Selling With Noble Purpose. Lisa Earle McLeod

conversation. It's a costly missed opportunity.

      Sales is where purpose can come alive or wither and die. As the center of a commercial model, sales can deliver outsized returns on purpose, emotionally and financially. When you activate a sense of Noble Purpose in sales, it drives engagement, innovation, differentiation, and ultimately revenue.

      For the last decade, this is what I've been studying, researching, and speaking and writing about. I'll share what we've learned from implementing selling with Noble Purpose with over 200 organizations. I've had the privilege of working with teams at organizations like Google, Salesforce, Dave & Busters, and Roche, helping them enhance their culture and drive sales performance. But Noble Purpose is not just for a few sexy high‐profile organizations. We've also worked with less‐well‐known firms who have achieved even more dramatic results.

In this book, you'll meet a concrete company whose blue‐collar team is redefining an entire industry; a commercial bank that went from malaise to winning awards; and a team of travel salespeople who bring so much passion and purpose into their client interactions that customers from around the world ask them for sales calls.

      These seemingly everyday companies harness the power of purpose to break sales records and become leaders in their spaces.

      In this new, updated edition of Selling with Noble Purpose, I'll cover the dramatic changes in the business landscape and in customer and employee attitudes that have made Noble Purpose a business imperative. I'll also share:

       The direct impact of purpose on profitability (it's more than originally anticipated)

       Why so many purpose‐driven organizations struggle to activate their purpose in sales, and how to overcome this challenge

       Examples of firms who experienced exponential financial payoffs from Noble Purpose, and how they did it

       Examples from firms whose purpose programs failed, and a breakdown of what went wrong

       Strategies for turning managers into belief‐builders for your organization

       Why most sales ecosystems can have a chilling effect on customer engagement, and how to align your sales ecosystem toward customer impact

       Innovative training techniques for activating purpose in frontline salespeople

      We've deepened our study of Selling with Noble Purpose, yet one thing remains the same:

       When you tap into someone's desire to make a difference, you unleash a force more powerful than anything found in a traditional business model.

      When you cultivate a Noble Purpose through your sales team, you create a tribe of true believers: a team who can beat even the most formidable of competitors.

It's called a Noble Sales Purpose because it is:

       Noble: In the service of others

       Sales: Based on what you sell

       Purpose: Your reason for being

      You don't have to create world peace. Your Noble Sales Purpose can be about making your customers more successful or about improving your industry.

      This book is about getting your entire sales organization aligned, empowered, and excited about making a difference to customers. When you are clear and specific about how you want to help customers, and you activate your Noble Sales Purpose across your entire sales organization, you create an unstoppable team.

      A friend of mine who was burned out from two decades of working in politics once told me, “In every office, there's always a TB.”

      “What's a TB?” I asked her.

      “A true believer,” she said. “That starry‐eyed optimist who still believes they can make a difference. But here's the thing all the jaded staffers don't tell you—everyone else in the office is secretly jealous of the true believer.”

      I've come to understand the reason everyone is jealous of the true believer: we all have a secret true believer inside us, just waiting for permission to come out.

      Selling with Noble Purpose is about igniting the true believer that lurks in the heart of every salesperson. Because as much as salespeople want to make money, they also want to make a difference.

Note

      1 1 Millward Brown Optimor, “Stengel Study of Business Growth.”

PART 1 Sales: A Noble Profession?

       In the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.

      —Jim Collins, author of Good to Great

      Making a living and making a difference are not incompatible. As a leader, you can do both. You must do both.

      In Part 1, you'll learn how a Noble Sales Purpose (NSP) can reframe your sales narrative to create more competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. And you'll learn why an NSP is crucial during times of uncertainty and volatility. We'll explore what an NSP is and what it's not—and why it matters to you and your sales force.

      We'll look at some surprising information about why overemphasizing profit has an alarmingly negative effect on salespeople and customers and how you can reframe the profit question inside your company. You'll learn the brain science behind NSP and where it fits within the structure of your larger organization.

You'll also learn why passion, despite its high value, is not enough to sustain performance. Finally, we'll address the leadership question that changes everything, and how you can use it to jump‐start your team.

      If you're thinking, “We're just an average (accounting, software, landscape, furniture, fill‐in‐the‐blank) firm. I'm not sure our work is noble,” we'll tell you right now: if your customers are buying from you, then you are adding some value. You do have a Noble Purpose, and it's time for us to find it.

CHAPTER 1 The Great Sales Disconnect

       I stayed the course … from beginning to the end, because I believed in something inside of me.

      —Tina Turner, entertainer

      Suppose you wrote the following goal on your office whiteboard: “I want to make as much money as possible.” Now suppose your clients saw it. How would they feel? How would you feel knowing that they'd seen it? Would you be proud or embarrassed?

      What if you went over your prospect list, and the only thing written next to each prospect's name was a dollar figure and a projected close date? Would your prospects be happy if they saw that? Would they want to do business with you? Probably not; it reduces them to nothing more than a number. Yet that's exactly how most organizations talk about their customers on a daily basis.

      Imagine a salesperson walking into a customer's office and opening the sales call by plopping a revenue forecast down on the customer's desk announcing, “I have you projected for $50,000 this month. Give me an order now!”

That rep would be thrown out in a second. Yet that's the kind of language most organizations use when they talk about their customers internally. It's like two different worlds.

      Think about the typical conversation a sales manager has with his or her sales rep. It usually goes something like this:

      “When are you going to close this? How much revenue will it be? Are all the key decision‐makers involved? Who's the competition? What