Sales vs. Leadership: Who Wins the Crown for Business Growth?

Hello and welcome to the show. In today's episode, I'm going to show that I am not above being click baity. I'm trying to spark controversy for controversy's sake. I guess that's because I put up a post recently today on sales versus leadership. I was trying to make an argument in the other direction that sales is more important than leadership anyway. So part of part of the motivation of me putting up that post was, yeah, primarily to poke the establishment.

You know, there's lots of thought leadership and content out there about the importance of leadership. So there's what's his name, the former pastor Maxwell. So Maxwell and the laws of leadership. Everybody's talking about leadership. And it looks to me that anybody who wants to become a an influencer, a thought leader or whatever kind of picks up the easy topics to talk about, you know, motivation, leadership and those sorts of things.

And very few people try to stake their claim or stake their ground in things that are much more metrics driven, things that are much more easier to show whether you succeed or not. So I am in the sales space if I do a good job or not, it's very simple. You can tell based on the results that I'm able to achieve either for myself personally or for my clients. So if we thought we were going to try and increase by a certain number of sales or by a certain number of revenue or you know,

those sorts of things, it's easy to to say when I've hit the mark or when I've missed the mark. But then I think for these leadership gurus, leadership gurus and motivational types, it's a lot easy to anyway, let me stop bad mouthing my my colleagues. Anyway, you sort of get the point. So that's the reason why I wrote the article, basically just to poke the bear and just to try and jab the other side. And well, I think it worked well given my the relatively small audience that I have.

You know, it's not like it's something that trended or broke the Internet or whatever, but I got a huge number of impressions in lots of the groups that I put it on and I got comments very, very quickly. But anyway, I'm here today just to share the general thrust of the post and whether there's. Anyway, let me just share the general, the general thrust of the post and I'll leave it up to you. So basically, let me put it this way.

Yes, leadership is important because it's leadership that sets the vision for the company, that sets the vision for the business, you know, that sort of thing. But my argument was that it is sales most importantly, that fuels the engine of business growth. And I tried to advocate different reasons why it should be sales that wears the crown rather than leadership. Because lots of folks out there on the Internet either pushing the motivation gospel,

motivation is separate from leadership anyway. So you have people pushing the motivation gospel and then folks also talking up leadership one way or another. I'm just here trying to say that there's another player that we ought to be paying attention to. And those are the unsung heroes, you know, the everyday ordinary guys and girls in the department who are, you know, pushing away and trying to get us to those revenue targets.

And that is sales. So the my argument basically in the post was that revenue is the oxygen of business because if you don't have sales, then there's no cash flow and no cash flow means no growth. So strategy and strategic types, you guys can sit down, you can plan, you can do all the brainstorming that you want, but if you don't have sales people on ground to translate things into action, then nothing is going to happen.

Now of course, I recognize and it so happens that for average ordinary Joes like us, you know you're starting up the business. You will be in charge of the leadership and and strategic component of the business. And most likely you would also have an imprint in the sales and level of revenue that you're able to drive. Well, even if you don't most of the time I argue that you should. Because when you take an interest in these sorts of things and you get when you take an interest into these sorts of things, basically the feedback loop that is built in, built into sales is going to give you lots of insights, lots of data that you can use to refine your product, your service, the customer experience, you know those sorts of things.

So if you're a one man show, maybe this argument is moot. But for the bigger people out there, that's the argument I was making anyway. So yeah, leadership important, but then the people that bring in the oxygen, the people that bring in the revenue and ensure that we have good cash flow, the sales people, then let's see, what else did I say? Oh, yeah. So what I said a couple of minutes ago, I think about customer insights because people on the ground, you know, sales teams, they're the ones who are speaking with the customers,

speaking with your, the ones that are speaking to the customers primarily. So they understand the customer's needs in a way that people who are in head office don't understand and they understand the challenges that the customer is facing in a way that the people in Home Office don't understand. An example of something like this that I got was back when I was in Lagos. OK. No, yeah, yeah, I was still in Lagos at the time.

