Complacency in selling is not a new phenomenon.  In fact, it has been going on for a number of years with salespeople accepting their status, their shiny new toys, and their numbers in the business, while exclaiming,

"Enough is enough.  I've accomplished it all!"

In this article, we discuss three keys to help sales managers bust the myth that “enough is enough” and continue to get the most out of their top producers.

Too often, highly successful salespeople reach a point in their career where they become complacent and “enough is enough”.  This happens for many reasons, but one of the main causes I've observed is because "they've made it".  It doesn't matter what the gender or tenure may be — all that matters is that one day the sales person wakes up, takes a look around, and discovers that all of the things they strived for when they entered into the business have been accomplished.

For example:

• They have the big house
• They have the right car
• They have the club membership
• They are either empty nesters or they have the kids in private schools

In the past, Dave Kurlan at Objective Management Group has said that highly successful salespeople are motivated by earning more money. Recently though, Dave has done some additional research to indicate that money is NOT really the primary motivator, especially with today's younger generations.  

With this in mind, I don't want to focus on money as the motivator, but I don't want to totally discount the idea either - Money does help people achieve the other extrinsic motivators that are important to them. However, it is actually the specific goals of the individuals, that provide the motivation for earning more money.

For example, let's suppose you have a sales person who says spending time with the kids in extracurricular activities is important. I would suggest that being successful in selling "buys" one the time to have balance in their life and “buys" the ability to make the choice to go to a field hockey game at 3:30 in the afternoon. This freedom of time and choice might require your sales person to succeed at a higher level. People who are actively dreaming and motivated to reach their goals will continue to work towards financial success to fulfill those goals.

Here are 3 Keys to help sales managers bust the myth that “enough is enough” and continue to get the most out of their top producers. And if you are a top producer yourself, these are three areas you should question and reflect on for yourself.

1. Ask the right question(s). It really isn't about money - how much they want to make, how much they want to have, when they want to retire, etc. The better questions focus on helping your highly successful salespeople determine what they would like to have to shape and define their lives. Ask them to rethink their goals to include some things that would be important to them to have as a legacy regarding who they are and what they accomplished.
2. Create an environment where goal setting is also goal sharing. Too often, sales managers don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what it is that motivates their salespeople. As a sales manager you may argue this, but the OMG data shows that 75% of all sales managers do not feel it is important to know what motivates their people. However, once you know what is important to you then, then you are more effective as a mentor and a coach.
3. Build the company sales revenue plan from the ground up. Start working with your people and help them identify what their requirements are to have a lifestyle filled with happiness, success, and financial freedom. Document their individual requirements and provide a process to translate those requirements into a selling success formula. 

I've explained to salespeople that if the company has a bigger goal for them than they have for themselves, they shouldn't blame the company. The salespeople need to blame themselves because smaller expectations are a clear indication that they have stopped dreaming and stopped setting goals. I’ve explained to executives that it isn't about shareholder value. Their salespeople, unless they own shares, don't give a hoot about shareholder value. They care about sending their kids to school, buying a place in the mountains, paying for the weddings, etc.

When you have an environment where your people can continue to make their dreams come true, then you have something special where “enough is enough" is never an issue. 

There are a certain number of rules that must be followed when it comes to prospecting in sales. 

These include, but are not limited to, making the commitment to get out of the cold calling business, identifying who you will ask for introductions and referrals each week, ensuring exactly how you will evaluate your success, and creating a pre-call plan for every single call and/or face-to-face meeting.

Some people say that rules were made to be broken. You might want to think twice about breaking some of these rules for prospecting.

The most successful salespeople I know are always challenging the ideas and methods of those that have succeeded before them, but they don’t challenge the notion of the importance of making prospecting their A priority every week. They know that no matter how successful they are, if they don’t continue to add new relationships, that eventually, their business will decline. 

Here are some rules to help you prospect and prosper:

1. Play in your sandbox. Make sure you have a profile of who you need to be in front of. Call on the people and businesses where you have expertise, and can leverage that, along with your experience.

