(this is a transcript of Rene’s educational moment at the Winchester Friday BNI on October 19 2012)

Let’s talk about Leadership Skills today. Leadership is about your capability to Influence people. Are you aware that most of the skills a leader can use are also useful for sales people? Let me give an example. John Maxwell, probably THE business guru on Leadership, distinguishes between 5 levels of leadership. The lowest level 1 type of leadership is leadership by position. You are the leader because you are appointed and people are appointed in roles to follow you. They will usually say what you do, but not with much zeal if that is the only reason you are their leader. In selling this is the same: if you are the only provider of a certain good or service, people will buy that from you. Not because you are the best, or because they really want to buy from YOU, but just because, well, because they have to.

On the second level of leadership (and I will talk about the other levels another time) there is the leadership style where people follow you because they WANT to follow you. Now why would they want to?

The answer to that question is: because they know you care about them. You sincerely want to help them get or achieve something that is good or enjoyable for them. That requires of coarse that you care about them. And that you also know the balance between ‘care’ and ‘dare’ (dare as in willing to tell them unpleasant truths). Again, this is true for both hierarchical leadership relations as well as in sales. If you buy from someone, and you know that this person honestly wants you to have what is best for you, wouldn’t that be  your sales agent of choice?

So let’s make this practical. How do you become a better leader that achieves level 2?

Here is something that works well for me. Ask yourself every morning “WHOM am I going to be of value for today” . Pick only one name. And I am not talking about the usual value that should be included in your core product or service. No, what can YOU do to provide Value beyond that? Then, at the end of the day, ask yourself: “Did I achieve my goal to provide value for this person today?”.  It works probably best if you put a sign against your wall with this question.

Become a successful leader, start today.

(transcript from Rene’s educational moment at the Winchester Friday BNI at October 26)

This morning we are going to test if you are really serious about improving your business. I am going to ask you two questions:

1) If I were to ask you right now: What are the 3 most important achievements in the next 3 to 6 months that your business has to achieve, can you within moments list them off to me? And don’t answer something like “I want to make a million dollars” or “more sales.” That is is too easy to say. Which is why I want to ask you the second question:

2) What are your three top strategies to achieve these three goals? And do you have them in place?

That is all I have to say this morning.