You and your salespeople are a product of mom and dad, the people met, the experiences had and the education/knowledge acquired:

• Nature and Nurture
• Heredity and Environment

Recently, I read a Jack Reacher novel.  Jack is a fictional character in many of Lee Child’s novels.  Jack is a former military police officer and states to himself, “You can leave the army, but the army doesn’t leave you.”  I stopped and thought about that comment and related it to my own life and realized, “You can leave the farm but the farm doesn’t leave you.”

Those that know me and have heard me speak or train know that I reference my youth and growing up on the farm in Hammonton, New Jersey.  Hammonton is the blueberry capital of the world, home of the Hammonton Hawks, the Hammonton Blue Devils and Bruni’s Pizzeria.

I am a product of those experiences as well as the numerous people I’ve met, places I’ve been, books I’ve read, speakers I’ve heard and work/fun experiences I have had since I was 18.  But, I am pretty sure much of what I am today - how I think and how I act - are a result of those first 18 years.  The farm and growing up the son of Ray and Geri Cole laid the foundation that is me today.

The core values and beliefs I learned on the farm that still guide me today:

• When all else fails, hard work works.
• Get up early and go to work.
• Go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep.
• Learn how to hunt and provide for your family.
• Working piece meal pays you your true value (i.e. working on commission).
• Don’t try to control what you cannot control (i.e. Weather and the rate at which blueberries ripen for harvest).
• There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
• Someone will always have it better/worse than you.
• Two things have to happen – death and taxes.
• God will provide wisdom, strength and courage – you have to do the work.
• Not everyone gets to play.
• Winners are rewarded.
• God provided us with two ears and one mouth, listen twice as much as you talk.
• You have to be in great shape to play college football.
• Thank and love Mom, Dad and God.
• 4^th place didn’t get a medal.
• If you hoe long enough, blisters will become calluses.
• Trucks run better with all four tires.
• Hard work can be fun.
• Make your handshake mean something.
• All we have is our integrity.
• Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be answer, ask and it will be given.
• The only way to get a pretty girl to go out with you is to ask her out for a date.
• Your heart will be broken and mend.
• If you plant trees in good soil, take care of them with food and water and shelter them from harm, they will last a long, long time (See my picture of the sugar maple my dad planted over 60 years ago).
• Love grows best in little houses.
• Kids taking care of pets learn about responsibility, life and death.
• Hugs are free.
• There’s always room for Jello
• Money doesn’t grow on trees.
• I’m not a Rockefeller.
• Practice what you preach.
• Take care of your equipment and your equipment will take care of you.

Most, if not all, of this list has served me well over the years. There is also a list of things I had to unlearn/undo because it didn't/ doesn't serve me well.

• Don’t talk to strangers.
• Life isn’t fair.
• Rich people are ‘rich bastards’.
• You want people to like you.
• Don’t upset the apple cart.
• Fit in.
• Play it safe.
• Don’t trust salespeople.
• Biases based on gender, religion and color of skin.
• You can’t be wealthy and happy.

I’m sure I could add more, but I’m also sure that this is getting boring, so I’ll get to the point.  That point is this: you have to do more in your training and development program than just teach tactics and techniques.  There’s lots of stuff in your head -  and in the heads of your people - that influences what you do and won’t do.  To get the most out of any training and development program, you have to understand the “root” cause.

Understanding who your people are is critical in getting them to perform. Understanding who you are will help you help them.

Here is a way to learn more about how your people think when it comes to sales and sales management:  Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis.

