Just as there are seasons in each year, there are also seasons in a person’s life. Spring might relate to infancy and growth, for example. Active youth and the nurturing of experience can be associated with summer. Maturity and influence bring color to the autumn of a person’s life, while winter is often a time for contented reflection. Unfortunately, many senior sales professionals shortchange the rewards of life’s autumn. They see themselves moving directly from summer’s active development of knowledge and experience into the reflective leisure of winter. But as 60s rock group The Byrds suggested in the Pete Seeger-written song Turn! Turn! Turn!, there is a season and a time to every purpose. For sales executives, the autumn years can be the time to turn maturity and influence into a time of purpose and professional reward. Here’s what I mean:
Turning Expertise and Experience into Fulfillment
As a seasoned sales executive, you’ve already succeeded at turning prospects into clients. At turning small possibilities into big wins. At turning learning into knowledge, knowledge into expertise, and expertise into meaningful experience. But can you turn your expertise and experience into a continuing career of professional fulfillment?
Frankly, if you’ve grown weary of the frustrations of sales leadership in the corporate world – lack of respect, lack of recognition, too much travel – it might be difficult to imagine using your hard-earned knowledge and experience in your next act. But most sales leadership consultants know this: You can turn expertise and experience into a continuing career of professional fulfillment if you first use your passion for a purpose.
Turning Passion into Purpose
Taking his cue from the book of Ecclesiastes, Pete Seeger wrote (and The Byrds sang) that there’s a time to every purpose under heaven. But how do you turn this time – when you’ve already enjoyed decades of sales leadership success – into a time of purpose? It all comes back to reconnecting with your passion.
Wait a minute… A passion for sales leadership when you are feeling burned out?
Chances are you feel burned out by the trappings of corporate sales. You are disillusioned by the endless work hours and exhausting travel. You are bored by the stifling routines and lack of rewarding challenges. You are disenchanted by feeling trapped, feeling like you’ve reached as high as you can reach, feeling underappreciated and undervalued.
Because of this, you’ve lost sight of your professional passion. Which begs the question: What were you once passionate about? Earlier in your career, what was it that really got your juices flowing? Was it the learning? The newness of each challenge? The belief that you were making a difference? If those things fueled your passion for sales leadership, I’ve got great news for you… It IS possible to rekindle that passion and turn it into working with a sense of renewed purpose. Here’s how:
Turning Silver Hair into Golden Opportunity
Sales leadership professionals far and wide have learned it is possible to find fulfillment again at the end of a corporate sales career. They’ve found they can rediscover their passion and work with purpose. They’ve come to realize that their decades of service and success have prepared them to serve small to mid-sized businesses, and that the owners of these businesses truly respect what they have to offer. The owners find tremendous benefit and value in working with senior sales executives, especially when their engagement can be on a fractional basis.
The sales leadership consultants benefit, too. They typically serve multiple clients at a time which brings them variety and fresh challenges. They travel far less and spend evenings at home with family. Best of all, they get a deep sense of satisfaction knowing they are making a difference for smaller businesses who might not succeed or survive without their help.
Bottom Line:
There’s a time to every purpose. There’s a time to turn expertise and experience into fulfillment. To turn passion into purpose. To turn silver hair into gold opportunity. That time is now, in the autumn of the life of a sales leader, when maturity and influence are leveraged to serve small to mid-sized businesses as a sales leadership consultant.
To learn more about how to turn your sales leadership experience into a new season of success as a fractional sales leadership consultant, click here or contact us at 844.874.7253.