Business Building: Leaders Make Selling A Priority!

Words: George Hedley

"I have some deep concerns about the future of your company. I have some deep concerns about your leadership. I have some deep concerns about the management team you have assembled. Your business is not growing for one reason: You and your management team are not leading or setting good examples."

This is the opening to a letter I sent to a start-up company I invested in. I wanted to shake them up and help them realize where their problems lie. Often business owners and managers tend to blame their bottom-line woes on the economy, competition, customers, salespeople or their employees. In reality, results are the biggest indicator of the leaders.

Leaders Lead By Example!
Leaders lead. Leaders have a vision of where they want their companies to go. Leaders make it happen and achieve big results. Leaders set the pace, innovate, and disrupt the status quo. Leaders motivate people to want to follow. Leaders create enthusiasm and excitement. Leaders take accountability for performance, make tough decisions, and do what it takes.

Making a profit and growing your construction business is simple. It starts with creating enough profitable revenue to cover your job costs, overhead and profit goals for the year. No revenue = no business = no profit. Your income statement is the scorecard for the leader - sales and profits. Effective constructions company leaders are almost always the big-time revenue generators who create lots of highly profitable sales with high margin customers. The fastest way to fix a company's profit or growth problems is to generate more revenue. Check out these quotes from successful leaders:

“Anyone can manage. Leaders go out and create revenue.” (Sam Walton)
“Anyone can write procedure manuals. Leaders go out and sell.” (Jeff Bezos)
“Anyone can mind the store. Revenue takes inspiration and excitement.” (Jack Welch)
“Anyone can organize. Leaders cold call and close sales.” (Lee Iacocca)
“Anyone can tell others to do it. Leaders go out and make it happen themselves.” (Ross Perot)
“Anyone can build great buildings. Leaders get customers to sign contracts!” (George Hedley)

Selling Is Not Easy!
For me, selling doesn't come naturally. I don't like to spend my day cold calling on potential customers who don't really want to talk to me. Selling is uncomfortable and is not my gift. So, like many of you, years ago I tried to fix this problem to generate more sales. I hired a salesperson as I figured this would remove me from the sales process. Guess what? It didn't work. He continually kept asking me to go on customer calls with him so I could close the deal. This ticked me off! Now what? How can I grow my business without me doing any selling?

In the construction business, customers want to know the owner and project management team before deciding to hire a contractor. Customers want to know who they’ll be doing business with. They want to build relationships and develop a sense of trust during the sales and contractor selection process. It’s almost impossible to expect a salesperson to get a construction contract signed without the construction company owner and team’s help. It’s easy to hire a salesperson, but the hard part is to get them to do it well without your coaching, direction, and hands-on involvement. Salespeople can be valuable as lead generators, but the team will almost always close the sale. When you rely exclusively on salespeople to grow your business and bring in profitable sales and signed contracts, it just won't happen. Without the owner and management team involved, it is hard to meet your sales goals.

Leaders Commit To Sell
The only way you can grow your business is to take personal responsibility to get it done. You must be the leader. You must lead by example. You must spend time with your customers. You must sell. What is your personal commitment to selling? This week? This month? This quarter? This year? Leaders generate revenue. A personal sales approach utilizing face-to-face appointments with your top 10 to 20 customer targets is what it takes. Every breakfast and lunch are opportunities to be with one of your targets. Every week arrange at least 1 or 2 meetings with potential and current customers from your list. Give your management team a weekly progress report to show your commitment to making sales happen. Only by your example of leadership will your team get on board as well and make selling their priority too. Get sales commitments from every team member. If your team members won't or can't make it happen, replace them with players who will. You can't grow a company without 100% commitment from everyone at the top.

Make Selling A Priority!
Remember the start-up company I sent the letter to? The CEO got on board and made it happen. He made a personal commitment to make ten sales appointments every month. He also committed to personally generate $15,000,000 in revenue within six months. His leadership inspired those under him to get on board as well. Each team member committed to making selling a priority too. This also improved productivity, customer service and profitability. All good news! Guess what? Their salespeople improved as well. With the full support of the company leaders, he was more aggressive, created leads and turned them into sales.

If your business isn't growing in revenue and profits, only you can be blamed as the leader. You lead your management or project team and set the priorities. Have you made selling a priority? Your company needs leadership. Your people need someone to follow. The choice is yours. Where will you lead them?


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