When I was a youngster, I used to go hunting with my dad and my older brother, Ray.  I never hunted with my younger brother, Michael, until just a few years ago.  But Ray, Dad and I spent many weekday evenings and weekends in the woods. We were doing two things:

1. Preparing to hunt
2. Hunting

PREPARING to hunt included:

1. Going into the woods to scope out the places where deer frequented or could be convinced to frequent
2. Building tree stands in close proximity to deer paths or food plots
3. Going to the sweet potato or squash fields to pick up potatoes and squash left from the previous day harvest. Sometimes we would get apples or peaches
4. Taking basket after basket after basket of deer food (see number 3) into the woods
5. Practicing our bow skills by shooting targets at 20 yards. Dad was so good he could hit a moving quart milk jug!
6. Getting a license to hunt
7. Getting the right clothes for cold weather
8. Getting the equipment ready
9. More practice

HUNTING included:

1. Sitting in a tree stand freezing your baguettes off waiting for a deer to show up
2. Not moving for 3 hours even if you had to pee
3. Shooting at a deer
4. Retrieving arrows that missed the deer
5. Tracking, finding and field dressing the deer if the arrow hit its mark
6. Carrying the deer out of the woods – sometimes up to a mile
7. Skinning and butchering the deer (Actually, I did none of #6 or 7...)
8. Eating the venison (I did lots of this!)

Everything I just listed (and yes, Ray, I’m sure I missed something…) would be defined as HUNTING.  Even if it appears that sometimes it is waiting and not actually hunting, I assure you it is all hunting.

Then... there is the hunting I’ve done the past week:

1. I joined a hunting club.
2. I showed up either early in the morning or early in the afternoon.
3. Brian, the manager of the club, took me to a tree stand.
4. Using a buck call, I called for and waited for a deer to show up.
5. If one showed up, I shot it (I actually got my first dear about a month ago) and sent a text to Brian. If I didn’t see or hit one, I sent a text to Brian and he came to get me.
6. When I hit a deer, Brian and I tracked the deer.
7. Brian field dressed the deer.
8. Brian took the deer to the processor.
9. I picked up the packaged deer meat.
10. I prepared venison parmesan.
11. We ate.

This is hunting in my world today.  Notice the differences?

Yes, I still have to practice.  I still have to get my hunting gear together and make sure my equipment is ready to go.  I still have to get up early and get to the game club.  I still have to sit in the tree quietly and not move.  I still have to have skills to put myself in a position to draw the bow, release the arrow and hit the target.  What I really do not do anymore is sit and shoot… or, rather, just sit.

Now, I want you to think about the similarities in HUNTING for deer and HUNTING for prospects.  And then, I want you to answer some questions:

• Which hunting is your sales team doing?
• Which steps are they doing?
• Which steps are they skipping or failing to do?
• What impact does this have on their ability to close more business, more quickly, at higher margins?
• If they are not consistently hunting, then what is the likelihood that they will have consistent sales results?

Brian and I went out last week when the weather was rather warm.  It was too warm to expect a good hunt, really.  I knew that.  He knew that.  But I told him I was going out anyway.  On the way to the stand, we talked about the weather and I made the comment, “It might be too hot, but I certainly won’t even get a chance to shoot a deer unless I go into the woods.”

And… there you have it.  Regardless of how you do it, regardless of the environment, regardless of the difficulties you have to face, the reality is that, in order to get someone to say “yes” to your product or services, you must have salespeople who "go into the woods" and hunt!

Important Resource:

Find out if you have hunters, account managers or farmers – Assess the ability of your current team to grow sales.

The sales management activities that we are performing today are creating the results we are achieving today.  What activities are you doing now that are creating your current unsatisfactory results?  It is up to us as sales leaders to set higher standards for sales behaviors and hold people accountable so that we get better results.

It is a given that successful sales management requires contributions on many levels:  skill, time, effort, effective execution and systems and processes to support coaching, performance management and recruiting.

