“What you can conceive and believe you can achieve.”  - Napolean Hill

This is so obvious that any meaningful information could probably be expressed simply by stating:

If you have people with various levels of desire for success in sales, you will have variability in performance!

Done. 

Not really, but this isn’t going to take a long time either.

Many years ago, I heard Mark Victor Hansen (author, speaker and all-around good guy) present to the Cincinnati Association of Life Underwriters.  It was at our annual conference and he was our keynote speaker.  His topic was “Visualizing is Realizing.”  During his presentation, he made the comment, “Motivation is an inside-out job.”  I wrote that down in 1990, and I’ve used that phrase over and over again in our 23-year history as a company.

Time and again, sales managers, sales executives and presidents of companies ask me, “Tony, how do I keep my team motivated?”  I tell them that they cannot do that because it’s something their people have to come wired with. That's mostly true. Companies do have to have an environment where it’s possible for people to create reasons for staying motivated.  Compensation, contests, incentives, and recognition all play a part in keeping people motivated.  However, in the end, people have to have a really good answer to the question: “Why do I desire success in selling?”

Success in selling is very specific.  It isn’t just success in a vacuum.  It’s success in a very difficult role with very difficult challenges.  I was once asked why I was in life insurance sales.  I responded that I liked people.  The prospect said, “Bullshit. You’re in sales because you want to make a lot of money.”  I said, “Fair enough; you’re right. I do want to make a lot of money.”

But, money in and of itself is not the root desire.  It’s one of the basics that drive the desire. It’s represented in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Money is just a way to take care of food, shelter, clothing, freedom from harm and security.  Traditionally, people that are very successful in selling have this one thing in common – they have lots of s**t to do that requires money.

Yes, sometimes people have a desire to be recognized as the best.  And they want to have self-satisfaction for a job well-done; but I assure you that none of that matters if there are bills to pay, kids to be fed, a college/mortgage/wedding to pay for or new cars to be driven.

With that as the foundation, let me make this as simple as I can to help answer the question, “So, how do I minimize variability in performance by focusing attention on desire?”

1. Recognize that it is an inside-out job… so that means you have to recruit people that have huge desire for success in selling.
2. Traditionally, desire is a result of people establishing goals.
   1. Your manager has to be leader in this. If they are not a goal setter (personal goals), then chances are your salespeople won’t be either.
   2. Your manager also has to set the example of goal achievement.
   3. Your manager has to create an environment/opportunity for personal goal setting.
3. Your manager has to have the mindset that they must know what motivates their salespeople – why do they desire success in sales?
4. The sales manager needs to recognize that it is their responsibility to help people raise their self-esteem by recognizing success in all forms when it happens.

As I stated in the beginning, the connection between desire for success and selling and the variability of performance is pretty obvious.  If you want to minimize variability in success, minimize the variability in desire for success.

Let’s start with the right people

This isn’t new.  Jim Collins in Good to Great clearly explains the concept of “getting the right people on the bus” and “getting those people in the right seats”.  Aside from that, however, there are other “people” components that have an impact on the variability of performance that are probably just off the radar of our thinking when we discuss ‘The Right People”.

There are three other contributing factors:

1. The Executive Champion – The executive champion has to support the effort when things get tough. The executive champion has to be able to manage up and down when resistance begins to fight against change.  This leadership starts at the very beginning of the process of trying to get it right relative to minimizing/eliminating the variability of performance.  When we first started our engagement with the community bank at Key Bank, their fearless leader, Beth Mooney, stated time and again in all of our kick-off sessions that “This too shall NOT pass.”  Beth did a great job of anticipating the reactions of the participants and warned them early that they were not going to be able to “wait this out”.
2. The people being trained/coached/motivated/instructed on what and how change was/needed to take place need to be coachable and trainable. In our studies of sales organizations over the last 20 years, it is clear that about 20% of the population is not trainable or coachable.  This doesn’t make them bad people. This doesn’t mean that they should be exited. BUT, if some of these people manage large books of business and, as a result, have become account managers instead of business developers, then there is going to be a variance in performance simply because they are unwilling to change.
3. The trainers – Are they capable of leading people to a place where they themselves have never been? Think about a field general trying to lead a group of soldiers into a battle and that general had never experienced the stress, fear, and confusion of battle.  How can a trainer possible facilitate transformation discussions if they’ve never done it themselves?

