Mastering Modern Sales Leadership: Strategies for Success in a Changing World

In this riveting episode of the Love Your Sales, host Leighann Lovely delves deep into the nuances of sales leadership with her guest, Dustin Kavelaris, Wisconsin Sales Director for Office H2O. They unpack the challenges of transitioning top-performing salespeople into effective leaders, highlighting the crucial distinction between bosses and true leaders. The conversation addresses the importance of authenticity, lifelong learning, and the pitfalls of micromanaging through metrics. Dustin shares invaluable insights on maintaining a thriving sales team by fostering a culture of two-way accountability and forward-thinking leadership. Tune in to discover how modern sales leadership can drive retention, performance, and overall success in any organization.

 

Contact Dustin

Website – www.officeh2o.com

LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/dustinkavelaris

 

Special Thank you to our Sponsors – Genhead – www.genhead.com and Sales Rescue – www.rescuemysales.com

Robb Conlon – Intro and outro – Westport Studio - https://www.westportstudiosllc.com/

The Brave Ones – Instrumental Version Song by Jan Sanejko - https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music/song/the-brave-ones/119489

 

Leighann Lovely: Welcome to another episode of Love Your Sales. I am so thrilled that today I am joined by Dustin Cavallaris. Uh, Dustin is a Wisconsin sales director for Office H2O, A leader in modern purified drinking water and commercial ice equipment for businesses. He is an established sales and people leader for nearly 20 years.

He's led sales divisions in direct B2C, [00:02:00] B2B, indirect channel management, and has navigated a plethora of sales leader Ship roles for small privately held companies up through publicly traded fortune 50 companies. He's completed sales coursework through the Northwestern Kellogg Executive Education and is committed to lifelong learning.

I love that. Thank you so much, Dustin, for joining me today. I look forward to this conversation.

Dustin Kavelaris: Thank you so much for having me. I couldn't be more thrilled to talk about All the things that you cover here.

Leighann Lovely: Yes, I'm a complete nerd. I am a lifelong learner as well. I love the opportunity that I get to have people come on and educate me.

It's really, you know, uh, a roundabout way of, of getting people on the hot seat and being able to pick their brain. Right. So, so tell me, a little bit about your, uh, experience, your background and a high level of, you know, kind of Being that leader, that sales leader [00:03:00] that, you know, and what you do and kind of on a daily basis.

Dustin Kavelaris: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I, I started, you know, I think from 16 years old had been in some sales centric capacity and, so through college, uh, was my first true kind of sales, you know, high activity sales gig. And I was, I started in telecom, ended up working my way up through from a standard sales consultant up through a regional sales manager.

And, you know, the epiphany I had, I don't know, it was probably 2007, you know, I had a really tough, I'm going to call him a boss to work for. And I, I distinguish boss and leader because I think there's such a interesting dynamic between those two phrases. Um, I don't, I don't let my teams today call me boss.

Cause you know, the behaviors between the two are just very different. But I just remember thinking to myself, man, you know, I, I love the impact that leaders have had a tough boss to work for, and just kind of vowed that, [00:04:00] you know, if I got into leadership, I wanted to be, you know, the leader that I didn't have at that t