To help understand what makes a successful sales manager, it is helpful to review the Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople. I recently asked the participants of a workshop to identify and share those habits that they believed contributed to the success of their best salespeople.  Below are some of the common habits identified:

• Develops great relationships
• Networks regularly
• Good time management
• Gets to decision makers
• Is selective in prospecting
• Provides exceptional customer service

Then I asked them to talk about the flip-side of the list – those habits that inhibited or hurt a salesperson’s ability to close more business.  Below are some of the habits they identified:

• Sells on price
• Inconsistent prospecting
• Procrastinates
• Presents to the wrong people
• Sells to anyone that fogs a mirror
• Poor prioritization
• Is too comfortable

How about you and your habits?  What are those habits that you can point to that you KNOW have a positive impact on your team’s sales behaviors and results?  Here are some that I observe and hear about:

• Coaches: in-the-moment to get a deal closed
• Reports sales results
• Makes joint calls
• Sets goals
• Conducts regular sales meetings
• Reviews and reports pipeline

This is a good list and with some additions, it can become a great list when we identify the skills of a great Coach, one of the most critical roles of an effective sales leader.  To examine what else you might want to consider, take a look at the following list of elements necessary for successful coaching:

• Debriefs sales calls effectively
• Asks quality questions
• Controls emotions
• Allows salespeople to fail
• Implements and manages the execution of a consistent sales process
• Motivates when coaching based on individual/personal goals
• Coaches to improve skill and change behavior
• Gets sales people to follow through on commitments

It’s not enough to just have the skill.  In order for managers to be successful at having a sales team built for growth, the manager must be in the habit of using those skills.

Being an extraordinary sales manager is grueling and time-consuming.  It requires attention to detail, the ability to have tough conversations with those who are not meeting their numbers, the desire and commitment to grow yourself and your salespeople, consistent activity and patience.  Like the coach of a winning team or conductor of an extraordinary symphony, you have the ability to positively affect the success and the lives of your salespeople and company. 

In a scene from Men in Black, Will Smith’s character, Agent J, asks, “Why are we here?” (He is in a meeting room with the head of Men in Black, Agent Zed, along with several other recruits all from various branches of the military.)  Agent Zed asks one of the recruits to answer the question.  The young recruit stands and declares, “We are the best of the best, SIR!” (link to watch youtube video)

Isn’t that what you should be looking for when recruiting sales and sales management talent?  Yesterday, I wrote a post about hirebettersalespeople.com.  In the post, I mentioned the book, Who.  In that book, Geoff Smart and Randy Street suggest that you create a scorecard to help in the evaluation process.  The scorecard is supposed to be used to find that someone who has a 90% chance of doing what only the top 10 salespeople can do.  I think that is a stretch and unrealistic.

Now, to be fair to the authors, I believe they do a nice job of explaining that an “A” player for a company in New York is probably different than an “A” player for a different company in Manchester, NH.  In other words, not all “A” players need be the same nor are they created the same.  But, aside from that, I still have an issue.

If you look at many great “A” players in sales, the arts or in sports, they just didn’t show up that way.  Many have been groomed and developed over many years to become that “A” player.  The key is to look for the “A” DNA in someone.  We know what that DNA is.  (Click here to request a sample of the ideal fit candidate analysis)

What I believe makes sense is to look for someone that has a 92% chance of success at helping to contribute to the 96% of your results.  Let me explain.

You may or may not have read other articles I’ve written in the past about the 80/20 of the 80/20 and Perry Marshall’s book – The 80/20 of Sales and Marketing.  If you follow the method I’ve described (based on Marshall’s book), you arrive at the following in Figure 1:

Figure 1

If you have revenue of $20,000,000 generated by 50 salespeople and then conduct the 80/20 of the 80/20, you discover that $19,200,00 of the 20,000,000 (96%) is generated by 18 of the 50 salespeople (36%).  Based on this, I believe that your best recruiting strategy is to find people that look like your top 36% or have the same DNA as that top 36% that are generating 96% of your revenue.

I’m sure the authors of Who would question the wisdom of this.  “Why…”, they might ask, “would you settle for salespeople that are less qualified than those that are at least as good as your very best?”

It’s not a matter of settling.  It’s a matter of understanding the today’s marketplace and understanding that talent has to be developed. 