Let’s talk about the right stuff

We are getting ready to submit a recommendation for a workshop at a conference where we’ve had the great privilege to speak for the last 6 years.  One of the topics we can submit content for is Insurance and Protection Products.  I’m anticipating that respondents attending the conference looking for a platform to speak about their insurance and protection products are also going to submit proposals. Those proposals, I'm assuming, will consist of how their insurance products can solve a variety of problems facing the prospects in the market that are looking to:  pass on an estate, transition their business, protect assets, avoid unnecessary taxes and avoid the risk of losing buying power to inflation. These will be very solid presentations…but they will focus on the wrong stuff.

You see, the problem at this conference isn’t a lack of understanding of how and why insurance and protection products are important to their clients.  The problem isn’t a product knowledge problem.  And I would suggest to you that when you evaluate your sales team and your sales team’s results, you would probably rarely arrive at the conclusion that your people fail to sell because they lack technical expertise or that the technical expertise needed isn’t available.

What you would find out is that one of the two factors below is the significant contributor to lack of results:

1. Lack of effort
2. Lack of execution

Lack of effort is a recruiting and performance management issue that needs to be addressed by training and coaching your management team rather than training your salespeople to “do more”.  Lack of execution has a number of deep-rooted causes that keep salespeople from asking quality questions, getting to decision makers, and uncovering motivation to change or take action.  Salespeople have been taught the techniques and the language, but they still fail to execute.  Why?  Consider the following root causes for failure to execute:

1. Lack of desire to commitment to success in selling
2. Failure to take responsibility for outcomes
3. Unsupportive belief system about certain aspects of selling
4. Fear of rejection
5. Difficulty recovering from rejection
6. Too trusting of prospects

These are just a few samples areas that can be remediated by training and coaching the right stuff.

Lets talk about the right way

When we started our business over 20 years ago, the primary technology for delivery of training was face-to-face instructor-led training.  A lot has changed since then and now there are many options for distance learning.  BUT WAIT – distance learning has been around since the 15^th century… in the form of books!

Distance learning isn’t new.  It’s been redefined by technology, but there have been hundreds of thousands of sales eople trained and coached by reading books and listening to audio materials.  What made those technologies work are the same things that make distance learning work today – the ability to learn and study when it works for the learner.

I have listened to hundreds of hours of David Sandler, Tony Robbins, Mark Victor Hansen, Og Mandino, Zig Ziglar and countless others.  I have bookshelves full of books that I’ve read at 5:30am on airplanes on the way somewhere and late at night in hotel rooms.  The unavoidable truth is your training and development program must be delivered the right way.

• Get the technical information delivered via written, audio or video form,
• Use live webcast for discussion principles, tactics and ideas
• Use live – interactive – preferably face-to-face – instructor led training (from someone that has already been where you want your people to go) for the soft skill development needed via drill for skill, role play and strategy development.

The current state of building and developing an effective and consistent sales team is as tough as it has ever been for many reasons, including the difficulty recruiting talent and keeping up with changes in the buyer’s buying process.  However, the mobility of people and the availability of information via technology allows for training/learning anywhere at any time.

Make sure, when looking to deal with the variability of performance, you are dealing with:

The right people, doing the right things, the right way!

Why does variability exist? Let’s check in with an article by the American Psychological Association written in 1982: *Locke, Shaw, Saari, and Latham (1981) concluded that the relationship between goal setting and performance is reliable, persistent and strong.  Specific, difficult goals led to higher performance than did nonspecific, “do your best” goals in 90% of the studies they reviewed in which the goals could be assumed to have been accepted by the subjects.  However, the strength of the relationship varies considerably from study to study.  In addition to goal conditions, three potentially important contributors to performance variability are:

• Situational Factors
• Task Characteristics
• Individual Differences

In the world of selling, certainly there are situational factors that change from prospect to prospect, client to client.  But, generally speaking, if you have a tight niche/market that you are attempting to capture, you can identify, plan and train for the variability in situations.

