One of the most important responsibilities of a sales leader is to translate the organization’s vision, mission and values into a meaningful context that sales teams can relate to and feel excited by. If this is achieved then the leader will have created a sales team with a shared mental model. This transforms an ordinary sales team into a high performing one.

For clarity, here is a brief description of the following terms:

An organization’s vision is a guiding image of success formed in terms of a huge goal. It is a description in words that conjures up a picture of that organization’s destination. A compelling vision will stretch expectations, aspirations, and performance. Without that powerful, attractive, valuable vision, why bother?

A mission statement communicates the essence of an organization to its stakeholders and customers, and failure to clearly state and communicate an organization’s mission can have harmful consequences around its purpose. As Lewis Caroll, through the words of the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland says, “If you don’t know where you’re going, it doesn’t matter which way you go.”

Guiding principles are the consequence of a mission statement that are intended to inform or shape all subsequent decision-making, which also provides normative criteria allowing policy-makers to accept, reject or modify policy interventions and activities. They are a guiding set of ideas that are articulated, understood and supported by the organisation’s workforce.

Values are beliefs which the organization’s workforce hold in common and endeavor to put into practice. The values guide their performance and the decisions that are taken. Ideally, an individual’s personal values will align with the spoken and unspoken values of the organization. By developing a written statement of the values of the organization, individuals have a chance to contribute to the articulation of these values, as well as to evaluate how well their personal values and motivation match those of the organization.

The Human Capital Development Model, created by Krauthammer International, is a logical process that can take top management concepts, and translate them into a context that has real meaning for staff at all levels.

The key to bringing this model to life is to answer the following questions:

• Do my team understand the organization’s vision and how their role moves the organization closer to achieving it?
• How can my sales team translate the organization’s mission into one that is relevant to them?
• How does the organization’s guiding principles impact on the day-to-day responsibilities of sales people?
• Which of the organization’s values does my sales team relate to?
• How can we interpret these values so they become compelling for each sales person?

An effective sales team understands the big picture and the context of their team’s work to the greatest degree possible. That includes understanding the relevance of their job and how it impacts the effectiveness of others and the overall team effort.

Too often, sales people are asked to work on an activity without being told how their role contributes to organization’s vision, much less how their efforts are impacting the ability of others to do their work. Understanding the organization’s vision promotes collaboration, increases commitment and improves quality.

An effective team works collaboratively and with a keen awareness of interdependency.

Collaboration and a solid sense of interdependency in a team will defuse blaming behaviour and stimulate opportunities for learning and improvement. Without this sense of interdependency in responsibility and reward, blaming behaviours can occur which will quickly erode team effectiveness and morale.

The more successful you are as a Sales Leader means that your sales strategies will affect more and more people. The more people you affect, the more likely it is that your actions will impact people who have power and influence over changes that you are seeking to implement. These people could be strong supporters of those changes or they could block them.

Stakeholder Management is an important discipline that successful Sales Leaders use to win support from others. It helps them ensure that their changes succeed where others fail. By engaging the right people in the right way in your proposed changes will make a big difference to the outcome you desire to attain from the changes.

Stakeholder Analysis is the technique used to identify the key people or departments who have to be won over in order to successfully implement the changes you want to make. You then use Stakeholder Planning to build the support that helps you succeed.

The benefits of using a stakeholder-based approach are that:

• You can use the opinions of the most powerful stakeholders to shape your change plans at an early stage. This makes it more likely that they will support you and their input can also improve the quality of your change plans.
• Gaining support from powerful stakeholders who have high levels of influence regarding your changes can help you to win more resources – this makes it more likely that your change plans will be successful.
• By communicating with stakeholders early and frequently, you can ensure that they fully understand what you are doing and understand the benefits of your proposed changes so they can support you actively when necessary.
• You can anticipate what people’s reaction to your proposed changes may be, and build into your plan the actions that will win people’s support.

Stakeholder Management really is that important!