The definition of “psychology” is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context. When we apply that to selling, as in the psychology of selling, we must understand the specific scientific characteristics and behaviors that apply to success in selling. Certainly, we can all think of people we have encountered in our own purchasing experiences that stand out. What is it that they do that makes them excellent and unique?

We utilize a sales evaluation by Objective Management Group that provides companies and individual salespeople with a peak into the science and the characteristics of great salespeople, (OMG assesses over 75,000 salespeople, sales managers, and sales leaders annually from more than 200 industries in 52 countries and is the pioneer and leader in the sales evaluation industry.)

Based on this science and psychology of selling, the graphic below defines 3 areas that salespeople must excel at in order to be top performers. They must have the Will to Sell, the Sales DNA and the competencies or tactical skills noted utilized daily in their sales process. Of course, no salesperson has them all mastered. We utilize this evaluation to help companies hire better salespeople and develop those they have.

One trait that is not on this list but is a bi-product of mastering many of the above is confidence. Great salespeople, due to their strengths, have the confidence in three areas that they can and will help those who choose to work with them.

The Psychology of Selling: 3 Areas of Confidence

First, they are confident in their firm’s value proposition (how their firm helps businesses or people solve problems). They believe their company can do everything they say they can do. They have “proof of concept” and share that with confidence. These confident salespeople rarely, if ever, think they need to have the lowest price. They position value, and they defend that value.

Secondly, they are confident in their approach. They know that they must interrogate reality, as Susan Scott says in her book “Fierce Conversations.” They must figure out whether the prospect is truly a prospect with a problem they have to solve, the money with which to solve it, and the conviction and clarity to make a decision when presented with a solution. Confident salespeople ask lots of tough questions.

Thirdly, confident salespeople do not have to be liked for the prospect to do business with them. They do subscribe to the philosophy that people generally enjoy business relationships with people they like. But they confidently believe that the buying decision is made because the prospect has trust and confidence that the salesperson can do what the salesperson says they can do – and that is to solve the prospect’s problem. Being liked has very little to do with any of that.

In the final chapter of his book The Psychology of Selling, Tracy shares the 10 keys to success in selling, which are of course worthy of including:

1. Do what you love to do
2. Decide exactly what you want
3. Back your goal with persistence and determination
4. Commit to lifelong learning
5. Use your time well
6. Follow the leader
7. Character is everything
8. Unlock your inborn creativity
9. Practice the golden rule
10. Pay the price of success

Understand more about the psychology of selling with our free eBook! Click below to download. 

In your role as Sales Leader in your company, you probably have asked this question of your sales managers or asked it of yourself in some variation: Why are Some of the People that You Hire, Train, Coach, Pay and Invest in Performing at a Level That is Lower Than Expected?

Certainly, you did not hire them with that intention.  When a potential new hire is brought to you by someone in your organization, they are typically described as:

• Highly successful
• Carry themselves very well
• Interviewed great
• Can be a top producer
• Has a great resume
• Has an awesome network
• Will fit our culture really well
• Will cost us more than we budgeted, but worth it

Never once did someone say to you that the person should be hired because: 12 months from now, they will be performing solidly in the middle of the pack. That wasn’t the intention, but it happens, alot.

The first step is to assess the current state of your sales team. If your numbers are like most, we get the chance to look at, then your sales team adheres to the 80/20 rule so you must get your arms around your numbers and figure this out for your company.  Once you have that data, ask yourself these questions:

• If this is true, then why do I have the other 80% of my sales team?
• Why is 80% of my team only generating 20% of my revenue?
• What are they doing or not doing that is getting that result? 
• What is my sales management environment/sales manager doing or not doing that is contributing to this outcome? 
• How long has it been this way and why?
• If this is true, then what should we be doing to correct the problem? 
• Is it a goal problem? 
• Is it a hiring problem? 
• Is it an on-boarding, training, development problem? 
• Do we have a process in place to help people succeed at the level we thought they would when we hired them?
• Is this a have-to-fix problem?

