Knowing how and where to reach our target persona will positively impact our ability to hunt, qualify, and discover potential new business.

Today, our customers are bombarded with sales, marketing, and advertising pitches from companies all hoping to win their business. They’re overwhelmed, or, in most cases, they simply tune us out. So, we try to reach as many potential customers as we can, but we spin our wheels and end up stuck in the same place, week after week, month after month, or year after year.

The problem? We’re not sure whom we’re trying to reach. Many of our potential customers view their time as their greatest, most valuable asset, and so should we. We can protect that asset by having a clear understanding of who our target customer is.

Identify What a Zebra is

In order to hone that understanding, we have to begin with first identifying our “Zebra,” or our ideal prospect persona.

We can do that in three easy steps:

1. Begin by segmenting our business’s book into thirds. For most companies, that top third brings in 90% of the company’s revenue. They are generally the best clients.
2. Look for common traits and demographics in that top third. Ask questions like:

·      What do these customers have in common?

·      What industry are they in?

·      Who is our main point of contact?

·      How do we contact them?

·      What is the size of their organization?

Having the answers to questions like these helps identify other potential customers in the market.

3. Once we know what traits we’re looking for in that top third, we should commit 2/3 of our time to look for or attract customers from this group.

Identify What a Zebra Isn't

Of equal importance is to know what isn’t a Zebra for us. If we know who doesn’t fit our ideal customer persona, we’ll bring clarity to our network and prospecting efforts, and again, continue to value time as our greatest asset. Here’s why it’s important to know what a Zebra isn’t:

1. We eliminate ambiguity. Introductions have been proven to be the No. 1 way that top producers grow their business. But if we aren’t specific about who we serve best, it’s hard to get those introductions. We need to be specific and clear about what type of zebra we serve best.

2. We reduce frustration with our Centers of Influence (COI). We want to capitalize on our COI’s relationships, but if we’re not crystal clear with who we’re looking for, our COI may make an introduction to someone we can’t help. When working with our COI, it’s helpful to articulate the type of business or individual we’re looking for, along with what we’re not looking for and why.

3. We reduce our opportunity cost. Our opportunity cost is what we’re not working on that might have been more viable for our organization. If we’re calling on Company ABC, we’re not working on Company XYZ. Are we losing out on better business, because we’re not calling on the right prospects?

If we know what we don’t want and the reasons why, it might reduce the number of opportunities in our pipeline, but the quality will increase dramatically. 

Cultivating Zebras

Once we’ve determined which customers are and aren’t Zebras, we need to understand the best ways to get in front of them and build relationships. You start by doing some research. Should we call or email them? What is their preferred social media platform – LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter?

Knowing how and where to reach our target persona will positively impact our ability to hunt, qualify, and discover potential new business. Undoubtedly, our most effective approach is to utilize the relationships we have with our top third by asking them to introduce us to others they know, who will most likely fall into that ideal customer profile.

It takes work to find these prospects and then contact them, but it’s well worth the effort. Our chances of success are now much higher because we know we’re reaching the right audience, the Zebras, who become our best clients. 

Why do so many of my salespeople fail to perform as expected?  It's a loaded question.  Or, is it?  In our corporate sales training experience, we've seen that evaluating underperforming salespeople in the pre-hire sales assessment is crucial for success in your business.

From poor diagnosis of the right contributing factors for success, to other candidates being eliminated due to weaknesses rather than hiring on sales STRENGTHS, there are specific reasons that not all of your salespeople are performing the way that you thought they would.

Did you hire them this way or did you make them this way?  Let's take a look...

If you are a sales leader and you look at your numbers and the people producing those numbers, do you ever scratch your head in confusion over why you are looking at a lack of sales results?

Certainly, you didn’t hire these people to be in the middle of the pack or at the tail end of the conga line, but that is right where they are.  I know you don’t believe you hired them that way, but it’s either that, or you made them that way.

Don’t get upset with me here.  The reality is that your team’s performance is a result of who you’ve hired or what you’ve done (or not done).

So, in general, why do so many salespeople fail to perform? I have detailed answers to that question that you will be hard pressed to find anywhere else besides right here.

• Underperformers have 80% of the desire of top performers. *Note – not all performers have off-the-chart desire – that is about 7% of all top sales people.
• Those that underperform have about 44% of the commitment to succeed in selling that top performers do.
• These two factors combine to measure motivational level. Underperformers have about 60% of the motivation of your top people.

SUMMARY – Underperformers just are not as motivated to succeed.

SOLUTION – STOP hiring people that are not motivated to succeed at the highest level of performance!

Using the Objective Management Sales Evaluation, there are over 100 data points to measure the opportunity for sales growth of a sales team/organization.  Additionally, this data helps us to predict the likelihood of success of new sales people and managers. 

Here are some interesting findings based on the raw data I have from assessing salespeople (as well as firsthand knowledge of some of the people in the study).

• Top performers are trainable and coachable
• Top performers have a high figure-it-out factor
• Top performers have a low need for approval and…
• Top performers score an average of 86.8 (higher score is better) and underperformers score 39.6 for handling rejection!
• Top performers are hunters, consultative sellers and closers (average score for skills is 55% of required skills while underperformers average 39.6% of required skills)

SUMMARY – Salespeople – regardless of tenure or previous success - need training and coaching. Also top performers handle rejection extremely well and move on.

SOLUTION – Do not hire based on past performance. (It’s like investing in a mutual fund – past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.)  During the interview process, reject the heck out of the candidate – the strong ones will recover and attempt to close you over and over again!

The following data indicates that sales strengths are better indicators of success rather than sales skills:

• Underperformers have 85% of the sales skills of top performers and have…
• Only 71% of the sales strengths that support execution of sales skills and…
• The severity of their sales weaknesses are 52% higher than that of top performers

SUMMARY – The skills are about the same, but those with strong strengths of desire, commitment, outlook and responsibility win.

SOLUTION – Make sure your pre-hire assessment process looks for strengths and “will sell” rather than just skills, personality and behavioral traits.

So, back to the original question:   “Why do so many of my salespeople fail to perform as expected?”:

• Poor diagnosis of the right contributing factors for success
• Candidates eliminated due to weaknesses rather than hiring for sales strengths
• Too much credit given to sales skills exhibited during interview process
• Lack of solid training and development on the root causes of poor performance

Now that you have the answers to the question, what will you do about it?

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.

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.