Episode 67: Can You Really Be a Leader Without Understanding Sales, with Karl Brockman

Hi everyone, I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Team podcast where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate and keep together highly effective sales teams. Teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits. Along the journey. We also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive year is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious sales leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, stronger sales teams is right where you need to be. Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. Today we have Karl Brockman. And I didn't know we were in for such a treat until I saw the jacket that he is wearing when I logged into the podcast recording about 15 minutes ago. And for those who are listening on audio, you can't see it, those on video you certainly can. But imagine you've got a man present, pretty well refined, pretty polished, with a great big woolen jacket on, big collar out and all. So it is definitely, it is your hey, I'm here and ready to put on a show jacket. No doubt. But before I throw to Karl to respond to my instant sledge, I may as well introduce you. So Karl has worked with hundreds actually, and quite a few hundred, I think, diverse leaders and teams from around Australia. Large teams, small teams. Carl has definitely had experience and knows what it takes to build and maintain really good cultures and achieve great results. So for Karl to create high performing teams, it's all about mindset, leadership and people practices being the core pillars for those. I really like those resonates really well with me. This is why we've got Karl here today. But now in his day job, apart from wearing jackets to say, hey, I'm here and ready to deliver, he is a people and performance specialist. So he'll use his consulting experience and expertise to look at the real root causes around what's holding a business back. Often we skip over those. So super important. He'll then put the strategic steps in place with you and develop all those skills, structures and processes that you need to be able to build your business and your people, whether you be small or large. In terms of vision, I know Carl's big on this, but he's all about helping leaders launch, build and support the best teams in the world. So stay tuned. Carl has a great business coming called Gold Brick Road. It's not far away. We'll get some little snippets of it today. But that is absolutely a consultancy with a bit of a spin and something different. So first, first of all, Carl, welcome to today. How are you?

Thank you. Ben. What a beautiful introduction. It's nice when someone says nice words about you and past me would have been like, oh, nah, stop it or go down, settle down. But no, no, I really appreciate the words. You definitely put me on a pedestal. And the jacket, I'm down south and not on the sunny, sunny coast. And it's the. Funnily enough, I don't have lots of warm clothes. It's one of the only jackets I have. And yeah, if I wasn't wearing it, I would be rubbing my arms and really struggling to be present in this chat. Ben. So there's a little bit of peacocking involved. We're on a podcast, but also it's survival.

Absolutely. I always say that confidence is really important in people in our industry. We just have to make sure it's directed in the right way. So if it's about keeping you warm, I'll take that for now. Okay, so today's topic, little bit different. It's all about whether or not there is a relationship between leadership and sales. And I think the obvious answer is going to be, yeah, you're always out there selling your business, but we're looking beyond that if there's a relationship out there between how leaders operate and how they can be rolling in really effective sales principles or techniques. So we're going to spend the next 20 minutes or so focusing around what that is. So for me, Carl, I'd love to know, what are your thoughts on this one?

Yeah, yeah. Well, just to circle back for a second, I grew up in my corporate career at a company called Beta Group. And after leading Telstra retail stores, I moved into a learning and development team. And the company had recently invested quite a bit of money in consultative selling in Win Win Solutions, in the relationship building of sales. And I was one who would fly around Australia and run these workshops with our consultants to go through these principles, these paradigms, and to create more effective sales people. After that opportunity, I moved into a leadership development facilitator role, where I then started running workshops on coaching, on high performance, on everything down to accountability as well as. What I found really interesting was, well, firstly, an alignment between our consulting methodology and our coaching methodology. Thought that was really interesting as a sales consultant, you know, to be able to earn some trust in a conversation with a client, to have that trust and enable a discovery to really get into an understanding of their wants and needs and their perspective and then to tailor a solution is obviously very effective, a really good way to sell. And I'd be very interested to see, Ben, maybe not in this chat, but how that maps up to enterprise sales as I don't have experience there. And then from a coaching perspective to have your team to have a whether it's performance conversation, a conversation about a new path forward to again build on a foundation of trust to discover and understand perspectives, wants and needs, thoughts, opinions, issues, concerns, and almost a tailor a way forward. I just saw a lot of correlation and so it got me thinking about sales in general. And would you agree, Ben, that a definition of sales is just an agreed exchange?

