The Sales Leader Of Influence™
When Leadership gets tested, Revenue gets exposed.
A practical system that helps prevent forecast surprises, margin erosion, and leaders carrying more than they should.
THE NEW SALES LEADERSHIP PARADIGM
When revenue starts to feel unpredictable, it’s almost never because something big is broken.
More often, it’s because a few smaller things that used to work together quietly stop lining up.
I work mainly with owner-led and family-run businesses in manufacturing, ICT, and hardware – where decisions are personal, pressure is real, and leadership doesn’t end when the workday does.
Nothing has ‘failed.’ It just feels heavier than it should. Most leaders don’t raise their hand and say something’s wrong – they just keep going and doing more.
Why Revenue Becomes Unreliable Long Before The Number Is Missed
It usually comes down to three things:
how leaders behave when pressure is on
how responsibility is really held (not how it looks on paper)
how results are expected to happen
I look at these together because when one slips, the others follow.
People start making assumptions.
Decisions slow down.
Leaders step in too late — or carry too much themselves.
This isn’t about blame.
It’s about seeing what’s actually happening.
Because most revenue problems don’t start in the pipeline.
They start with how authority, responsibility, and judgment play out under pressure.
If you lead a sales team, you already know how to sell. You already know how to lead.
What changes is how you lead when things get tight.
One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that leaders don’t stay in the same mode when pressure rises.
When things are calm, we delegate, coach, and think long-term.
When things get tight, we drop down into doing, fixing, rescuing, or avoiding.
Over time, I mapped this into a simple progression – not to judge it, but for leaders to notice it and choose differently.
Pressure pulls leaders down this ladder.
Discipline lets them move back up.
What This Work Helps With
The Sales Leader of Influence™ is the work I use to help leaders stay grounded and neutral when it matters most.
It’s for leaders who want to:
stay grounded when pressure rises
make decisions earlier instead of being responsible for all of them
spot resistance in buyers and their sales teams before deals stall
protect revenue without rescuing, micromanaging – or disappearing
This isn’t about changing who you are.
It’s about leading in a way that doesn’t cost you clarity, energy, or credibility – and the business, revenue.
When Leadership Becomes More Predictable
Leadership starts to feel more predictable when three things are clear:
1. How you show up under pressure
You stay present, make decisions, and don’t add to any drama.
2. How responsibility is held
People know what they own – so challenges or opportunities don’t get highlighted up the chain too late or land back on you.
3. How results are produced
Outcomes don’t depend on heroics, personality, or rescue missions.
When these line up:
teams sort things out themselves
deals stop getting stuck internally
forecasts are more accurate
leaders stop carrying everything alone
decisions happen faster and with more conviction
credibility, profitability and emotional stability is not sacrificed
From the Founder ~ Bernadette McClelland
Hi, I’m Bernadette McClelland.
Before this work, I owned and ran a bricks-and-mortar business of my own.
When serious illness hit, my family business didn’t survive. And I learned – very quickly – what it feels like when responsibility is personal, decisions are heavy, and there’s no corporate safety net to fall back on.
That experience changed how I see leadership.
Not as something theoretical or something you are ‘supposed to do’, but as something people have to live with – especially when the pressure is on and the consequences are real.
Since then, my work has focused on helping leaders ground themselves in those moments. I work mostly with owner-led and family-run businesses, where sales, money, and relationships are tightly intertwined and decisions don’t just affect the business – they affect people.
Along the way, I’ve worked across corporate sales environments, coached CEOs and senior leaders globally, mentored Harvard MBA students, and served as a former Tony Robbins Master Coach (APAC). I also spend my time mentoring incarcerated individuals – work that reinforced for me that leadership behaviour, judgment, and accountability matter most when circumstances are hardest.
All of that experience led to the work you see here.
My role is not to make leadership more complex.
It’s to make it more steady and grounded.
So decisions don’t get delayed.
So accountability doesn’t feel personal.
And so the business doesn’t depend on one or two people carrying everything by themselves.
ENTRY POINTS INTO THE SALES LEADER OF INFLUENCE
There isn’t one ‘right’ way in. Most leaders start where the pressure is showing up.
