A recent survey from the Work Foundation found that leaders who focused on targets and tasks were less effective at achieving results than people-centric leaders who focused more on motivating their staff.

But in the target-driven domain of sales, can this be true? Surely sales is the lifeblood of a business - and for the business to grow isn’t there a definite and undeniable need to focus on targets?

Well, at one level it is true that a business needs to plan, and goals in sales are a key facet of this. But if we look further at sales leaders and their approach we often find that a sales manager has been promoted because they are a very good sales person. And as they are achievers it is often this sales ability that directs how they manage others.

But ‘doing’ something is very different from helping others to ‘learn’ how to do it. This is especially true in sales where the role of beliefs and attitudes in the selling function has a huge impact on individual performance. In the same way that if the only tool you have is a hammer then every problem you approach will be a nail, if you have achieved sales success through an active ‘doing’ approach then it is very different to have to manage and lead others to achieve results. It is, of course, easier to tell and instruct (through targets) rather than to help someone learn for themselves.

Perhaps the biggest lesson to sales leaders from the research is this: you cannot get away from sales and performance targets in sales – there need to be measures of success and achievement. But once you have these targets in place, the clever sales leader focuses on engagement of their people. You do this by coaching them, understanding their motivations, beliefs and challenges and then by helping them to learn rather than simply trying to direct them.

And an engaged and motivated team will of course be more likely to meet their targets!