Successful businesses are discovering that strong leadership is among the last remaining differentiators. This differentiation is more important than ever as organizations attempt to navigate the convex revenue curve. In this SlideShare, Steve Dodman, Chief Sales Officer of Richardson and SPI, discusses the five critical leadership practices needed today.

1. EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS:
Brief
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FIVE SALES
LEADERSHIP PRACTICES
FOR NAVIGATING
TURBULENT TIMES

2. INCREASE
COMMUNICATION
In a time of crisis, leaders need to deliver two or
even three times the communication they offer in
normal circumstances.
Communications must:
• Have increased frequency
• Be overly transparent
To overcome challenges, leaders and their teams
need to determinate and communicate an accurate
assessment of the difficulties ahead.
Planning becomes incredibly difficult in a volatile
business environment.
Increased communication at the team and
individual levels is the most effective way for leaders
to get to the front lines of the business where they
will have the most complete and clear view of the
terrain ahead.
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3. RESET AND
CLARIFY
EXPECTATIONS
Measures of success have changed,
and many leaders continue to revise
and iterate on their original 2020 goals.
Leaders must clarify:
• Short-term
• Full-year objectives
Leaders must remember that a
redefinition of expectations also
includes a redefinition of a “win.”
The acknowledgment of small wins
reminds all other team members that it
is possible to find new avenues to the
sale even in a period of adversity.
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4. DEVELOP A
HEIGHTENED EQ
• A leader’s emotional intelligence, or EQ, becomes
crucial to success during periods of stress.
• While many sales leaders have an inherently strong
EQ, they must demonstrate an even stronger EQ as
sales professionals face intensified challenges.
• Encouraging an open dialogue helps reveal the
details behind selling challenges.
• Just as sales professionals need to ask deeper
questions to understand the customer’s needs, the
sales leader must do the same with their sales
professionals.
• With these insights, the leader and the sales
professional are equipped to work together to
develop new strategies.
Copyright © 2020 Richardson. All rights reserved.

5. Copyright © 2020 Richardson. All rights reserved.
The study concluded that:
“Leaders with a high level of
emotional intelligence are more
likely to understand how they are
feeling and why and more able to
effectively manage their
feelings.”
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WHY IT MATTERS
Numerous social science research studies illustrate
the importance of EQ in navigating short-term
upheavals and ensuring the sustainability of a
business over the long term.
One study, published in the Journal of Advances in
Social Science-Humanities, found that there is a
“very strong positive relationship between
emotional intelligence and organizational culture
equilibrium.”

6. INTENSIFY CLIENT
RETENTION
EFFORTS
Leaders need to get creative in their strategies to retain
customers. In a slowing economy, budgets often centralize
and move upward.
As a result, spending decisions made prior to a downturn
are often reversed and sales professionals find themselves
trying to preserve relationships and deals that were once
assured.
Preserving those relationships means overcoming
objections.
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• First acknowledge the customer’s objection.
• This is a chance for the sales professional to
demonstrate their empathy and engage in
active listening.
• Second ask questions.
• Go below the surface and reveal the
underlying reasons for the customer’s
decision to abandon a purchase or pause a
service.
• Finally, position a solution that accounts for the
customer’s new circumstances.
• Seek feedback from the customer to ensure the
new solution addresses the customer’s
challenges.

7. Copyright © 2020 Richardson. All rights reserved.Copyright © 2020 Richardson. All rights reserved.
CREATE CROSS-
FUNCTIONAL
ALIGNMENT
WITH
UNIFORM SKILL
DEVELOPMENT
Leaders need to ensure everyone is working from the same
playbook.
Without cross-functional alignment:
• Leaders risk an unbalanced approach to selling in which some sales
professionals may choose to offer price concessions.
• Others may attempt to sell solutions that cannot be adequately
delivered.
Aligning teams means:
• Providing the coaching
• Insights
• Training that equips everyone to deliver the strong ROI message
customers need to move forward with a purchase.
Training becomes critical in a time of economic difficulty when the
likelihood of disparate selling practices is at its highest.

8. Copyright © 2020 Richardson. All rights reserved.Copyright © 2020 Richardson. All rights reserved.
Leaders must remember that the global
pandemic is unprecedented.
Even the most tenured sales
professionals have not experienced the
complex nature of this event.
New skills are needed.
In our most recent survey,
we learned that
47%
of sales professionals
believe that engagements
will increase as virtual selling
normalizes.

9. Copyright © 2020 Richardson. All rights reserved.
As the difficulties of today’s
circumstances become shared,
effective businesses are discovering
that strong leadership is among the
last remaining differentiators.
Leveraging this differentiator
to its fullest encompasses:
02
03
05
01
Increasing the frequency and depth of
communications
Boosting client retention with an
objection resolution model
Demonstrating a strong EQ to drive
alignment between the business and
the people
Resetting expectations and
recognizing every win
Coalescing all sales professionals
around a single selling methodology
04

10. Copyright © 2020 Richardson. All rights reserved.
company/richardson/
https://www.richardson.com/blog/
Copyright © 2020 Richardson. All rights reserved.
www.richardson.com
215-940-9255
info@richardson.com
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