In Selling with Noble Purpose, Lisa Earle McLeod shows how sellers who understand the difference they make in customers’ lives enjoy both better closing rates and greater job satisfaction. She explains how to develop a “Noble Sales Purpose” (NSP) using a three-step process and then guides sales team leaders on the path to creating an organization that truly lives that purpose. The NSP transforms sales training, replaces counterproductive sales incentives, and creates purpose-driven salespeople who have a customer-first mindset for every call. Stories from the field illustrate how an NSP can dramatically improve sales results. McLeod provides practical advice for sellers, sales managers, and anyone who wants their organization to reflect a noble purpose.
Adopting a Noble Sales Purpose (NSP)-a vision of the salesperson as someone who improves customers’ lives-enhances job satisfaction and helps close more sales.
The NSP works because it taps into the deep-seated human desire for connecting with others and for serving a higher purpose, a transcendent ideal.
Too often profit crowds out the NSP. Profit is merely one of six facets of a successful organization. Purpose is the central focus; the others are process, product, promotion, and people.
Sales managers should go beyond asking salespeople what they need to close a deal and how well they are achieving their revenue targets. They should ask, “How are you making a difference in your customers’ lives?”
Many sales organizations run on fear: fear of the overbearing sales manager, fear of missing quotas, or fear of being outshone by teammates. Customers sense fear in a salesperson and are less likely to trust that such a seller has their best interests at heart. Job satisfaction is low in such organizations.
Gains from skills-based sales training dissipate rapidly. Instead, sales training should help sellers develop a customer-first mindset. Selling skills flow from the proper mindset.
Company narratives-stories of the differences the company has made in customers’ lives-provide great support for an NSP. They remind customers and sellers alike of the organization’s higher purpose. Similarly, recording and shared sales-call case studies boost morale.
Sales managers should strive for interactive sales meetings in which salespeople share their experiences with one another. PowerPoint decks and one-way communications from management sap sales teams’ morale.
Organizations that adopt an NSP become purpose driven and realize many benefits. The NSP becomes a touchstone for decision making, reduces turf wars by obligating disparate departments to a common purpose, and helps salespeople become more centered and less frantic on their sales calls. A significant increase in sales follows.
Selling with Noble Purpose is aimed at business-to-business salespeople and their managers. The book should be read in chronological order. Part I explains how to create a purpose-driven company and sales team; Part II outlines the many benefits of an NSP in various contexts; and Part III provides practical advice for sales managers who want to build purpose-driven sales teams. Most chapters end with a “do one thing” idea for implementing the chapter’s suggestions. A companion website provides additional resources, such as a template for creating case studies like those discussed in Chapter 11. The book also includes a comprehensive index that is helpful when using the book as a reference.
