About the Guest 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 Key Takeaways Leaders are not just politicians, but someone who shows interest in people and empower them Earning trust consists of building personal connections and establishing credibility Readiness and hiring are the two main facets for building trust within companies Leading change is about driving success Quote “Every salesperson should be a leader, but in my opinion, every good salesperson is already a leader.” Highlights From the Episode What do you mean when you say every salesperson should be 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. How do you build trust? 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. How do you enable companies and sales reps to embrace some of those principles? 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. A leader leads to change, how do you translate that in a sales situation? 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. How much of this is changing in a remote environment? Especially with COVID-19? 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. Is there a book, blog, newsletter, website, or video that you would recommend to our listeners? Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win By Jocko Willink Shout-Outs Jeff Peterson – Senior Director Product Marketing for Microsoft Stacey Peterson – Account-Based Marketing Leader for Microsoft
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