It is probably important to start with the definitions of both “leading” and “managing” as they are quite different and confused in the minds of many.

Inside Sales Management

Management is the “perspiration” of running the day to day-to-day activities of the group. Making sure that people are doing their jobs, that the support systems and structures are working and being used properly,

If we use an old steam engine train as an example it would be driving the train, monitoring the instruments, feeding the engine, and running the passenger services.

Inside Sales Leadership

Leadership on the other hand is the inspiration of cultivating the internal motivation of the team members and then empowering them to reach the vision you’ve set forth.

In the steam engine example it would be setting the train’s destination and inspiring the crew to want to give the customers the very best experience possible and to run the train in the very best and most efficient way.

The Advantages of Leadership Over Management

While management is always going to be necessary, leadership will make that part of your job so much easier.

An inside salesperson would typically know what to do and to at least some level of competence doing it. And it is in these two areas that you’re management efforts where management efforts are usually applied.

How enthusiastically and energetically your inside salespeople attack their job however is a function of their own motivation. And that motivation affects their attitudes, morale, and thus most of their activities and success.

If you learn how to take a “leadership” role and do it effectively, what happens is that your salespeople become very motivated to do their jobs. Many of the typical things you would do as a manager literally go away as the team members start to actively seek the accomplishment of the goal independent of any pushing by you.

This of course requires that you provide a vision and the empowerment they need to achieve the goal, or leadership.

It also generates salespeople who work aggressively and with little or no supervision. It creates salespeople who thirst for knowledge of how to do even better than they’re doing (active learners).

All of which culminates in average people producing remarkable results.

Let me close this post with a very brief example.

A Brief Example

I lead a group of 3 salespeople that was part of a sales organization composing of 5 regional teams each including a manager and 3 salespeople.

Through the use of leadership skills I was able to get that team to perform about 30% better than any of the other 4 teams. They made 30% more calls (and sales) everyday than the rest of their peers. I never had to watch them or beat on them to make sure they were working or push them to do the job at 110%. They did this automatically.

But the most amazing part of the story is that they did all of this in 25% less work time than the other salespeople. Instead of working 8-9 hours per day, these folks went home after 6 hours of work and still creamed the results of every other team.

The Result

The result of my leadership activities made most of my management activities go away. I had zero personnel issues and I spend most of my time working with the team to make the better at selling and more efficient at their daily tasks.

And when I had something to say, they wanted to listen and would employ my ideas immediately as they truly believed from their results that I could help them improve further and make them more money.

This was the result of great leadership. I invite you to learn more about leadership by watching the “Three Keys to Great Leadership” training module under the “Sales Management Training” tab.

http://telesalesuniversity.com/sales-management-training/3-keys-to-great-leadership/