I think I was still in university. So I didn't have my own car. So it was mom, CS car that was driving then and there were battery issues and I went to go and get the battery replaced. I was just chilling just with the battery guy and he was talking to somebody else, you know, one of the distributors and I think they were complaining about batteries not moving, a particular brand of battery not moving. And the guy was trying to explain about how customers are not buying this, customers are not buying this, you know, blah blah, blah.

Now, The thing is, I'm not a technical person, so I don't understand the reason why people would buy some kinds of car batteries and not the other kinds. But it would turn out that it looked like sitting there in the guy's shop close to Under bridge. Well, that's what it's called, the Ketcha Under bridge. So sitting close to in the guy's shop close to the Ketcha Under bridge, it looked like the distributor was trying to move a certain brand of batteries.

But people just ain't buying it. Now the conversation was technical, so I have no idea why people were not buying that particular brand of batteries. But it it kind of fleshes out what it is that I'm trying to say. Now people in corporate office can say it has to be this product, let's move this product, this is the newest, the latest, the greatest, let's move this. But then you, it will be nice for you to pay attention to the boys and girls on the ground because they're the ones that will tell you that, look, Oga CEO, OGA Chief Strategy Officer or whatever, this one just ain't moving.

This one, this one is moving. This is where customers like this, this is where customers don't like that. So that insight, that feedback really, really important and you take that, excuse me. So you take that, you listen to your sales people and you, you take that and into your next brainstorming session, your next strategy session, you know, blah, blah, blah, all those things. And it's going to spark ideas that can fuel product development or service development in case you're one of those businesses that sell or serve is not a product and also help you differentiate yourself in the market.

Now another argument that I made was that sales people are the ones who actually build brand advocacy because of course, they're the ones that interact with the customer. So a salesperson who absolutely wows it, who absolutely kills it, she's going to foster trust, admiration and trust in the customer that they've had an interaction with. And that is actually what builds loyalty and people, especially people in the, what's it called,

you know, like restaurants and things like that. What's what are they called the restaurant space? What do you call it? Is that food? Hospitality. OK, let's say hospitality. So that's something that people in the hospitality space don't quite get. I've experienced this first hand was a time when we had some small change, so family decided. But we decided we take the family to a hotel that was me and Wifey to spend the night.

They were overbooked and we ended up waiting, I think about two hours to get a room. But there was one person at the front desk who went above and beyond, and she did, She did, She handled it. She handled really well. Apologetic, taking the initiative, upgrading us to a new suite. Let's see what else. Arranging for what you call it. Arranging for food and drinks and then an extra extra gifts for the kids and things like that.

I mean, she was masterful, she was wonderful. But then we learnt quickly after she left because hotel Staffs, you know, the working shifts. After her shift was up, we learned quickly that the hotel pretty much had shitty service all round. So you know people in the C-Suite, you know, top people, strategy people, CEOs, accountants, you know, blah blah blah. They just go ahead and they hire somebody. They hire anybody, but they forget that actually is the salesperson on ground.

OK. Well, in this case you can't say the reception, The reception is a salesperson, but let's just say OK, people with customer facing activities, yeah, let's put it that way. People who are customer facing, they are the ones that actually build brand advocacy and that's the reason why they're the unsung heroes that we have to, you know, that we have to celebrate. So because of the sales people, the receptionists, all those people who are customer facing,

forward facing, they do a good job then they create satisfied customers and the satisfied customers are the ones who sing the praise of the brand. Now this hotel had done a good job and everybody was like that receptionist or that front end staff. I'm sorry, I'm not sure if receptionist is the proper or polite time to use these days. So let me just say front end staff. So if everybody had done was like that front end staff, then of course me or especially Wifey anyway would have been singing the praises of the hotel and would have lots of brand ambassadors.

And these are the things that drive organic growth. And so that's the reason why sales people are important and that is the link between your sales people or your customer facing people and brand advocacy. So leadership folks, people in the C-Suite doesn't matter what you can do, you cannot build that level of brand advocacy with customers. The best you can do is come up with some fancy advertising campaigns, but eventually the robber meets the road and people have to interact with someone and typically your sales or your customer facing from people are the ones that you're going to validate the claims that you're putting out over in your in your advertising.

Then another thing I argued was that sales teams are agile, they're responsive. You know when stuff is happening in the market in sales people we have to move because we we we're action oriented people. So because you know if you don't make a sale you don't eat. You know most people are on 100% Commission in Nigeria. I know you don't think of it that way, but just think about it, you know, back to the battery seller in Ikeja under bridge.

