Good leaders are good sales people. Regardless of the occupation, leadership requires a degree of salesmanship, the ability to persuade others of the benefits of a good idea. "Leadership is leaders inducing followers to act for certain goals that present the values and the motivations—the wants and needs, the aspirations and expectations—of both leaders and followers," wrote historian James MacGregor Burns in Leadership, a landmark study of the topic.

Effective leadership enriches both leader and follower. Likewise, good salesmanship requires the recipient to feel good about his purchase; or in the case of leadership, understand the benefits of the new idea. As Burns has written, leadership requires a mirroring of values in both leader and follower.

Salesmanship, it must be said, has acquired somewhat of a tarnished image. Many times the term "good salesman" is used derisively, to connote a low-brow huckster who has connived some worthy person out of his last dollar. Think of Professor Harold Hill in the Music Man. That kind of talk and double-talk (albeit wildly entertaining in the movies) is not salesmanship, it’s showmanship.

Inherent within salesmanship is a degree of enthusiasm. Show me a man or woman in business who isn’t enthusiastic about his service or product and I will show you a person in the wrong line of business. Ray Kroc’s sense of enthusiasm for McDonald’s and the hamburger was legendary. He created the quick service restaurant as we know it by sheer force of will and salesmanship. He became so excited about what he sold that he persuaded others to follow.

Kroc, however, was more than a salesman. He was a leader. If not, he never could have built a company As a result he built an organization of people who could do things Kroc could not. Initially, franchisees and employees, however, were drawn to Kroc by the force of his personality and the logic of his vision for building a restaurant system based upon standardization of quality, convenience, and service. Employees, franchisees, and vendors alike shared in Kroc’s vision of the future.

We must, however, take care not to let our enthusiasm for an idea overwhelm logic or rationality. No amount of enthusiasm can overcome sound principles of business: finance, logistics, market appeal. The same holds for leadership. If a manager is promoting an idea that is out of sync with corporate strategy, he is in danger of angering his bosses and losing his job.

Yet many great companies would be nowhere today without the persistent prodding and nudging of their own employees to make change. Sales people can make good leaders because are especially good at this because the nature of their job forces them to interact with people outside of the organization, their customers. Compared to others in the organization who never meet with anyone on the outside, sales people serve as the organization’s "eyes and ears" to the world at large.

If they have their antennae up they can perceive discordance between corporate thinking and reality. The sales person is continually pitching his wares to customers who posses a healthy amount of skepticism. These customers question the need for what the sales person is selling. Within an organization, too few people question how they act, what represent, or what the organization sells; they simply do it, without thinking much about it. Behavior scientists call this groupthink. Sales people do not have this mindset; they are constantly mingling with outsiders. They regularly deal with purchasing agents, who make sport of a vendor’s shortcomings as a means of negotiating a better deal.

Aside from negotiation, good salespeople, as well as sales leaders, listen to their customers in ways that cipher genuine need, particular with respect to product deficiencies in a product they present. For this reason, effective salespeople can make suggestions for product improvements.

Good sales people know their product isn’t for everyone. That is not their concern; their goal is to focus energy on the people who need and want their product or service. Likewise, manager-leaders must focus their energies on people whom they can influence or persuade to change. Leaders must husband their strengths to sell the people who can do the most good; these include supervisors, teammates, and subordinates.

So how can you sell an idea? Think of the people you wish to persuade as your customers. Here are six steps you might employ to persuade them.

• Present Leadership Proposition… Think of why your idea is good and sum it up in 25 words or less. Example: "I have discovered a way to improve our processes, reduce costs, and save us money."
  
  
• Explain Features & Benefits… What makes your idea better? Itemize its attributes and explain why those attributes are beneficial. As with the unique proposition, think it out before you verbalize it. Example: "By reducing the number of processes, we will avoid duplication, reduce costs, increase quality, and in the long run, improve customer satisfaction. Along the way, we will make things easier for our own people and free them up to concentrate on business-building activities. What’s more, our increased savings will enable us to make investments in future technologies that may lead to the creation of new products."
  
  
• Listen to Followers… How are people reacting to your idea? Listen to what they are saying. Do their objections have merit? (If you receive too many objections right away, you may have to re-think your idea. This is not the end of the world; it’s simply a means of refining your thinking and your ideas.)
  
  
• Overcome Objections… Good ideas may spark controversy. Again, listen to what people are saying and try to win them over with the strength of your features and benefits. Be specific. If the objection is to methodology, demonstrate process-thinking skills. If the objection is to cost, respond with figures that demonstrate your argument. Instead of shying from objectives, regard them as opportunities to gain new supporters. Overcoming an objection is actually another means of validation; not only does it sharpen your thinking, it enables you to root out resistance and win over more people to your cause.
  
  
• Restate the Leadership Proposition… Reiterate the 25-word synopsis of your idea to affirm that people understand what you are saying. Example: "We truly can attain process improvement, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction."
  
  
• Ask for Commitment… This is akin to closing a sale. Some novice sales people think this is the hardest part; it’s not. If you have presented a good idea, overcome objections, asking for commitment is natural, logical, and easy. Put into leadership terms, people cannot follow unless you ask them to. Example: "Are you willing to support my idea when I present it to senior management?"

These six steps in selling require something else—the force of personality, the conviction that what you are doing is good for the organization. Much of force of personality emerges from plain old excitement for an idea. "Nothing," opined the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "is so contagious as enthusiasm."

Every coach knows that unless his players feel enthused and excited, there can be no commitment. And without commitment you have a group of people "playing" together but not "winning together." The same may be said of business teams.

Effective persuasion requires the enthusiasm to be grounded in conviction. After all, if the leader is not convinced of the soundness and appeal of his idea, how can she expect someone else to be so moved? Sound leadership is grounded on the principle of persuading others of the rationale, efficacy, and effectiveness of another idea. Ideally, the follower will take to the idea so much so that he takes its values for his own. When this give and take occurs, the notion of "shared vision" emerges. Leader and follower become unified in purpose and the organization can grow and prosper. But before that can happen the leader must sell the idea; and that requires energy, excitement, and enthusiasm.

Ò John Baldoni 1999