Leaders Don't Puke
By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL
By Rob Wright
Ron Karr is a popular public speaker and business development expert. He is also the author of “Lead, Sell Or Get Out Of The Way.” He and I recently had a discussion about his book as I was interested in having him submit an article for Life Science Leader’s very popular Leadership Lessons column. In his humility, he told me that a lot of people describe his book as being “a sales book pretending to be about leadership.” Having read the book, I can attest, there are a lot of good tips for sales people, some of whom are at the very top of your organization. In a conversation I had with a CEO, he described for me how he had to “sell his team on a new vision and business objective.”
Everyone Sells
Having a background in sales, as a field sales drug representative, I was charged with educating and convincing physicians on the benefits of my products — asking them to recommend these to their patients. I would often hear, “I am not going to sell your product” even when the clinician believed my product to be the best in the industry. So why wouldn’t they sell the product? Simple, they didn’t know how or didn’t like rejection. All people need to know how to sell — even doctors and executives. Doctors need to be able to communicate in their best medical judgment what is best for a patient — perhaps a procedure — maybe a product. Not doing so, in my opinion, qualifies as malpractice. Executives need to be able to sell as well. I recently met a CEO of a small start-up. He is an engineer by training, but he is finding that to get his business up and running, he is doing a lot of selling, not just of the product and service his company has to offer, but the idea behind his company and why an investor should support it. Great leaders sell, and they sell a lot. They sell ideas. They sell visions. If you didn’t come up through the ranks or have any sales training, perhaps it is time you became educated on the process. Karr’s book would be a great starting point. Plus, you will learn a lot about leadership.
The Leader’s Advantage
You may be wondering, what’s with the title, “Leader’s Don’t Puke?” Well, I came to this phrase on the second page of Karr’s book, which certainly got my attention. PUKE is an acronym used by the author to convey the following — People who Utter Knowledge about Everything. If you want to have influence as a leader, you need two things from people — their time and their attention. As a leader you can force your team to give you their time, but you can’t force them to give you their attention and gain buy in. Your job as a leader is to find ways to connect with people. Karr says this is best achieved by first focusing on the “what,” i.e. what are people looking for? Next focus on the “how,” i.e. how are you going to get there? If you start with the how, you leave out the most important part of the conversation, namely, the outcomes you are going to produce together. This is best achieved by asking issue-based questions, listening, and taking notes. Karr provides some examples, and I even tried these during some recent conversations with some executives. For example, describe the three biggest challenges that your company is facing right now in reaching its business goals? What do you want your customers to think of when they hear your company’s name? The next time you are running a meeting with your team, try engaging your team to uncover the issues — getting to the “what” before you give the “how.” I think you will find this approach to be more beneficial than if you take the PUKE approach to leadership.