First… the market place:

There has not been a single prospect or client that I’ve talked to in the last 5 years that has not shared with me the challenge of finding, recruiting, hiring and successfully on-boarding new talent - with the biggest challenge being the “finding.”  There are a couple of reasons for that huge challenge:

• Most companies don’t work at it consistently and so they suck at it when it comes time to recruit.
• There isn’t a process/system in place that utilizes filtering processes to attract the right candidates.
• The pool of available candidates is smaller today than it was with the boomer generation.
• Those available in the candidate pool today have a tendency to find jobs other than sales.
• The un-steady economy has kept experienced salespeople from seeking other opportunities for fear of “last in, first out”.

Next… talent development.

As stated above, talent just doesn’t fall off of trees and, unfortunately, everyone in your market is vying for the same “A” talent.  If you cannot offer the same compensation as some of your competitors to attract and hire “the best of the best”, then you have to make great selections from the talent that is currently available.  In order to do this, you should have a very good understanding of what your talent looks like. Specifically, you should start looking at the 36% of your current talent that is generating 94% of your results and stop looking for and hiring people that look like your bottom 64%.

• Identify the results being generated by the top 36%.
• Identify the activities and behaviors of this top group.
• Identify the following:
  • Will to sell
  • Sales DNA
  • Figure-it-out factor
  • Trainability and coachability
• Determine if you have the talent in the management role to:
  • Coach
  • Motivate
  • Manage performance
  • Mentor, grow and develop people

I grew up on a farm where we primarily grew peaches and blueberries.  I just visited the old homestead and, though many things have changed, one thing has not changed.  In the farm acreage, there are various plots of blueberry plants.  Some plots contain plants that are mature enough to be harvested while others have plants that are still being developed and grown to produce.  In the nursery plots, there are plants with solid DNA that are being cultivated, fed and cared for so that, at the right time, they can be productive.  The same should be done with the talent in your organization.

For further assistance, call us at 513.791.3458 and ask for Alex – our expert at hiringbettersalespeople.com. 

This is a blatant blog post boasting about our hiring deliverable - Hirebettersalespeople.com.  I normally don’t do this in this forum in such an obvious fashion, but I cannot help it today.  Allow me to explain…why this…why now.

I have a book on my shelf, Who, written by Geoff Smart and Randy Street.  Those two are famous in the world of hiring better talent.  Their first book, Top Grading, made the best seller list and is now in its third edition printing.  As I started to read Who, much of what I was reading was familiar and I assumed it was because I had read other materials written by the authors. Turns out that it was familiar because I had started reading that book years ago!

Here is the premise of the book in a nutshell:  The “what” in your business is the easy part of business.  The “who” is what costs you time, money, freedom and maybe, eventually, your business if you don’t get the right “who”.  The “who” is what separates your business from every other business in your space. It’s the difference maker in your peace of mind and making the “what” actually happen.  In short:

Nothing else matters nearly as much as the “Who”.

In January of this year, 2016, we launched Hirebettersalespeople.com.  Actually, 3 years ago, I managed to capture the domain name and just kind of sat on it.  Over that time period, it seemed that every one of our clients who hired us for sales and sales management development complained about their difficulty in finding talent that would actually perform as expected when they were selected.

Sound familiar?

Based on these discussions with various associations and the on-going noise about the same issue I heard at every conference and workshop I went to, I decided to put our offering together and market it to our clients and prospects.

Hirebettersalespeople.com combines 1) our experience/expertise/knowledge about what it takes to be successful in sales and sales management, 2) Objective Management Groups #1 in the world pre-hire assessment tool and 3) Dave Kurlan’s Sales Talent Acquisition Routine. (STAR).  To learn even more about it, CLICK HERE to view our slidedoc on Hire Better Salespeople.

According to the research documented in the book, a bad hire of $100,000 can cost a firm 15x that amount in salary, training and development, lost opportunities and poor performance by others that this hire was supposed to be managing/leading.  How big is that number for you?

Stop the bleeding. Get the right people on board. Stop spending so much time on the “what” until you get the right “who” in place.  Nothing else you do in 2017 will have as much impact on finding, hiring, and coaching the right people to grow your revenue and company!