Oh, wow. We could go many different ways with this. But certainly for me, I think a successful sales result has an agreed exchange of something of value.

Okay, beautiful. I really like that. And so that lends to. Okay, well, what is a successful salesperson? What's the definition of successful salesperson? And I've been workshopping this for myself for a little while and workshopped with my clients recently in a group session. And we came up with this definition that lands for me and really links the two for me together. And I wonder what you think and your audience thinks. But for me, a successful salesperson is someone that makes it simple for the right client to say yes to the right solution.

And I certainly agree with that. Sales is about making it simple. I actually talk about making it easy. Being easy to work with is what is a very successful sales team. But if you're a leader of a business, you have a number of stakeholders that are really important to you. And number one is going to often be investors and a board. Number two is often going to be the people that you have in your business. And number three, and this is not in any order, your customers completely agree.

I like how you mapped out as well, up and down. And yeah, it also begs the question, does a leader of a sales team or someone in that capacity? I know that this actually exists and needs to exist in some environments and workplaces, but is it in their best interest to be selling directly to clients?

Well, I'm a huge believer that the best leaders who have any involvement with sales teams do an element of carrying the bag themselves. And I believe that because what it allows you to do is get really fast feedback from the market. Market about the position that your offer is at now. And that changes very regularly. It might have been three months ago when you last did it, but things change. I think it also gives you really fast feedback around how your team are performing when you're out there meeting customers yourselves. And I also think it keeps you real and grounded. So for me, I really encourage any leader to have customer facing time, but particularly if you're in a sales leadership position, that time will be more likely be more significant than if you're a C suite or a GM type of level.

Yeah, I love that thoughtful response. And I agree. The risk is that you get caught up in doing just that. Right. And it takes you away from the reason their leadership role exists in the first place.

Absolutely. Yeah. No doubt. If you spend too much time, then you're either doing the job for your team and you're disempowering them, or you're not doing the job that you should be doing and your business struggles to grow. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So to tie that in a little bow. So if an effective salesperson is to make it easy, which I like that language as well, for the right client to say yes to the right solution, and, well, your board, your investors, obviously the right client, they're paying you, they have given you the role. Hopefully you're continuing to attract the right client in terms of your team into your business. And therefore, the other caveat is we'll buy into the right solution. So you're selling something different. You're still in a sales role if it's not direct to the client or to the market, but you're selling now as a leader. Ideas, vision, ways, forward, actions, and I think a lot of the same sales skills that are effective in a team member to client relationship play a very important role in a leader to team member or a leader to leader relationship.

Okay. And look, I don't think that's necessarily polarising. Right. We have sales where you are selling to customers and building strategic or tactical relationships, whatever your business works in. We have sales to your board where you're selling the visions and the pros and why they need to continue to back your business or to back a change in direction or a growth strategy. I think that's very clear. And then we have sales to your team where you're needing to get them to buy into the culture and buy into a place where they want to work, not need to work. We're seeing a significant shift in particular millennials around not feeling they need to work, but really driving their decisions on where they want to work. So absolutely, there's a piece there. And even with your team, there's a piece around buying into your leadership methodologies yourself. Right? Every leader is very, very different. Some lead from the front, some lead by empowering others, some lead by striking great thoughts or having great people around them or great practical leaders around them. So I think that, for me, is something I've always bought into. What I'd love to know from your point of view is where there are synergies between leadership and sales, because inherently, well, on their own, there's certainly different elements of your professional cadence. Where do you see synergies existing at leadership level or even at individual level? That's fine too, between leadership and sales.

