The Great Sales Crusade

King Arthur on Leadership

(Adapted from the book Success Through Total Empowerment, first publication Copyright 1999, Kenton W. Davis)

Whether you believe that he really existed, or simply enjoy the romantic legend, King Arthur’s leadership style and the concept of his legendary round table offer us timeless lessons in human motivation.

According to Phyllis Ann Karr, author of The Arthurian Companion, the “Round Table” is fabled to have had a total of 150 seats, in which once seated, there was “no order of precedence”. Everyone had an equal voice in the matters of the day, and rank went unobserved. Empowered by the authority of the table, the knights rode out to do “good” throughout the kingdom. It is written that, from here, quests, missions, and even the Great Crusade, all started.

Many of today’s organizations may need to conduct their own Great “sales” Crusade of sorts. With the economy struggling, high unemployment, and consumers cautious about their financial future, sales are definitely harder to come by these days. And with sales down, bottom-line revenues are suffering causing the operating budgets of many businesses to be stretched dangerously thin.

All this adds up to an enormous amount of pressure being placed upon sales teams to produce. More specifically, the weight of this responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the sales manager, whom is ultimately charged with leading their team north of sales targets irrespective of the challenging market conditions.

Now imagine for a minute that our legendary hero King Arthur faced a similar crisis in his kingdom. Say, something along the lines of… the treasury was running dangerously low, an unusually large number of peasants and serfs couldn’t find a field to work, and Merlin’s confidence in his magic was shaken from the resulting unrest spreading throughout the kingdom. How would the beloved king of English lore have handled this situation? Would he have withdrawn to his royal chambers and attempted to single-handedly solve all the problems of the realm?

Not a chance. In fact, if King Arthur had ruled autocratically from the throne, he would have likely been “done to the turn” back in the day (which would have seriously messed up this colorful legend). Instead, when confronted with challenging times, King Arthur would summon all the great knights of the land, from near and far, inviting them to join him at an enormous round table in the status of equality. There, he would openly seek suggestions from his dignitaries as to what they would (or could) do to collectively solve the crisis in the kingdom.

Under pressure to meet sales targets, instinctively, average sales managers often withdraw to their office, close the door, and attempt to formulate the master “sales survival strategy” by drawing on their personal experience― a very anti-Arthurian thing to do (dangerously limiting the probability of mapping out a successful strategy, thus increasing the odds of their own personal turn on the spit in the future!). Instead, they should take a page out of King Arthur’s leadership book and invite their sales team members to participate in a roundtable session.

When you summon your sales team members to participate in a genuine roundtable session, where they are truly seated with “no order of precedence”, where problem-solving, idea-swapping and general brainstorming is encouraged, where the suggestions made are incorporated into the direction the team is moving, where no idea or suggestion is considered “foolish” and everyone’s opinion is respected, the results can be nothing short of magical. You will have tapped into the power of King Arthur’s legendary participatory leadership style and trigger intrinsic motivation within each team member. This will then serve to motivate them to overcome the current market challenges, to reach and exceed their individual sales goals, and to help the entire team meet the collective sales objective.

If your sales organization needs to go on a “sales crusade” to turn things around, send your team members off with the weapons they will need and the additional inspirational strength and courage to slay the “economic dragons” they will confront along the way. Make full use of King Arthur’s “Round Table” strategy for success!