A guest post by Jack Kasel, Sales Development Expert, Anthony Cole Training Group

The Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” I don’t remember reading any accounts of Aristotle conducting sales training, but I believe he would have been pretty good at it.

I have a statement and a question that tie into Aristotle’s quote on habits:

• The systems you have in place are perfectly designed to produce the results you are getting.
• Do you own, and do you like, the outcome you produced?

Habits + Systems = Outcomes.  I think I can get agreement that, if both habits and systems are excellent and well thought-out, the outcome will be what it needs to be.  The problem is this: if either habits or systems are bad, the outcome will never be what it could be.  Here’s the good news though – you are in control of both the habits you create and the systems you follow.

Let’s take a look at habits.  There are many you can create.  One of the best habits you can develop is setting aside an appointment, each week, to meet with your most important customer.  That most important customer is you and the habit you must form is to never… under any circumstances… break that appointment.  During that appointment with yourself, plan and set goals for your week, read things to improve your skills and craft or just spend time organizing yourself.  You will be shocked how much better you can be by investing 30 minutes each week.

What systems do you have in place that will help you succeed? What are key factor you need to achieve to succeed in sales?  Are they introductions?  Cold Calls?  Appointments? Presentations, etc.?  What’s your conversion ratio?  How many calls turn into appointments?  How many appointments turn into presentations?  Have a system, measure the activity, find the gaps, do the things necessary to fix them.

Finally, let’s look at outcomes.  Do you own the outcome you’ve created?  Another way to look at it is, when something doesn’t happen the way you wanted or needed it to, do you look out the window for the reason or do you look in the mirror for the reason?

So, there you go.  A simple formula . . . Habits (good or bad) + Systems (good or bad) = Outcome. If you own the outcome and don’t like it, fix the things on the left side of the equal sign.  Finally, always remember this: Someone needs what you do; go find them.

SUMMARY:
So, change your habits and you will change your outcomes. Remember: schedule a 30-minute weekly appointment with yourself to…

• Spend time organizing yourself
• Plan and set goals for the week
• Read to improve your skills
• Develop a system and measure the activity
• Find the gaps and decide how to fix them

Prospects want you to have honest, direct and assertive conversations with them so that they can make better, critical decisions.

There are many contributing factors as to why someone may not be assertive such as: learned helplessness, low self-esteem, having a go-get mindset versus a go-give, false bravado, life out of balance causing a sense of desperation and a crisis management approach to work rather than a self-management approach to work.

Assertive people have certain characteristics.

• First of all, they have minimum acceptable standards for themselves and those people around them. They don’t associate with toxic people – they work with nourishing people.
• They have a goal philosophy; they have lots of goals and then they continue to pursue those goals and achieve those goals.
• They get outside the box. If you’ve seen the 9-dot exercise, you’ll know what I’m talking about. They get outside the dots- they expand their comfort zone.
• Next, they take risk and they understand that taking risk can result in failure. But, failure becomes defined as just another step towards success. They’re persistent. They find other ways to close.
• They themselves make decisions; that makes it hard for them to understand why someone would want to think it over.
• They know what they stand for and they won’t fall for just anything that falls under the category of objection or stall.
• They control the sales process. You can ask them about next steps and assertive people can give you specific details about what happens next.

To overcome the hurdles that might trip you up as you attempt to be more assertive, you might consider the following:

1. As they said in the Godfather movie, “It’s not personal; it’s business.” Don’t take it personally.
2. Take ownership of how you feel. Nobody can make you feel the way you feel in terms of being uncomfortable. You choose to feel a certain way.
3. Consider Emerson’s quote, “Do the thing and you’ll have the power.” There will be times during a sales process or sales step where you will feel the need to be assertive but you will be afraid. DO the thing… do the thing that you’re feeling and you’ll have the power.

As always, thank you and have a perfect day.

In his ground breaking book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey states that highly successful people start with where they want to be – “the end” - and then work to get there. That’s great advice for managers attempting to lead for results, manage activity and coach behaviors.

In a Sales Managed Environment®, a sales manager - in order to get the most out of their team - must execute two critical functions:

• Performance management
• Coaching

Both of these are contingent on knowing where your individual salespeople want to end up. What is it that is important to them? What is their motivation to do what they have to do to succeed in selling? Knowing that information and using that information to build a solid sales success plan is critical. In addition, gaining personal commitment to achieve personal goals is the only way to improve the probability of professional sales success.

I recall having a discussion with a COO of a large insurance holding company. He was about to address one of the agencies the following day and, as we were eating dinner, he was sharing with me his message. Most of the message was about the company growth and the importance of shareholder value. As gently as I could, I reminded him that the group he was addressing the next day didn't really care about shareholder value. They were more interested in making college payments, getting out of debt and building the cabin on the lake.

And so it is with your salespeople. Unfortunately, you can count on at least 75% of your people failing in the area of setting goals and having a solid goal achievement plan.

The information in this chart comes from the Sales Effectiveness and Impact Analysis produced by Objective Management Group – the world leader in sales team evaluations. In a group of 50 salespeople, you can see that 77% of them do not have written goals or a goal management plan.

What does this have to do with a sales manager and starting with the end in mind, you ask? Everything.

• The people that you have today who are performing in the middle of the bell curve or the wrong end of the 80/20 power curve:  Did you hire them that way or make them that way?
• Those salespeople who seem to have gotten stuck at a certain level of performance - could it be that they just stopped thinking bigger or are comfortable?
• Why is it a struggle to keep your sales team motivated?
• With changes in comp plans and implementation of incentives, why isn’t there more movement toward improvement in results?
• Why do you find yourself always talking about the same people who don’t seem to be “lifting their weight”?

