Attitude Reflects Leadership

In the Movie “Remember the Titans" there is a scene where the Defensive team Captain is calling one of his fellow players to the carpet for having a bad attitude, to which the other player responses "Attitude reflects Leadership".

While, one can make the argument that there are some people that are going to have a bad attitude no matter how good a leader they have, the fact still remains that there is a lot of truth in this statement and attitude does often reflect leadership.



This was driven home for me during a recent business trip where I visited some customers that I hadn't seen in a while.

During my visit with them they were sharing with me some horror stories about a Vendor that was once a valued partner and produced a quality product. Now this same company's performance had gotten so bad that the Customer had made the decision to not allow this particular company to have any future opportunities.

They were sharing this information with me because we both knew several people that worked for this company and would consider some of these people mutual friends.



When they showed me the work that this group was putting out, I was shocked and a little heart-broken. Even though these guys were my competitors, some of these guys were also my friends.



At one time this team was putting out great looking work, but what I was seeing was the work of a team that didn't care and didn't have any pride in their craftsmanship at all.

How could this happen? How could such a talented team of guys produce the crap I was looking at?



It was a change in Leadership.

This company had undergone a recent change in leadership. The former leadership had the reputation for being customer-centric and focused on producing great machines, whereas the new leadership was focused solely on money.

My customers told me that these guys were short on support and performance but always standing with their hand out asking for extra dollars for every little thing that was done. My customer’s perception was that there was a definite shift in the leadership’s focus from them to their wallet and we all know what perception is. Reality!



Even with the leadership change, the guys I knew cared about their work AND their reputation. There was a time where the work that I was seeing would have never left the shop floor.



Here’s where the heartbreak came in for me.

Guys that I knew and respected as true professionals in our field had allowed the poor leadership they were under to compromise them. Their attitude was reflecting their leadership and it was showing in their work and in their attitude towards valued customers.



I drove off from that visit determined that I would never allow myself to work under poor leadership that had the potential to compromise my attitude and that I would NEVER offer the people that looked to me for leadership, something that would affect their attitudes in anything other than a positive, uplifting way.



I have a deeply held conviction that if I make others around me successful, I will be a success. I also recognized that every leader has his own personal limits and needs to listen carefully to his mentors and the good people around him in order to push past those barriers and become a better leader.



I hope and pray for those of you that may be reading this post that you will guard your attitude and always strive, not to be just good at what you do, but Great. Lead well and seek out great Leaders and Mentors in your own life because “Attitude reflects Leadership”.



All the Best

Joe

Earlier this week I was a part of a conversation where a group of Sales Managers and business owners were lamenting the fact that there sales engineers were struggling with the Sales part of their job. These leaders admitted that their employees were great engineers, but marginal sales professionals at best.

Below is my contribution to this discussion.

Sales skills are certainly not taught in the institutes of higher learning and often times snubbed by engineers at first. Most of the SE’s I’ve worked with in the past 15 years are great technically however they have little or no understanding of the anatomy of the sales process. The Sales process is just as technically challenging as any technology or solutions we may be waving in front of our customers. Skip a step and you may lose the sell or worse, lose the customer altogether.

Gaining Attention / Discovery / Solution Building / Proposal / Closing / Post Sales review

You can gain attention through a lot of varying avenues, but successfully gaining the customer’s attention will almost always include some form of relationship building. It’s not enough to just show up with something cool, you need to be likeable too. Customers buy from people they like and feel connected to.

Discovery is an area that is most often overlooked, rushed through or just poorly executed on. Discovery is about asking questions and listening to what the customers says and perhaps more importantly what they don’t say.  Asking open-ended questions is an art and must be modeled and taught. It’s not enough to just ask questions, it’s all about asking the right questions. Teach your SE’s the right questions, model for them how they should ask the questions and most importantly, teach them the power of the pause. If the customer doesn’t immediately answer the question the SE does not need to fill the empty air with his voice. Wait and let the customer fill in the blanks first. Often good discovery not only helps you truly learn your customer’s real needs, but also helps the customer better define those needs. Good discovery can be a great value to your customer and it shows the customer you truly care about their needs and not just about their wallet. Even if you do the best discovery ever if you done capture the information it could be a wasted effort. Part of good discovery is capturing the information so you’ve got to take notes.

Most good engineers can build a great solution if he has done great discovery. Poor discovery though……..you know where that leads….. Incomplete Solutions, Lost Profit, Lost Opportunity, Lost Customers….it’s not a pretty sight.

The proposal phase should include a well written Scope of Work that communicates your SE’s understanding of the customer’s needs, how your company intends to meet those needs and clearly defines the responsibilities of both your company and the customer. Managing the customer’s expectations is very difficult if those expectations haven’t been documented and discussed both with the customer and with your team. Everybody needs to be on the same page or someone is going to get disappointed.

Some SE’s aren’t always in the position to ask for the sell, but most are and this is an area that even Sales Professionals with years of experience still struggle. If you’ve done good discovery, have a great solution, have communicated all this effectively to the customer then you’ve earn the business. Ask for the Purchase Order; more than once if you must. Close with Confidence.

And finally go back after the job is completed. Review the project. Ask the customer what went well and where you could have done better. This builds relationship, shows the customer that you care and teaches you how to be better at what you do. The Post Sale review is important to your future sales.

Follow the steps of the sales process and you will be successful. Skip a step and you’ll know it sooner or later.

If your SE’s are struggling give them a process to follow. What engineer doesn’t love a good process?