Yeah, really good question. The first thought comes that not all of leadership is sales, right? There's obviously a lot. It's a lot more of a dynamic role. But in terms of the, again, where to play out. A leader is one that sells a vision, that sells ideas, that sells a path forward, that sells different ways of thinking, that sells the result of change management or changing something that their team is very much used to. All of the same principles, from my perspective, apply. You know, people buy from people that they trust. And so trust is almost like a foundation. If you trust your leader, you're more open to buying into their frame. You're more open to engaging with how they think and feel. Or at least if you're not, you have more of a place to not just disagree for the sake of disagreeing, but having a conversation about it, negotiating like. Like, because I trust you, Ben. I'm not sitting here with my backup worried that you're going to disagree with me and then respond emotionally and attack you back or completely withdraw and just stop the podcast. I see an opportunity to negotiate because we have that relationship because we have a foundation of trust. And I think what trust also allows the salesperson and the leader to do is to discover, is to understand, you know, even from the leader to a board perspective, it's a lot easier to have them buy into your thoughts, your way forward, your understanding of the market, your understanding of opportunities in the team, if you understand what they see, what their perspective is, what they care about, what their goals are. And not everyone is great at communicating these things, even at. Even at the top level. So to be able to have an element of discovery, to be able to ask great questions or create the environment in which you can do so can really help you sell these things that aren't just products and services to the appropriate Stakeholder in a leadership role. Lastly, you alluded to earlier a team member buying into a leader. You know, like, again, I see that as akin to the word buys in it, right? It's buying in to that individual, it's buying into their place in the team, it's buying into, I guess, that business in totality. And to circle back to some experience in the corporate world really quick, millennials. And I guess I'm one of them or I'm just out of it. Like, I need to understand why, otherwise I'm just not on board. And the worst thing that my leader could do was say, oh, the company needs this, so we're just going to do it. I don't disagree, I don't agree, but the company needs to do this, so we're just going to go this way. Even if I would tick those boxes, it was nowhere near to the performance or the expectation of myself. Even in some environments it would even intrude on my own integrity. And then also if I was in a leadership role, when I was in a leadership role and leading a team and I didn't get something that I agreed with from the top line and there wasn't an opportunity to negotiate, whether it was my own ability or otherwise, then my delivery, the buy in for my team, it flowed on. Like, we don't just take everyone's word as literal. And if I'm not bought into something, there's no way my team, the people that I'm leading, are going to be bought into it unless they're bought into the greater company or have other motives.

Okay, so a lot of we're talking about there is leaders taking principles from sales as to how they can become better at leadership by using some of those principles? How about in reverse? Do you ever see where sales, and particularly sales leaders are taking leadership principles in to help them be better at selling?

That's very interesting. I've spent a lot of time thinking of the other way around, so I'm excited to unpack this in the moment. The first thing that comes straight to me is I love thinking of leadership very simply as like tiers of leadership of self, leadership of others, and leadership of leaders. I think that paints a very easy picture to understand and to align with. And also it paints the importance of how leadership of self marries up to leadership of ours and leadership leaders. Again, if we have a leader that we don't respect because they don't lead themselves very effectively, then what are our chances to be led well by them and to perform at a higher level? If we're not self governing, if we're not ambitious, if we don't have our own motivations that drive our own performance, and then also like if we do have those things, then it's easier for us to be in the gray area because we're not bought into the dot IN the I's, crossing the T's that might be expected because we don't respect the leader. I also see in conversation and ability to lead in conversation. Like make it easy, as you mentioned earlier, make it easy for the right client to buy the right solution. A really effective sale is one that is easy and a great salesperson leads a conversation very effectively. That doesn't mean saying every word and talking for 90% of the time. I'm sure we could agree that that's probably not the most effective sales strategy. But they lead the conversation well, all down to the individual skills like questioning open and closed questions to facilitate a response, qualifying, setting up a conversation for success through an agenda statement or a doctor's frame, whatever you'd frame it as, and then tailoring partnering, the wants and needs, the language of the person in front of you to the solution. I think a great salesperson leads those conversations very well. They're the two that come straight to me as you're.