So he moves a couple of batteries, He has a cut on it. If all the inventory remains in the store, he doesn't have a cut. So a lot of people in Nigeria say 100% Commission sales. That man, that is gangster, that is hard, that is this, that is that. But the truth is most Nigerians 100% Commission. You just have never thought about it that way. Think about it. You're waiting photographer. What do you think you are? You're 100% Commission.

You don't sell, You're not going to eat. You know you don't sell. No fuel for your car. You don't sell. You can't celebrate Valentine's at the point of this recording. Valentine's is next week, Wednesday. So, wedding planner, you're 100% Commission. Battery. Personal who sells battery is your 100% Commission. Most Nigerians, you're 100% Commission. You just haven't realized it yet. So realize you're 100% commissioner Commission.

And then act accordingly. So because we're agile, we learn about customer preferences. We know what it is that is going on in the market. You know, strategy and leadership, people can sit in the conference room and have fancy ideas about this and that. But sales people can actually tell you that, man, this is how things are moving. That is how things are moving. We pay attention to this, ignore this, This is important.

That is not important. Then another reason why I said sales should start being celebrated is because sales performance is something that is easily quantifiable. So you can tell whether your people are doing their job or not. And that's something that I found absolutely impressive when I tried selling financial products for an insurance provider in Niger that I will not name. They have a sales force. At the time, I think the sales force was less than 400, was it 400,000 in Nigeria?

But then this company was doing was it 500 and something billion in revenue or something. And I just thought that man, that's absolutely fantastic. I mean of course they have advertising behind it and things like that. But at the end of the day, the people that push the contracts and get the signatures and collect the deposits are sales people. Now you have less than 400 K and the company is doing 500 and something 500 and something billion.

I mean fantastic. So you can quantify that 404 hundred and something thousand people on payroll or on Commission in this case. You can tell if they're working or they're not working. It's hard to see if the leadership brass is working or not because some other factors might be impinging on the ability to bring success. You can make an argument on why strategy is working or not working. You know other things you can you can make excuses whether it's working or not.

But for salespeople, it's easy to quantify. You hit the figure or you didn't hit the figure, you hit the figure, you overshot it. It's easy to tell. So summary, like I said, I was kind of being polemical. I was trying to poke the bear. I was trying to strike, strike up some debate and I was trying to give it to my leadership and motivation colleagues. On the other hand, mostly the leadership people, because I'm seeing lots of leadership stuff on my LinkedIn.

So yes, I was being polemical, but I but I I had a point. Yes, leadership is crucial because strong leaders are the ones who create the kind of ecosystem and the kind of environment where sales can thrive. But the point I was trying to make was you can sit down and come up with all these kind of fancy dreams and everything. What is the application that makes the dream a reality? And it is sales people like you and me.

For those of you who are sales people who are listening to the podcast, we are the ones that make things happen and we're the ones that lead ultimately to business growth and development. So if you're one of those organizations where everybody is hyping leadership, hyping leadership, just remember that there are some unsung heroes out there. We have boys and girls who are hitting the streets, boys and girls who are out on the road,

young men and women who are out there in the markets, the trade shows, mining the phones, the computers, you know, all kinds of things. People who are making it happen. Let's remember to celebrate these unsung heroes every now and then because the Commission might be good. In fact, some people say the Commission sucks. You know, it depends on which organization you're with. But let's just assume, best case scenario, that the Commission is good.

A little bit of recognition and praise wouldn't hurt as well, so thank you very much for listening to the show today. Please connect with me on WhatsApp. The number is 08064662140. The country code is +234. For those of you who are hit me up outside the shores of Nigeria, also connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Tavish Shima Ayede. I'm the host of the show. Some of you fondly call me Tav. I've never had a nickname before, so I'm enjoying people coming up with different variations of my name since Tavishima seems to be too much of A mouthful for most folks, so don't worry about the spelling of my name.

However, you can get it from the link while you're listening to this episode, whether it's the podcast or whether you're listening to it on a web, what's it called? Web page or a web link. So thank you very much for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.