2. If you are dependent on making cold calls, make the commitment to get out of the cold calling business. You will schedule appointments and make sales cold calling but the acquisition cost per sale is much higher than with referrals and introductions. Not to mention the sales process is generally longer.

3. Look at your schedule each week and identify who you will ask for introductions and referrals. It could be face to face meetings, networking events or a meeting with a center of influence. Have a process for asking that makes it easy for people to help you. Bring your list of top 10 prospects to every meeting and ask them who they know on the list that would take a call from you? Better yet, make use of LinkedIn and look through their connections for people and businesses that look like your target prospect.

4. How will you evaluate your success? Make sure to set objectives whether it is with a success formula or a commitment to specific behaviors and then TRACK IT!

5. Have a telephone approach that when calling for appointments helps you sound like someone they want to speak with. What is your unique selling approach? What problems do you fix and why do people meet with you? It must be compelling.

6. Do a pre-call plan for every call, on the phone or face to face, to help you stay on track. Know what questions you will ask, what questions you need answered and the tough questions they will ask along with how you will respond.

7. Don’t quit, be persistent! Rejection is part of the process. It’s not falling down it’s staying down that defeats us all.

In sales, it is critical for a producer to develop behaviors for success and systems to support those behaviors. But often times, salespeople struggle and settle for the results they get because they don’t know how to adapt.

In this article, we will review the formula and methodology for change and the key questions every successful salesperson must ask themselves when identifying how to improve their sales outcomes.

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, if either habits or systems are bad, the outcome will never be what it could be. Here’s the good news, 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, you 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 factors 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 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.

In our follow up to last week's March Madness write-up, we discuss the idea of "sales madness", and the notion that it can be defined similarly to insanity, or doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result.

There are four reasons that make up our judgement into sales madness.  They are:

1.) Uncoachable Salespeople

2.) A failure to recognize that the game has changed

3.) Being allergic to hard work

4.) A failure to add value

Like many of you, I always enjoy the month of March.  The temperature at least is supposed to start trending in the right direction…my birthday occurs in March (thanks to all of you who sent gifts)…and last, but certainly not least, is the NCAA basketball tournament that we have come to know as March Madness.  Wall-to-wall basketball with good food and good friends is something we look forward to each year here at Anthony Cole Training Group.

As a sales coach, there is another kind of madness I see that is not exclusive to the month of March.  I refer to it as "Sales Madness."  I define sales madness just like others have defined insanity: doing the same thing over and over while at the same time expecting a different outcome.

So, what about this other kind of madness?  Where does it come from?  I sense there are several reasons why salespeople keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, but, to keep our theme of March Madness alive, I give you my “Final Four” reasons that make up the madness. 

They are:

1. Uncoachable salespeople - Some salespeople are simply averse to changing their game.  Maybe they are stubborn.  Maybe they have an inflated sense of how good they really are at putting the ball in the basket.  For whatever reason, the salesperson will push back when anyone attempts to coach them to higher levels of performance.
2. A failure to recognize that the game has changed - It still surprises me how many salespeople are trying to sell like the famous musical artist Prince – like it is 1999.  Buyers today are on a journey.  They are more informed than ever before.  They are starting the process on their own instead of waiting for a salesperson to reach out to them.  Almost 80% of C-Suite level prospects have indicated they will not even come to the phone for a conversation with a salesperson they do not know.
3. Being allergic to hard work - Some salespeople have concluded they can continue to have the same (or even better) results without hustling even more for rebounds and loose balls on the floor.  That won’t cut it.  There is more competition to deal with…not less.  Prospects are more cautious…not less.  Buying cycles (note that I did not say sales cycles) are longer…not shorter.  Sure, you might be really talented.  But remember this – hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle.
4. A failure to add value - Two things happen when salespeople don’t provide value along the buyers' journey that prospects take:  they don’t differentiate and they don’t build relationships.  Add those two things together and it might explain those unreturned emails and voicemails.

