What does the future of sales look like? How do insurance organizations attract the best people to the sales profession? Our answer is to help the next generation of insurance sales professionals become digital sales leaders.  Things are changing, sales are changing, and we have a solution that can help attract higher caliber people to professional sales. Digital sales leadership is a mindset.

There are seven core concepts that help a sales professional enhance their sales career. Here are several key aspects to digital sales leaders:

Master digital communications. Digital sales leaders connect with their clients and peers digitally. Mobile is a different beast that great sales leaders embrace. Over 80% of younger clients prefer their messages mobile ready. What does that mean? Briefer, shorter, more interesting stories and messages! Let your imagination go wild on the possibilities.

Embrace ambiguity. Digital sales leaders explore the possibilities with their clients. They embrace the different options that fast-changing markets provide them. In uncertain times, people who excel embrace the all possibilities.

Embrace collaboration and make sales a team sport. Teams are more powerful than I. The new digital sales leaders learn how to not only sell their clients, but influence the other people on their teams as well. They see and embrace many of the key concepts of transformational leadership.

Change the game in their markets. Digital sales leaders leverage technology, creativity, and imagination in helping clients solve their problems. They help the client tell the stories that lead to digital transformation in their industries and markets.

Digital sales leaders guide their clients through change. They are masters of the both/and concept. They leverage the current state while embracing future possibilities for differentiation in their markets.

Work well in a gig (freelance here in the Midwest) society. Digital sales leaders build extensive and extreme networks knowing that their clients have many kinds of needs that may fall outside their areas of expertise. This leadership is being facilitative versus the control and command structures of many tradition business partnerships and alliances. They become masters of the consulting arts.

Commits to lifetime learning. Digital sales leaders are curious people who thrive in an environment where they are always learning new things. They are adopters of new tech and concepts. They tell stories. They are great at probing questions that help their clients look at things from many different perspectives, so they get the optimum solutions for their clients.

Constant personal and professional growth is a key quality of digital sales leaders. Their experience levels can range from startup entrepreneurs right out of school to senior executives within global giants.  They are all embracing lifetime learning.

Finally, they cultivate character. Digital sales leaders understand the foundation of all success is trust. They know that they face many options in how they serve their clients’ interests. They are developing a service-based approach to how they serve others.  Their personal leadership  brand is built on a values-based approach to selling and serving others.

In 2019, I’ve been asked to write a book on digital sales leadership.  The book is going to discuss these qualities and traits of the next generation of high performing sales leaders.  My consulting projects over the last several years have been to help several technology companies bring new products and services to market. This has been challenging work for my clients and their sales leaders. We’ve invested thousands of hours in trying to understand what the future of sales and influence looks like.

This project is now moving beyond the initial pilot stage of the project into implementation in several key industries that are experiencing digital disruption.  I believe this is the perfect time to begin training the next generation of sales leadership in the way of the digital sales leader.  I’ve committed the next 12 months, until the book is launched, to sharing concepts and ideas that help you implement this new way of doing business.

Happy New Year!  And see you next week.