Laurent De Grauwe is a leader among leaders; he is a Global Field Marketing Director – Business Applications for Microsoft. His goal is to balance the scale between people and business, to accelerate business while continuing to care for customers. In this episode, Laurent does a deep dive into the intricacies of building connections while earning trust and establishing credibility. He presents a forecast on what to expect for sales in the digital realm and lays out important details when forming lasting connections.
Laurent is an experienced Sales & marketing leader with a passion for people, change, and business growth. His goal is to balance people and business to accelerate growth while having fun.
Laurent’s career started in marketing and eventually, he grew a strong drive for sales and business development. Over the years, he built a diverse set of experiences across working for multinationals like HP, Thomas Cook, and Microsoft, being part of a start-up, starting new businesses in existing organizations, and growing established businesses globally. As the Global Field Marketing Director for Business Applications, he leads the team responsible for landing the GTM strategy with Microsoft Field teams.
Connect with Laurent De Grauwe
“Every salesperson should be a leader, but in my opinion, every good salesperson is already a leader.”
A leader does not only relate to someone in politics or an organization; it is much deeper than that. To be a leader, an individual must possess various selfless characteristics, most notably someone who cares about others and never puts himself first. A good leader also carries the ability to inspire, empower, and develop a shared vision to earn trust and drive change.
The process of building trust starts from the very beginning of your professional career. You have to build connections and establish credibility. Building connections is about showing your humanity, being genuinely curious about others, and understanding their goals. Credibility adds value to yourself and the conversation at hand.
First and foremost, build a connection with yourself. Understand your defects and be willing to work on them. From there, you can begin to focus on readiness and hiring. Readiness’ foundation in sales, but with the added twist of leadership training. Extending leadership training to everyone who is on the front lines with customers is essential. Hire people who show leadership qualities.
Just like connections and credibility are about earning trust, leading change is about driving success. Once the trust is earned, you can begin to enable change within the person you are engaging with. There are three pillars when going through this process; focus on the why, lead with value, and explain the how.
The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation across all industries. Moving forward, sales will be a hybrid engagement, which only emphasizes the importance of building mindful connections with customers.
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