Once you get your arms around the data, you will gain some business intelligence and insight as to where the problems are and why they exist. Failing to do this data analysis is akin to trying to diagnose a medical problem without going through diagnostics on the systems responsible for good health!  As you attack the answer to these questions for your organization, we challenge you to take action. You don’t have to accept the status quo. The Pareto Principle does not have to thrive at your organization.

Create a Motivating Environment

The first step to motivating your sales team is to recognize that motivation is an “inside-out’ job. When the topic of motivation is discussed, we typically think about incentive compensation, sales contests, and recognition programs. All of these certainly encourage sales teams to focus on generating new business because these are rewards. However, you will gain true engagement and enthusiasm if you create an everyday environment that encourages each individual to identify and visualize their own internal motivation.

Salespeople do not care about corporate shareholder value unless they are shareholders themselves. What they care about is food, shelter, clothing, recognition, paying for college education or a wedding, buying a vacation home, etc. These are personal desires and make up the vast majority of things that are important to people. Therefore, the solution is to create an environment where this internal motivation can take place. See The Dream Manager book by Michael Kelly.

A salesperson’s motivation is one of five key factors that make up their Will to Sell. The Will to Sell Competencies measure a salesperson's overall drive to achieve success in sales. Without strong Will to Sell, it is difficult for an individual to change their habits or learn new skills. When hiring or developing salespeople, a manager must uncover how motivated they are to succeed in selling. We recommend a sales assessment by Objective Management Group, the pioneer and leader in the industry.

How to Set Motivational Goals for your Salespeople

The next step to motivating your sales team is to help your salespeople identify what is important to them, their goals. Make the effort to set up time off-site that is dedicated to planning and spend time developing each individual’s dreams and goals. This is time that you and they will spend ON your business instead of in it.

Create a process where people can establish personal goals because this is where true motivation, passion, and desire are born. Hence, it is from this process that each salesperson’s business plan must evolve.

You might position this process as though you are the coach and the salespeople are players on a competitive baseball team. Each of you has a part to play so that the whole team wins. When someone objects to the dream building exercises by saying something like “You are just going to provide a goal for me anyway so why do I have to do this?,” tell him that, as with a baseball team, each player must excel at his job so that the team can win and go to playoffs. Salespeople will understand this. If someone does not get this, he or she may not be suited for selling. Selling requires desire, commitment, and a need to win. Selling is a competition.

Create an environment where people get a chance to unplug, sit down and outline their goals and dreams; a time when both of you can establish timeframes and attach financial values to these items. Once you have attached financial values, you will know what level of prospecting and selling activity is necessary for each salesperson.

Create a Process to Track your Team’s Sales Success

It is not enough just to establish goals. A strong manager will create accountability measures to track performance along the way. We recommend holding weekly Huddles that are focused on the burning platform metrics that will drive success. Each company must establish what those metrics are. All must be present for the Huddle and report on the 4-6 metrics. This provides transparency of effort and success and provides you, the coach, with the essential real-time information you need to determine who needs coaching and in what areas.

Don’t forget to reward your people when they have a success. At our company, we have a big bell in the hallway that we ring every time we bring in a new relationship. It is LOUD and that is just the way we want it! As your people go through this process and identify their goals; as you sit down and establish your own personal and team goals, be sure to specify how you will reward and recognize your people as each of them achieve these goals.

Download your Personal & Business Work Plan below: 7 pages of free planning tools!

Raising-the-bar ultimately begins with you taking responsibility for those you are currently managing. What must you do to help generate their best performance?

Step #1 – Take responsibility for your own performance or lack of. Make a commitment to do whatever is necessary to get best performance.

Step #2 – Make your people responsible. Starting immediately, do not accept excuses for lack of performance. Make sure there are consequences for salespeople who show up late or miss meetings. Do not accept excuses about lack of prospecting activity. From now on, when a sales person uses an excuse, respond with: “If I didn’t let you use that as an excuse, what would you do differently?” and “What should you do differently in the future?”

Step #3 – Communicate expectations clearly. Tell your salespeople exactly what you expect. Ask them to repeat what they heard. Ask them to describe how these expectations impact their day, week, month, quarter and year. What will they do, or change, in order to meet these expectations? 

