Blackbaud, a Charleston, South Carolina firm, is one of the world’s most successful cloud-software companies. But in 2014, Blackbaud’s sales and stock price were slipping. The firm named Mike Gianoni as its CEO and charged him with turning things around. He focused on Blackbaud’s “Noble Purpose,” which he defined by asking, “How does our work impact clients [and] are we being effective in serving them?” In this second edition of her popular sales manual, Lisa Earle McLeod – writing with Elizabeth Lotardo – explains how to find and enact your organization’s noble purpose, and how to make that purpose your company’s defining structure, mission and rallying cry.
Many firms care only about making money. Companies with a “Noble Purpose” prioritize improving life for their customers.
Many firms operate solely to make as much money as possible. Other firms, by contrast, set out to make life better for their customers. That improvement is their “Noble Purpose.” If making money is a company’s foremost priority, that is the opposite of having a noble purpose.
Your noble purpose or related “Noble Sales Purpose” (NSP) is in harmony with your quest to do the right thing. Your noble purpose isn’t only about making your customers feel good; it calls on you actually to make the world better for your customers.
Improving your customers’ lives brings several beneficial side effects: It helps spur creative thinking and long-term customer relationships. Additionally, having a noble purpose differentiates your company from your competitors. Having an NSP helps salespeople increase their sales and maintain that increase. It provides a compass for tough times. Sales teams that pursue an NSP outsell sales teams that aim only to achieve their sales quotas.&#...
Lisa Earle McLeod, an executive adviser at McLeod & More, Inc., wrote the first edition of Selling with Noble Purpose as well as Leading with Noble Purpose and The Triangle of Truth. Elizabeth Lotardo is a researcher, consultant and LinkedIn Learning author.
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