1. START WITH A DIAGNOSTIC - IDENTIFY ANY RISKS
ASSESS YOUR REVENUE PREDICTABILITY
Revenue Predictability (5 minutes)
Identifies which of the 5 leadership dimensions needs attention: Positioning, Presence, Precision, Profitability, Prominence.
2. RUN INDIVIDUAL LEADERSHIP WORKSHOPS
1. POSITIONING
(Authority Under Pressure)
Authority Under Pressure
Authority Under Pressure prevents forecast variance and margin erosion by focussing on decision consistency that holds you in good stead for when the Board is watching, quarters are closing, and scrutiny is at its highest.
Leaders learn to recognize and deliberately disrupt their automatic behaviours that cause them to trade their authority when they are under pressure – before those patterns erode pricing integrity, forecast credibility, or team capability.
Ideal for: CROs, VP Sales, and Sales Leaders accountable for forecast reliability, pricing integrity, and decision consistency when pressure rises.
2. PRESENCE
(Decision Psychology)
Decision Psychology
Decision Psychology prevents late-stage deal loss by reading buyer and sales team psychology early – before resistance causes deals to stall internally, and before objections surprise you. It means you can reduce late-stage escalations and accelerate pipeline velocity.
Ideal for: Sales Leaders, VP Sales, and CROs accountable for pipeline velocity, deal progression, and coaching teams
3. PRECISION
(Revenue & Role Clarity)
Role and Revenue Architecture™
The Role and Revenue Architecture™ defines role responsibility, revenue ownership, and pipeline clarity so sales teams move faster, prevent execution gaps, and deliver consistent commercial outcomes.
By creating alignment across roles, functions, and decision points, it improves forecast accuracy and revenue predictability.
Ideal for: CROs, VP Sales, and CEOs accountable for role clarity, pipeline integrity, forecast reliability, and revenue ownership.
4. PROFITABILITY (Coaching As A Strategic Discipline)
Coaching As A Strategic Discipline
Coaching As A Strategic Discipline reframes coaching from an ad-hoc activity into a repeatable and strategic leadership standard embedded within the sales organisation.
Leaders replace reactive firefighting with an intentional early diagnosis and decisive practice of intervention, advancing deals through clarity rather than pressure.
Ideal for: VP Sales and Sales Leaders accountable for shifting behaviour and execution – not just managing outcomes.
5. PROMINENCE
(Executive Influence)
Executive Influence
Executive Influence transforms invisible expertise into market authority by installing the stories, speaking and strategic codifying of IP into a positioning infrastructure that differentiates leaders from the competition – within a company and without.
Leaders build their thought leadership and/or playbooks to attract top talent, command premium compensation, commercial assets and create board-level influence.
Ideal for: Sales Leaders, CROs, and Commercial Executives ready to position themselves, influence their market or market their influence.
3. ENROL A FULL LEADERSHIP COHORT
FULL IMMERSION (The Complete System)
The Intensive
The Intensive is a 12-week, system-level integration for sales leaders who have outgrown surface tactics and want the full Sales Leader of Influence Method™ embedded across all 5 dimensions: Positioning, Presence, Precision, Profitability, Prominence.
Participants embed the complete operating system – not piecemeal fixes – so leadership capability sticks, scales, and becomes their new standard of leadership.
Ideal for: Sales leaders and commercial executives accountable for revenue reliability, decision quality, and sustained influence – not just a short-term performance fix.
This is full-system integration across all capabilities of The Sales Leader of Influence™ Method.
4. UPSKILL YOUR SALES TEAM
For Commercial Teams Facing Complex Buyers
Selling to Decision Makers™
Selling to Decision Makers™ is a leadership and sales framework that replaces bottom-up selling with top-down, commercially led conversations that accelerate decision-making and deal progression.
Leaning heavily into qualification and quantification, sales leaders equip their teams to engage senior decision-makers with clarity, relevance, and commercial confidence – reducing time to value and increasing deal quality.
Ideal for: Senior sales leaders and enterprise teams seeking consistent access, influence, and credibility at executive decision-maker level.
This system acts as the Execution Intensifier within The Sales Leader of Influence™ Method.
DON'T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT!
