Sales Leadership In Times Of Uncertainty

Uncertainty. It’s like kryptonite for our brains. (see March of 2020’s lines for toilet paper)

As uncertainty abounds once again, if you’re a sales or revenue leader, recognize the impact on your teams – and do something about it…today.

Our brains are wired to predict. It’s pretty much its primary function – to anticipate, prepare and speed time-to-reaction. When we go to bed at night, we sleep best when we can predict what will happen the next day. Better sleep, better performance.

And when we can’t predict? Our IQ goes down. We’re less productive. We make poor decisions. We go crazy!

In Japan, death-row inmates aren’t informed of what day their execution will take place – until the day that it happens. The uncertainty caused the inmates to actually sued the government, calling the uncertainty “inhumane”!

Today, uncertainty surrounds us once again. And I fear that many companies are treating their teams like those inmates. Their teams go to bed thinking, “Will tomorrow be the day?” Performance suffers. Creativity suffers. Mental health suffers. The worst-case scenario becomes reality.

Be a transparent sales leader!

• Create certainty where certainty exists: What do you know for sure? The good news and the bad news. Share how you and your organization think about the current economic environment. Share what makes you feel good about your position, but where there is also cause for concern.
• Embrace what you don’t know: Nobody can predict how long a downturn will last, or how bad it will get. Cards face up. Be humble about it. Every downturn in the history of Earth has been different. Some have been short-lived blips, and some have fallen all the way into depressions. You build trust as a leader through transparency.
• But, help them predict by letting them know when they’ll receive updates: Set expectations and consistently meet them. The minute you veer from the expectations you have set is the minute trust is forever eroded.

As I wrote about on February 2nd, we could see this coming. While much in our economy cannot be predicted, this is a rake we’ve stepped on before. The Great Salesperson Purge of the early 1920s resulted in salesperson turnover of 85% in 1922. On the back-end, the smart survived. Focus on profitability. Focus on markets and industries that do well during downturns. Invest in yourself and your team. Less focus on quantity. More focus on quality.

Don’t wait. Be transparent with your team…starting today!

Todd Caponi is the author of the 3x best-book-award-winning and international best-seller, The Transparency Sale and a speaker & workshop leader as Principal of Sales Melon LLC. Todd is also a multi-time C-Level sales leader, a behavioral science and sales history nerd, and has guided two companies to successful exits. His next book, The Transparent Sales Leader, is planned for Summer of 2022.

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