Then ask if they will accept the responsibility of meeting these expectations. They will say “yes.” But ask them if they are “sure.” Again, they will say “yes.” Warn them “It will be hard.”

Next ask them if they are willing to do everything possible to succeed. They will say “yes.” Finally, ask them what you should do if they fail to meet these expectations.

You have now raised the bar on expectations. You must now raise the bar on performance.

Step #4 – Establish ambitious goals and make them known in advance. Often the reason individuals and companies fail to perform is because minimal standards are set and people do only what it takes to meet them. This minimal goal approach sets you and your team up for failure.  Starting today, or as soon as you begin goal setting for your next fiscal year, eliminate minimal acceptable standards of performance and embrace a new and different path, one that includes extraordinary standards of performance.

Learn how to set extraordinary goals – download our ebook below!

These numbers show a huge opportunity for financial institutions and fintechs — who bridge the most trusted industry sector to financial services — to build greater trust.”

This is not new news to those who work within the industry. In fact, most organizations and advisors have been working long term to be more customer-focused. The challenge is for advisors to be focused on relationship selling, asking probing, sometimes assertive questions without coming across to customers as sales-driven.

Assertive (not aggressive) salespeople win more business than others. These people care so much about doing the right thing for their clients that they are willing to risk the relationship and the sale to ensure the prospect or customer makes good decisions. Does this describe you and your people?  

What does assertiveness have to do with effort and execution? If done properly, the early relationship building conversations and meetings will help to qualify or eliminate a suspect. If done well, this will streamline a salesperson’s efforts and pipeline, giving them more time and energy to focus on finding and building relationships with better prospects.

During initial conversations, a financial advisor, banker, or insurance agent is gathering information that leads to a next meeting and eventually to a presentation meeting. It is through the intelligence that is gained and utilized in building superior solutions that your presentation meetings will lead to decisions. This is the focus of relationship selling because any proposal or recommendation is built around the specific client’s identified problems, growth challenges, and revenue goals.

In the process of relationship selling, the skill of asking the right questions, the right way, at the right time is critical. In an effective selling system, for a prospect to qualify they must:

1. Have compelling reasons to buy, to make a change, or do something different
2. Have the capability and willingness to invest the necessary time, money, and effort
3. Be willing and able to make the decision to fix the problem and be able and willing to make the money decision

Uncovering all of these issues requires that a salesperson asks many questions and some of these questions require a salesperson to be somewhat assertive. They could consider and use questions such as:

• How will you go about telling your current broker / banker / relationship that you are no longer going to do business with them?
• If you don’t have enough money, how will you solve the problem?
• The budget you have won’t be enough to get you the outcome you want. What part of the solution do you want to eliminate?
• What will you tell your partner/executive when they say they don’t want to make the change?

Are your salespeople prepared to ask these types of questions? And think about the relationship building aspect of these gutsy questions:

• Based on our experience, expertise and knowledge about your business, your best action is this:  ______________.  If that doesn’t work for you, we might not be a good match.
• If I treated my clients the way you’ve been treated (by your current provider), I would expect to be fired.
• When we finish our presentation, which will include budget-appropriate solutions to all of the problems you’ve identified and answered all your questions, I’ll ask for you to make a decision on whether we’ll do business together or not.
• Maybe the most important thing for you to consider is “fit”.  If there isn’t a fit between our two companies, then our products and pricing really don’t matter.

Imagine if salespeople were gutsy enough to have these types of conversations. They might fear that they would lose more business. But suppose that wasn’t the case. Suppose by being more assertive, salespeople eliminated the tire-kickers more quickly. Suppose this led to the elimination of think-it-overs and actually helped prospects to trust them and make decisions more quickly.  Imagine if salespeople stopped making presentations to people who could only say “no” and never had the authority or intention of saying “yes”.  What would happen? Salespeople would sell more, more quickly at higher margins.  They would stop wasting time, stop getting delays, and start building relationships built on trust.