Leaders Vs Managers

Are you a leader? Or just a manager? What’s the difference, you ask? If you don’t know, you’re probably in the wrong job. A leader energizes and motivates a sales force to achieve seemingly impossible goals. A manager makes sure all reports are in on time. Leaders innovate. Managers...well, they manage. Lest you think this is a bunch of New Age business-seminar babble. In the twenty-first century, understanding the difference between leading and managing is understanding the difference between winning and losing in cut throat markets.

Global competitiveness is so intense today, and there’s so much sameness in products, that you will succeed or fail ninety-eight percent of the time because of your company’s people, and the quality of the people in a sales force comes down to the quality of its leadership. Pure managers make the system work, but leaders make things happen.They make the people around them better. Put in more practical terms, every time you hire a leader who doesn’t maximize people’s potential, you lose market share.