The bit that jumps out at me. There is so leaders, you have leadership of self, you've said you have leadership of others and then leadership of leaders. And I think there's a line here for sales leaders where they often believe that if they're delivering great results across their team, they're doing a great leadership job. And for me, what's changed? I'm 41. I've been in sales or very close to sales for about 25 years now. I started pretty early and certainly 25 years ago. I think that mostly held true. Get the results, get the money in the door. People are paid well because they've had those results. There was an element of needing to be in a place that's reasonable to work. But at the end of the day it was results and money that tend to spike really loudly. Whereas what's changed now is I think that getting good results isn't enough. And it's very similar in sporting teams. Just getting the results without doing the community engagement. Or if you have toxic people within that team that are causing issues to the wider community or setting a bad example, for instance, they are becoming more and more important because businesses and sporting teams are seeing the link between great people, great behaviors and results. And that importantly that great People and great behaviours and great cultures drive great results. And also that customers are wanting to see that we have the right people and the right ethics of the business. For example, sustainability and corporate social responsibility becoming more and more important. So today to get good results as a sales leader is not enough. I can stand there and I can say that, and if that polarizes, I'm happy to take everything that comes my way on it. But if as a sales leader you are learning some of those great principles around leadership, around governing, self, leading others and leading leaders, invest some time in that because it will come back in spades and certainly provide you with a base level of leadership skills that go beyond just hitting sales results. So I really like that as an approach. Carl, how about conflict? Do we ever see conflict existing between leadership and sales? Or have you seen it happen before?

Yeah, the conflict that I see generally stems from misalignment somewhere. And the most prevalent example from my time in retail was when we had a new product or service or a new focus that was high margin and just, it was coupled with an expectation that, yep, we want to see this number now because of this product. And a great leader would perhaps workshop that new product or service with their team. Okay, what is it about this? What clients would buy this? What are the benefits and how do they help someone? Or how do they, what experience do they give to someone? How would we then include perhaps the questions or the features of this in a conversation? When is it appropriate, et cetera, to be able to collaborate with your team around something new and gauge, buy and negotiate and to have them leading with what, why and how is obviously very powerful. Too often, especially sales leaders that were the best salesperson in their team. Sometimes the best salesperson isn't the best leader. I'd actually say probably more often than not. And, and they go into a leadership role and say, okay, this is what we're doing now, this makes the most money, let's go. And depending on what drives one, it will depend on obviously the success of a team. And I believe as people we're playing longer games. I love how mentioned earlier the other things that sales leaders need to include to be successful just outside of the number. These things make a lot of sense. If you're playing a long game because you need to sell this month to pay the bills, but also you need to sell in two years to continue to grow sustainably. And that's where community engagement and these other things come into play. And also ethics, again, they obviously matter, but they don't matter. If you're just playing next week, if we just want results this week, of course they matter ultimately, but it's very easy to cast them aside because we just need to get this number next week. It's a lot shorter game. I think any business or team that wants to be there for the long run needs to think from the long run down, not from the short term long.

So what we're talking about here is money and the need for it or the want for it in businesses often gets in the way of good leadership. And I'll be frank, sometimes there are times absolutely in businesses where you just need to get results to keep the doors open. There is no doubt about that. And those are times when I think there can be a natural conflict between sales and leadership. But the really good leaders will recognize that there is a conflict and they'll talk openly about it with their team and why it's important and get the buy in to say, hey, we actually just need to focus on this amount of revenue or this amount of gross profit or delivering these projects to keep doors open. And here's how it works. So I certainly don't subscribe to the ethos that says sometimes you've just got to do what you got to do to get money in the door. Now I certainly think that's important, but you don't have to drop everything that's important around leadership at the same time. They're not mutually exclusive. But I remember working for a global business about 15 years ago and they were new to market with a world first technology around an antimicrobial product. So this was all about protecting people that provide first response care. First responders, well, also the second responders. Right at hospital level as well as, but certainly providing care that looked after the clinicians as well as the patients. And it had an antimicrobial product in there that the global leadership team said was going to be the next big thing right. In technology over the coming years. And so that was pushed by the business as the number one priority above everything else for the next 12 month period. And what happened was the market was actually saying, we love your concept but we're not ready for it yet because we can't justify the additional cost for the benefit it provides. We think there are other ways to get that benefit at a lower cost. And the market actually said we want to move to products that provide less irritation to the skin, which we think cause less wounds on the hand, which we think removes the needs for some of these microbial products. Right. It was logical I'm trying to keep this story top line. So what happened was that by failing to see those cues of what the customer wanted and being so focused that the business was going to be leaders in this technology, they actually had a significant deterioration in market share that took a few years to come out. So they were putting a product out there that the customer didn't want and they weren't listening to the feedback from the very front line. So the leadership ego got in the way of selling the right product, which is actually one in reverse when leadership or leadership principles got in the way of success of a business. So I see it work both ways where there can be some conflict. But of course both of those examples I've given are infinitely solvable. Right. When you take the understanding that it's not a case of either or, it doesn't have to be sales or leadership, there can always exist a synergy and some harmony between both. So Carl, last question for you before we go. If you are a sales leader right now in charge of your business and you're looking to turn on the company growth tap this year, right. What are you doing real top line level, what are you focusing on now?