I always like asking the salespeople I coach one simple question: 

1. How much are you willing to put on the table in terms of what you are willing to change?  Those that are willing to take the scary route of change generally score more often.

Enjoy your Spring…and here is to confining the madness to the hardwood!

The sales process, albeit its own animal, shares certain similarities with the monster that is March Madness.  From prospecting, qualifying, taking the big shot, closing, assessing the opportunity to win, and much more, selling and sport's greatest tournament are linked in more ways than meets the human eye.

This might be the biggest stretch ever in the history of my blog. How can I possibly tie the NCAA Basketball Tournament (also known as March Madness) to selling? Honestly, I’m not sure…so I will be making this up as I go. Let me begin by setting the stage for selling and how I see it is similar to the event of March Madness.

• Prospecting > Games that are played by all Division I teams throughout the year.
• Qualifying > Selection Sunday – based on performance of the teams, 68 teams qualify to make the tournament.
• Assessing the Opportunity to Win > Selecting your teams from the ‘brackets’ that you think have the best chance to win OR the teams you want to win OR the teams you think will be the upset and give you a chance to win the office pool.
• Presenting > The Madness begins on Tuesday and Wednesday night in the "First Four" games.  On Thursday, the real fun begins, with a full slate of 16 games where the participating teams play their hearts out, and let the ball bounce where it may.
• Closing > In some cases, the game is over before it begins (or so it seems that way).  In other games there are more questions that need to be answered (Overtime) before a victor is declared.  In some cases, an unexpected outcome – an upset – a 16 seed beating a 1 seed (looking at you - UMBC - and you, Virginia!)
• Get a decision > The loser goes home while the winner savors the victory before facing the next big challenge.

And as Paul Harvey used to say, “And now… the rest of the story.”

Think about some of the outcomes of the presentations you’ve made where you were the top seed, or where you were the one in the game with all the right things in place to help you win the business. You have the talent, bench strength, great coaching, and preparation in place.  You have presented to the prospect what you said you would present but then… in the final seconds… someone throws up a “buzzer beater” and there goes your sale.

What happened?

• The prospect let the incumbent come in and they matched my price.
• I couldn’t get underwriting to change a covenant.
• They took it to the decision maker and that person didn’t want to change
• They said it was too expensive
• They are thinking it over
• Etc. etc. etc.

And just like in the ball game, it’s easy to point to the last play in the game that seals the upset – RJ Hunter’s 3 pointer with less than 2 seconds left to win the game for Georgia State comes to mind:

But, when the losing coaches review the game tape with their team, they point out to their players that there were several opportunities that, if the team had performed better ordifferently, the outcome would not have come down to the last shot.

The same is true in selling. It hardly ever comes down to the last shot when determining if you will win or lose the game:

• Matching price – You should have uncovered earlier who was going to win a price tie.
• Changing covenants – You should know beforehand the exact specs you need to get the deal done and, if you cannot meet those specs, you don’t present.
• Decision making – You should know the decision making process before presenting.
• They said it was too expensive – Why didn’t you know the budget before you presented?
• Think-it-overs – You must eliminate this as an option when discussing the decision making process.
• Other – Uncover in advance what can go wrong and deal with those things prior to attempting to present and close.

As the sales manager/sales executive, it is your responsibility to:

• Put the best possible team on the court.
• Make sure you have provided your team the resources they need to win.
• Prepare them with a solid strategy to win.
• Practice what you expect them to perform.
• Debrief after they perform so you can help them change behaviors and improve skill

Once you do your job, and you do your best to make sure they are doing their job, then get them on the court and see where the ball bounces.

Additional Resources:

Sales Management Environment – Building the structure to improve your chances for winning.

Sales Talent Acquisition Routine – Hire Better Sales People - get the right people to come to your team to play and WIN against the opponents in your market.

Goal Setting and Business Plan Development – Build a foundation so that your team has the required internal motivation to win in all market conditions.