Profits are the result of your work, not the sole purpose of your efforts.
The evidence tells us that purpose is the secret to driving more revenue. As one of my favorite purpose colleagues, Roy Spence—who has worked in the purpose space for decades—says, “Purpose is your reason for being; [it] goes beyond making money, and it almost always results in making more money than you ever thought possible.”
An NSP approach can be counterintuitive for leaders schooled in a “managing to the money” style. For some, it's almost heresy. Yet the results speak for themselves.
Our client Doug Williams, the CEO of Atlantic Capital Bank, articulated it best when he said, “I've realized I need to manage to the numbers, but I need to lead to the Noble Purpose.” Later in the book, you'll read about how Williams and his team used their NSP—“We fuel prosperity”—to transform their organization, grow income from continuing operations by 81%, and be voted a Best Place to Work based on anonymous employee surveys. Eighteen months after they began their Noble Purpose journey, Williams was on the cover of American Banker Magazine as one of the top bankers in America for his team's remarkable turnaround.
An NSP drives more revenue than financial goals alone because an NSP taps into a human instinct even more powerful than our desire for money.
Reframing the Sales Profession
As the famous saying goes, nothing happens until somebody sells something. Salespeople are linchpins; they're the ones who bring in the revenue that keeps everything else running. If you want to create a prosperous organization, you need to sell. Personally, I believe a role in sales is one of the highest callings you can have in an organization.
Unfortunately, not everyone feels this way. There are two widespread misperceptions about sales:
1 Sales is sleazy.
2 Sales is easy.
Scott Jensen, a former sales coach at Deloitte, tells a story about being a young sales manager with another company. Upon walking into an internal departmental company meeting, he heard one of the other department heads say, “Here comes the commission whore.” The rest of the group laughed at the joke.
This story makes my head spin. How can an organization create differentiation and pride if they believe their sales team is only self‐interested? The simple answer is, you can't. Differentiation and pride come from a deep‐seated belief that your work is actually helping people. That's where you come in: your job as a leader is to build that belief across your organization.
What's Gained from Approaching Sales with Purpose
Your Noble Sales Purpose points you in a nobler and, ultimately, more profitable direction. It's the starting point for a series of changes that can dramatically improve your sales force and the bottom line.
An NSP:
Brings the customer voice to the front and center of the conversation
Provides an organizing framework for planning and decision-making
Improves the quality of your existing sales training
Helps mid‐level performers set more ambitious goals
Helps top performers stay focused on delivering value
Differentiates your conversations with customers in a way products and specs cannot
Acts as a reset button during times of challenge and change
This book is written for sales leaders because you set the tone for your organization. Whether you're the Chief Revenue Officer, a sales manager, an aspiring sales leader, or a CEO who wants to change the way your team approaches customers, your mindset, language, and strategy are where everything starts.
An NSP is not a tactic. It's a strategic shift in the way you approach your business. It's more than a simple sales technique; it's a sales leadership philosophy that turbocharges all other techniques. It's the missing ingredient a sales force needs to take their performance to the next level.
You gain the following from approaching sales with an NSP mindset:
Your sales team becomes more resourceful since they're always looking for ways to help customers' businesses.
Clients take you to the higher‐level people in their organizations because they see you as a resource and not someone in it only for their own quota.
You shorten the sales cycle. You ask more robust and second‐tier questions, delving into critical customer business issues and creating urgency.
You bring the customer's voice into your organization, which helps you create better products, services, and marketing.
You create proposals and presentations that are more compelling and persuasive because they're organized around the client's goals, not focused on your product's or service's features and benefits.
You don't have to “act like” you care about your customers, because you really do care.
You love your job because you have a more noble purpose than just “selling stuff to make money.”
You're more likely to talk about your job in social situations, and when you do, people are more likely to be interested in hearing about it—since making a difference in people's lives is exciting.
Sales coaching improves because leaders speak in depth about client situations and goals.
You're better able to manage obstacles because you don't get defensive and take them personally. You see them for what they are: simple requests for help.
Your NSP becomes your North Star: a way of resetting yourself during tough times.
Why Selling with Noble Purpose Becomes Self‐Reinforcing
Unpack the inner drivers of most salespeople, and you'll find that money occupies a substantial part of their mental real estate. But people are complex; we have multiple motivations.
When we did a deep dive into the internal motivation of salespeople, we found the top performers do care about money. They're not complete altruistic do‐gooders. Many (myself included) initially got into sales because they wanted to make good money.
But here was the notable difference. Over time, the top performers added a layer of purpose. It often developed as a result of seeing their positive impact on customers. Because they were more attuned to it, they saw it more readily; it stuck and then became self‐reinforcing. It became their default.
For top performers, their internal talk track, the narrative in their heads that drives their daily behavior, is about the impact they have on customers. It doesn't matter what's going on inside their organization; their internal compass always resets back to the customer.
Mid‐level performers, on the other hand, tend to mirror the prevailing organizational story, whatever that may be. If the organization emphasizes a financial carrot‐and‐stick mentality, that's where their brains will go. If the organization has a narrative of a higher purpose, that's where their brains will go. The organizational talk track becomes their internal talk track.
When we do deep dives with salespeople who aren't top performers, we usually find that they too have a secret desire for purpose and meaning. They simply haven't reflected on it or spoken about it because nothing in their organization prompts them to think that way. It's not their default setting.
Their potential Noble Purpose is there, but it has