RESILIENT COMMERCIAL LEADERSHIP AS THE BASIS OF THE EXPLOREME MINDSET
What does resilience mean for a salesperson, account manager and commercial leader?
Only by setting long-term career goals can salespeople, account managers and commercial leaders excel. Resilience, then, is the capacity to deal creatively with the challenges and setbacks associated with pursuing such goals.
Possessing resiliency, a salesperson, account manager and commercial leader can meet new commercial challenges more decisively. Successful salespeople, account managers and commercial leaders become battle hardened as they gradually overcome challenges and thereby generate more sales. This is also known as small wins, which in turn generate feelings of happiness and self-confidence.
Resilience consists of shaping thinking and feeling processes as well as making connections in the brain which is known in brain sciences as the use it or lose it principle. Successful salespeople, account managers and commercial leaders therefore seek strategic accounts to solve their problems, because these projects are more challenging and they can ultimately learn more from them. Applying this acquired expertise to other clients or projects is what we call knowledge brokerage.
Commercial leadership, setting career goals, developing resilience, knowledge brokerage and developing your own brand with placebo effects on customers are the core concepts of the ExploreMe Mindset.
By Mindset we mean that we provide you with a frame of mind, based on years of scientific research, so that you look at yourself differently as a salesperson, account manager or commercial leader and this perspective inspires and motivates you to develop specific commercial skills so that you generate more turnover with your customers and accounts.
Why the emphasis on resilience?
Compared to other animal species, man, the Homo sapiens, has a larger brain and this large brain allows him to innovate faster, to copy those innovations exactly and then apply them to new domains, thus increasing innovations exponentially. In the business field, this manifests itself, for example, in the emergence of start-ups, setting up companies based on disruptive technologies, the growth of new business ecosystems and advancing internationalization. In short, there is more intense competition between companies.
This growing competition creates significant challenges for the salesperson, account manager and commercial leader. Think of repeatedly acquiring or calling new customers, being rejected by customers, forming new coalitions with other market parties, offering the customer the opportunity to experience an interesting customer experience, operating socially flexibly within networks, knowledge renewal through the selection of key accounts and also selling yourself within your own company. This is exactly how you get more sales!
Knowlegde brokering and the HOW: the ICCCT principle
Successful salespeople, account managers and commercial leaders are able to learn and copy wisely innovation through contact with customers and colleagues. They apply knowledge acquired from one customer to other customers. In short, we regard this as knowledge brokering.
Salespeople, account managers and commercial leaders are knowledge brokers for their customers as well as within their own company.
By engaging in knowledge brokering, the salesperson, account manager and commercial leaders experience job meaning that differs from job happiness. Finding meaning in work is central to the ExploreMe Mind set.
Successful knowledge brokerage involves deploying the five fundamental social skills that we collectively call the ICCCT principle.
Outlined below are the ICCCT skills that make up the ICCCT principle.
Reinforcing these ICCCT skills is critical to developing your resilience. To emphasize the value of ICCCT we have also created the animation below for you.
Successful salespeople, account managers and commercial leaders always try to
a) develop those five fundamental ICCCT skills and
b) use them flexibly with both customers and colleagues in their own company.
So they play total soccer as the Dutch call it!
What does total soccer have to do with resilience?
In short, these ICCCT skills are the fundamental drivers of commercial resilience development that make them known as innovative problem solvers: again the placebo effect of the commercial leader.
It is precisely from here that the more successful salespeople and commercial leaders achieve more turnover and sales!
Fundamental to the ExploreMe Mindset is that the ICCCT skills are learnable and trainable and not innate. Learning these skills goes hand in hand with the creation of new connections in the brain.
Not every commercial leader is equally resilient!
Different biological and psychological processes influence the extent to which the commercial leader develops the ICCCT skills or deploys them flexibly with customers and within his own company. Three dimensions play a role here:
We consider the basic needs and attachment styles mainly as stable qualities, but they do have an effect on the resilience development of the salesperson, account manager and commercial leader.
- THE WHY
- The basic needs: need for power, affection and achievement
- The attachment styles: fearful, secure or avoidant attachment
- ENERGY MANAGEMENT
- Managing the balance between energy takers and energy sources.
- An excess of energy takers causes burnout and reduces the commercial resilience development of the salesperson, account manager and commercial leader.
- QUALITY OF LIFE
- Mental and physical health (or lack thereof) influence the commercial resilience development of the salesperson, account manager and commercial leader.
The aim of the ExploreMe Mindset is to make the salesperson and commercial leader aware of the different dimensions that influence the commercial resilience development of the salesperson and commercial leader. This inspires him to become a successful knowledge broker. Successful knowledge brokers generate more turnover and sales.
