Special: What Product Leaders Need To Know About Sales VPs And Working Well Together

Special Episode From the 2020 Summit

This is a special podcast episode, sharing an important discussion from The Everyday Innovator 2020 Summit. The Summit brought together 24 experts who spoke on topics for product managers and product VPs. Many of the topics are truly timeless and this speaker, Keith Hawk, impressed the Product VPs who attended with his sales and organizational leadership experience.

As this was a Summit presentation, the format of the show notes below are a bit different.

BIO: Keith Hawk is a lifelong sales professional who has spent most of his career in senior sales leadership roles, most notably his 10+ years as the Senior VP of Sales for a 1,000+ sales force in a major information company, LexisNexis. He is a frequent speaker on topics including consultative selling, leadership, principled negotiations, incentive compensation plans, and performance metrics. He is the co-author of the popular business book, GET-REAL SELLING. Keith and his son AJ Hawk, 11-year NFL linebacker and Super Bowl champion, do frequent corporate speaking engagements together on “The Athletic Organization”, where they mix Keith’s career as a Fortune 500 senior leader with AJ’s experiences in the wild world of NFL football. Keith and his son Ryan Hawk, host of the internationally popular podcast “The Learning Leader”, do presentations together on the importance of principled leadership and building a culture of thriving in organizations.

INSIGHT: The most important attribute for a professional salesperson is confidence. One of the keys to being able to confidently advocate for our business, or our product, is to be inspired by what an amazing job our product can do for our customer.

Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers

[2:08] To what do you attribute your success mentoring others?

People look at who you are before they look at what you’ve done, so first I try to be a good teammate. Integrity and confidence in our shared mission are important. I make sure everybody understands their role, and I stay involved at the front of the operation. If you’re a leader, don’t forget what the other people in your organization do.

[3:56] How does emotional intelligence help you be a great leader?

Emotional intelligence means self-awareness and understanding how you’re perceived. Every leader should work on building their emotional intelligence. You can do that by listening to mentors whom you trust and watching the reactions of people around you.

[9:11] To help us improve the relationship between product and sales, what do we need to know about what motivates a sales VP?

VP of sales is the most measurable job in a company. We are measured on our numbers, and our sales force is paid based on their performance. As VPs of sales, we want to be successful. Sales is very misunderstood. Consumers tend to perceive salespersons negatively. Professional selling in a business-to-business setting is not what it is in the consumer world. My mission is to help my sales professionals become supremely confident that they work for a great company that delivers great products that solve customers’ problems. Our job is to provide confidence to customers and increase their success.

Sales also can give valuable information to product management, because we talk with customers every day. Some of the greatest learning happens when we bring customers and product people together.

[14:57] Do you think the mission of providing confidence to customers is a common perspective among salespeople?

Unfortunately, too many salespeople bag-dive—figuratively dive into a bag of products and throw them at the customer. Salespeople easily forget that they can only be successful after making their customer successful...