Well, yeah, let's finally this to some sales language and wrap it all beautifully together. I would take stock of my team, I would take stock of where we are and why we're here. I'd probably ask and discover upwards if there are shareholders aboard a C suite or if there was just another leader above me, I would create the space to discuss with them what they see, what they think, what their experience tells them. And really? Yeah, like go start with a discovery period. I would look at the data, I would listen to the people, I would speak to the customers, I would speak to the people that are winning because generally even in the worst times in business, there's still salespeople winning. So why are they winning? What are they doing? Well, how does that sort of buck the trend if the rest of the business gone backwards? If you don't have that privilege, then people that were winning previously. So what's changed? What's, what's happened? I found my time leading sales teams that unfortunately a lot of the friction comes from other places in the business and it gets in the way of the client salesperson relationship. So maybe there's some relationships or some internal processes to mend. And the problem with a problem like that is that we can get so fixated on the problem that only answers to how we can sell more come to the table. Whereas if we're Able to create the space to open up our scope and to better understand not only from our team's perspective, our leaders perspective, other place in the business perspective, we can draw in a lot more information. And then if I like to lead in a very collaborative way, I like to lean on my team. Regarding. Okay, here's the information. What do we think? Where are our biggest bangs for Buck? What levers can we pull? What can we change individually? Are there any issues, barriers or concerns that are coming up for you guys? If we don't address them right now, they're going to come up later. So let's get this to the table now and let's put a plan in place to adapt quickly if we need to adapt. So we'll review after week one or week two. There might be some champions or some key people that I'll highlight, depending on the nature of the business, the size of the team, et cetera, and essentially not directly delegate the problem to everyone else, but to collaborate on the problem with as many people associated to that problem as I can. So I'm drawing in a holistic amount of information to orient ourselves and adapt quickly, fail fast. And when I think that's like might be the motto in Silicon Valley and I think it makes a lot of sense. You know, I always say we either win or we learn, you know, and learn and win. And as long as you learn, you don't just keep repeating the same mistake. So yeah, discovery, discovery is if I was discovering with a client, discovery, collect information, get an understanding, open up your framework, go to people that you trust, go to people that have won and then collaborate, negotiate, come up with a way forward that makes sense, where the why, the what and the how are very defined and then have a space as well to quickly adapt, to quickly learn, to quickly integrate at a high level using some sales language. That's probably the best I'd answer that question.

Okay, so what we're talking about here is build a strategy. Build a strategy that everyone gets involved in. Because when people build things, they generally will deliver them. So words very close to my heart. All right, Carl, that's it for today. Thank you very much for joining us. Can you please remind people where they can find out a little bit more? Well, not remind, because I haven't spoken about it yet. Can you please tell people where they can find out a little bit more about Carl Brockman and Goldbrick Road?

Carl Brockman on LinkedIn. Share my link tree with Ben and it'll be in the show notes which will have all of my business information in a way get in contact with me and that's about it.

Ben, Excellent. Perfect. Well, thank you very much for your time today, Carl. Some really nice parallels between leadership and sales that went both ways. So I think leaders and salespeople and sales leaders will benefit from this. So thank you again. Look forward to seeing you again soon. But for everyone else, please keep living in a world of possibility and you'll be amazed by what you can achieve. Want to be kept up to date with any of our free materials to help you build the best sales teams possible? Well, the easiest way you can do so is to follow us on your favourite social media channel. We're onger sales teams on most of them and if you DM us stronger, we'll send you right back some great resources to help you build your super powered sales team. If you'd like a little more help, please get in touch directly and book a free discovery call with me. I run a limited number of these sessions and they're free for my podcast listeners. I'd love to help you out. Until then, see you next week for another podcast of stronger sales team.