How can a sales manager leverage their time to become a growth multiplier? I got a great book this week from a client called Multipliers, by Liz Weisman. They thought I would find it interesting since I spend much of my time coaching sales managers on how to become people maximizers.

Liz Wiseman has a great way of helping leaders have more impact. I’ll share her framework, but if you’re responsible for leading a great team, get a copy of her book Multipliers, How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter.

Liz makes a great distinction that helps you understand how leaders lead. She breaks leaders into two groups; the Diminisher and the Multiplier. You can guess where I come down on this leadership debate.

What’s interesting to me is that great multipliers keep getting better with their people, faster. Multipliers don’t need significant time to build trust with the people in their lives. They are consistent with their actions and it allows them to enjoy life more. This leadership congruency allows them to increase their teams’ success faster.

The diminisher always feels out of control, so they control more. It a vicious cycle of poor sales leadership that is accelerating because of technology and connectivity. We live in very small world.

What makes effective sales managers great multipliers? The first key quality of a multiplier is they are a talent magnet. You can spot them everywhere they go. They are constantly coaching their talent to get maximum results. They are very good at evaluating talent and understanding what their team members can contribute to their efforts.

These sales manager multipliers always have the pick of the best talent in the market. Bad news travels fast, great news travels to people who are listening and curious. The two key traits help sales professionals excel.  It’s also why so many of them end up on multiplier’s teams.

Have you ever worked for a boss who makes it easy to excel? These sales managers know how to turn it on and up. This quality describes leaders who consistently create a competitive and collaborative workplace. These sales managers expect and get great performance out of their teams across the organization.

They are intuitive and authentic leaders in their interaction with their teams. They are constantly bringing out the best performance of the team members. People don’t want to let these leaders down.

Knowing how to challenge team members is a lost art for many sales managers. All the successful entrepreneurs I’ve met know how to set stretch goals for themselves and their team members. There is something magical when you see people constantly growing and succeeding.

Great challengers find both big and little ways to challenge you to reach for the stars. This means that they know their people’s hopes and dreams. They inspire people, not with motivation speeches, but by understanding what is important to the individuals on the team.

Can you use debate to drive better decision making? Multipliers make better decision. Its counter intuitive, but they can process information very quickly. Many sale manager multipliers use debate as a way of creating better solutions for their clients and customers. The multipliers motto is no one of us is smarter than all of us. Great sales managers leverage both the group’s experience and talents to create wins for their clients.

Finally, a multiplier sales manager understands that they can’t achieve their goals alone. They invest their time transferring ownership of results to their teams. Sales multipliers understand how and when to spend their time coaching people’s performance and when to apply pressure at the right time. Their coaching capabilities oscillate between caring and daring others to bring their best performance to their sales roles.

Hopefully, I got you interested in why you might want to become a sales manager multiplier. Want to know more? Grab a copy of Liz Wiseman’s book Multipliers and watch how quickly you begin adding her tools to your leadership toolkit. You want a copy at home and in the office!

See you next week.