All of these questions are tied to motivation or the lack of motivation. And that starts with management. If you don’t hire motivated people, you cannot make them that way. And… even the most motivated people need a “shot in the arm” once in a while. Starting with the end in mind, your job/task/responsibility is to create an environment where your people have the opportunity to dream the big dream and have a plan of achievement.

So, start today with these resources:

• Sales Managed Environment® Certification Program Certification Program

• Free Goal Setting Toolbox

Several years ago, I had an eye-opening discussion with one of my largest clients while reviewing the prior year and setting goals for the next year.  During this discussion, my client suggested several critical "Keep Doing, Start Doing and Stop Doing" items that he felt would help us to be even more effective.  This 3-dimensional discussion helped me to understand how we could grow by tweaking some of our traditional approaches.  I think this process is relative to all businesses and has a particular application in regards to building relationships with banking, investment and insurance clients. In our January newsletter, I covered what to stop doing to drive sales growth. Today, we will focus on what to start doing.

Start focusing on helping people get more of what they want: “If you help more people get what they want, you’ll get more of what you want.”  In his essay on compensation, Ralph Waldo Emerson alludes to the law of the universe. The law of the universe fundamentally means that you can neither add nor take from the whole of the universe. If that’s the case and you spend time and energy trying to get more out of the universe, then you must start putting more into it.

Start spending more time on recruiting: One of the reasons managers end up with the wrong people is that they are reactive instead of proactive (this is just one of the many reasons). When you are reactive, you feel desperate, you cut corners, you allow for a wider margin of error and you take on the belief that a warm body is better than no body in the seat.

Start effective performance management: Gathering data in Sales Force or any other database is not performance management. Sending out reports on pipelines and production results is not performance management. Having and implementing a PIP process is not performance management. Performance management is having multiple data points to assess behavior, skill and performance. You then must use that data to develop business intelligence for intentional coaching. Performance management should be about helping people succeed in their selling process rather than using punitive measures.

Start coaching: Coaching is getting the sale pushed through the pipeline to closure. Coaching to change behavior and improve skill is what builds the foundation for long-term growth and success of your people and team. Make sure you have Coaching time scheduled on your calendar each week!

Start making your bottom better: Assume for a minute that you have a sizable sales team - one that has more than 10 people. If you break the group down into quintiles, you have 5 groups of 2. Each of the groups performs at a certain level. Understand that you will always have a top quintile and a bottom quintile. All the Jack Welch’s “fire the bottom 10%” in the world will not actually eliminate the bottom 10%. If you have 10 people, there is always going to be someone who is number 10 or last in the ranking. However, each quintile this year ought to out-perform the same quintiles of last year. Manage to that objective and you will blow your numbers away.

Start accepting responsibility for results and start making your people do the same: On the stop list was “stop making excuses”. It’s only logical that, on this list, I would include “start taking responsibility”. Own your outcomes. Make your salespeople own their outcomes. If they have no one to blame, they will find a solution or be forced to leave.

Start getting your people to think “extraordinarily”: The standard in too many organizations for too many managers and too many sales people is this: “Just enough is good enough.” The Pareto Principle (80/20 rule) proves this. Implement a goal setting and work plan development strategy.

Start planning and executing effective sales meetings: Did you attend sales meetings that were boring and ineffective? How good are yours today? Do people miss or find excuses/reasons to not be there, come late and/or leave early? Do you find that the sales meetings are having ZERO impact on attitude, activity, performance and results? If they are not having an impact, then just stop doing them. However, if they are something that you are committed to doing, then act like they are more important than any meeting you have. Prepare as if your job depended on it!

Start each year with individual work plans already in place: Time and again, I hear sales managers working with their salespeople on business plans in December. This makes sense ONLY if you have a 30-day sales cycle. For most B2B sales, the cycle is a bit longer. If your cycle is 90-days, then the business/work plan for the coming year should be completed in September.

Start: Today! 

If you missed the What to Stop Doing to Drive Sales Growth article, go to my blog.

Additional Resources:

Personal Goal & Work Plan Development – Workshop

Questions to Determine Their Commitment – A PDF worksheet

Are My People Motivated? – Sample Sales Force Evaluation

Suppose… you had a non-performing stock (salesperson).

If you had a stock that hadn’t performed as expected, how long would you hold onto it? Six months, a year, 18 months? Maybe it’s performing like the rest of the stocks in a similar portfolio but not growing as you expected. What do you do with that individual stock? What do you do to the entire portfolio when it’s under-performing?

The answer is simple – you manage it!

As portfolio manager, you:

• Set metrics for success and standards for each of those metrics.
• Conduct research/due diligence to make sure that you are adding investments to the portfolio that are consistent with your investment and long term financial goals and risk standards (Cash, Income, Income with growth, Aggressive growth, International growth or a Hybrid)
• Determine your strategy on buy, hold or sell
• Establish a method of inspecting what you expect
• Gain intelligence from the information you gather from quarterly reports and you determine next steps
• You either buy, hold or sell based on the information you have and the impact that an investment is having on your ability to achieve your goals

What can be accepted as true is that every portfolio is perfectly designed for the results it generates. There is cause and effect. If you are not happy with your results, you change your objectives or portfolio management strategy, right?

Well then, how about the portfolio of investment advisors you have on your team? As program/sales manager you have objectives that you have set out for the entire team/portfolio and when you added investments (people) you had performance expectations. Based on performance, what has to change if anything? Are individual performers pulling their weight or are they a drag on the performance of the team? When you assess your investment in each of the individuals on the team, where do you need to buy, hold or sell? Finally, when you assess the managers managing the portfolio, how effective are they?

You have the awesome responsibility to the stakeholders to put together the best portfolio in order to maximize return on investment. Failure to do so creates a failure in fiduciary responsibility.

See you tomorrow.