Do company presidents need sales training? Sounds like a stupid question, doesn’t it? I mean, why in the world would the company president need sales training? Ah, for a million reasons.
First of all, there’s no such thing as staying the same. You’re either striving to improve or you’re allowing yourself to get worse. There’s no such thing as staying the same. So even if the company president was formerly the senior sales executive, he or she can always use more training.
A recent poll of company presidents showed that many come from Sales and Marketing, although not as many as come from Finance. That’s not a big surprise. After all, not too many other departments are as connected to the market place as sales and marketing. And Lord knows, the bottom line is the bottom line so finance is a main road to the top of the hill.
Ranking of departments that company presidents come from
- Finance
- Sales and Marketing
- Operations
- Engineering or Product Management
- Human Resources or Legal
As our nation celebrates President’s Day, let’s consider some of the virtues of strong leadership. In other words, what does it mean to be presidential?
One recent survey highlighted these leading Presidential characteristics
- Vision – the ability to craft an imagined-future based on a current plan
- Courage – the confidence and ability to act in the face of fear and resistance
- Commitment – steadfastness to values, principles and to one’s vision
- Knowledge – the information and skills (competency) to be expert in the field; or to leverage expert resources)
- Ability to influence others – the ability to get others to act in line with your vision and to sway agreement
- Pacesetter – someone who sets the standard for urgency and achievement of the organization
- Integrity – discernment of right and wrong and consistency in acting based on strong values
On your own journey of personal development, do you have a game plan to develop each of these virtues?
Perhaps you should. Granted, it’s your strength areas that will get you to the top, but the areas of void may be pulling you down.
One other way of looking at things, and something many successful sales professionals do, is to consider that you already are the president of your own company. It doesn’t matter if you’re employee number one million, you can still view your own job as Me, Inc.
In fact, studies show that employees who take ownership and responsibility for their jobs (as if it were their own company) are considerably more successful than ones that view themselves as just a cog in a wheel.
So take aim. Be presidential today and who knows, in which corner office you may end up.
