Rob Jeppsen is the founder of Jeppsen Performance Group. He is passionate about being a sales leader, and he has some unique approaches to sales leadership.
Rob decided to start his sales career by finding young, privately-held companies where he would get the opportunity to do more sooner and learn faster. He wanted to be part of how sales evolve, however, and to do that, he needed to have some big company experience. So he landed a job heading up a 1000 person team, and there, he took his lesson in leadership up a notch.
Rob’s effort in making the company more successful was the catalyst that led to the success that he had never imagined before and as a result, he became committed to the development of sales leaders.
He used to make the mistake of trying to make salespeople in his image. Now, he has 21 laws of sales leadership, which changed everything for him. He has a New Manager Fast-track Program, which condenses what usually takes people eighteen months to learn down to three months.
EPISODE NOTES:
The five most important sales leadership laws are:
- Not everybody loves you. (There will always be a group that loves you, a group that hates you, and a swing group in between.)
- To become an elite leader your leadership system has to build trust and achieve results.
- You need to love the love group.
- You need to neutralize the hate group.
- You need to win the trust of the swing group by being honest, helpful, and reliable.
Leadership
A leadership system is about your approach to leadership, the culture that you intentionally build, and the behaviors that you allow to exist.
Trust
Rob spends a lot of time helping leaders to build trust, and building trust is a skill. The more skillful you are at it, the more authentic you will be.
Trust gets earned through behavior. To build the trust of a large group of people, you have to create experiences that will allow you to consistently demonstrate that you, as a leader, are honest, helpful, and reliable.
There are three kinds of trust. They are character (how ethical you are), competence (how good you are), and connection (how much people relate to you).
There are five ways in which the results of a legendary leader should show up: Growth in sales or total performance, the percentage of team members hitting goal should increase, the average revenue per rep needs to increase, win rates should increase, and the turnover should also increase.
Beating competitors
Rob’s approach to beating competitors is about leadership. The two types of coaching that he uses for better leadership are performance coaching and opportunity coaching. The four levers that you need to pull to improve on those are the number of opportunities that you’re chasing, the average revenue per customer, the win rate, and speed. All of your work as a leader should be to increase those four things.
Rob’s tips of the week:
- Leaders on pedestals make easy targets, so stay off the pedestal. Trust and leadership are assigned through behavior and trust, not through position.
- You cannot push people. People have to push themselves, so you need to foster inspirational thinking and help people grow beyond the scope of their natural talent.
Links and resources:
Rob’s website – http://www.jeppsenperformancegroup.com
Rob on LinkedIn
