phenomenal leader and how to start your journey.

What you need to know to be a great sales leader

A leader is not a manager

Often, when people talk about leadership, they’re actually talking about management. Leaders and managers are both needed, but they aren’t the same thing.

A leader is specifically someone who empowers and influences others in an attempt to develop the best version of themselves, while a manager simply, well… manages.

Leaders foster open communication

The chief characteristics of an effective leader are trust and transparency. Without those, it’s impossible to lead a team to be successful.

The primary way you achieve these characteristics is through open communication — if your team doesn’t feel they can be open about what is going on in their lives, then they will never trust you.

Phenomenal leaders inspire their teams

When Mark thinks about great leaders in his life, his thoughts quickly turn to his current CEO. That’s because one of his mantras is, “We know you won’t be at 6sense forever, but we want to ensure that your stop here is the best stop on your career journey.”

It’s a powerful lesson that shows that true leaders look to support their teams beyond the mere scope of the job — they want to make sure the team is winning just as much as the company.

What do you need to do

Instill confidence

If you want your team to shine, they need to be empowered to be the best version of themselves possible. It’s good for them and the company because it helps create a shared set of goals and a sense of purpose.

One thing that’s paramount to the success of this approach is that you need to help your teams understand why leadership is making the decisions they are. This kind of transparency builds trust and ensures that everyone feels like they have a stake in not just their paycheck but the success of the company at large.

Create an open environment

Trust is created by open communication, but open communication isn’t just something you can turn on with the flip of a switch. No, open communication only happens when you cultivate it.

There are two things you can start doing today to make sure you are creating that environment:

• Remove the stigma around talking about mental wellbeing. If people are afraid to be vulnerable, then that’s bad for them and for your company.
• Let them know that you are concerned about more than just your revenue targets, that you care about the things outside of their control, too. Make it clear that those are things leadership will help them solve.

Retain top talent

Ultimately, an inspired team comes from two things:

1. Hiring the best talent for your organization
2. Keeping the best talent in your organization

You need to let your organization’s mission and purpose shine through from the very first interview all the way to the exit interview.

The best way to do this is by making it clear that you care about their success by articulating your desire to help them win. Only one thing tops this approach:

Winning.

“As a sales leader, you retain when you’re winning. And that’s easy — so long as you’re winning”

Mark Ebert, SVP at 6sense

Just remember

A leader is not a manager. Your job as a leader is to empower, inspire and motivate the individuals on your team to be the best version of themselves they can be.

Only then can you become a truly effective leader.

Now that you know what it takes to be a great sales leader, are you ready to dive into how to rehumanize your customer experience or learn the secrets to personalizing at scale? Check out the full list of episodes: The B2B Revenue Executive Experience.

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