Task characteristics should only be variable if you have failed to implement a mapped, objective, centric-measured sales process.  This is the “engineering” aspect of developing a sales managed organization. This helps minimize variability in task characteristics.

The biggest and probably most difficult variable is the difference in individuals. The uniqueness of each fingerprint is expressive of the uniqueness of each individual you hire when recruiting for a sales team built for growth. However, there is science available to help you identify the variables that are consistent among your top performers as well as your bottom performers.  By using that science and implementing a consistent system of attracting, qualifying, interviewing and onboarding, you can improve the probability of success and minimize bad hires.

But, none of this matters unless you have an answer to the question: “Why eliminate variability of performance?”  I cannot possibly answer that question for you. However, along with acknowledging the real costs of recruiting, training and paying those that fail to perform, I can list some additional possible reasons why you might want to eliminate variability of performance:

• The HR cost of managing PIP
• Additional oversight required by management to manage underperformers
• Use of training time and money with zero impact on results
• Perception in the marketplace about your company – churn and burn
• Strain on other members of the team
• Impact of poor work ethic on those that perform as expected
• Interpretation by others on the team that “it is okay to not hit the goal”
• Unknown cost of lost opportunities
• The real economic difference between expected sales and realized sales
• Drain on the executive committee members discussion about the continuation of employment by those not performing

If your company is experiencing any of these items, then eliminating or minimizing the variability of performance must become a front burner issue.

I am certain that, when building a sales team for success, there has never been a discussion between a hiring manager and an executive that signs off on the approval of a hire where the hiring manager and the executive have a discussion like this:

Manager – “I think we should hire Joe Smith.”
Executive – “I agree because I believe Joe is going to be the most unbelievable average producer we’ve ever hired.”

I don’t believe that conversation ever takes place, but somehow there are people in the sales team who are occupying the middle standard deviations space defined as “the average producer”.  But, you didn't hire them with that intent, so how did they get there?

Is it time to measure and address the cost of variability of performance in your company?

Growing sales depends on the ability to know the answers to the right questions.  Often companies make a decision to invest in their people in order to improve performance.  Sometimes the investment pays off: other times, not so much.

When it pays off, it normally is a combination of the right things coming together at the right time:

• Leadership that thinks sales skill improvement is important to improve sales
• Sales management that really knows how to manager performance
• Sales management that understands that coaching is the job
• Recruiting that works to make sure the right criteria are being used to hire superstar sales people and doesn't settle for less
• Marketing programs that increase visibility, strengthen the brand and generate interest in the product.
• An economy built for growth
• A no-excuses environment
• Metrics for success that matter
• Systems and processes that support effective selling
• Salespeople that are motivated and committed
• Salespeople that have the right skills to sell to the market the company is attempting sell to
• Etc., etc., etc.

But… what do you do if sales growth isn’t happening as expected or needed?  Where do you start? 

• New management
• New leadership
• New salespeople
• New CRM and other sales enablement tools
• New marketing strategy

And therein is the problem; most companies don't have the answer to the question(s) of…

• How do we grow sales?
• Where do we start?

At our company, Anthony Cole Training Group, we have partnered with the #1 sales team assessment company in the world – Objective Management Group.  With this partnership, we answer four critical questions for our clients:

• Can we be more effective?
• How much more effective can we be?
• What will it take to accomplish that?
• How long will it take to accomplish that?

To answer those four critical questions, our prospective clients work with us in an initial interview to get a “lay of the land”.  We spend time asking questions to find out what work isn’t getting done.  We listen to understand and we uncover the symptoms of the problems.   We discuss the impact on the business and the solutions attempted in the past.  What we know about every company is that they are perfectly designed for the results they are getting today and will get tomorrow.  If those results are not acceptable, then we go to work.

We go to work with them by providing them a series of questions that have to be answered by senior executives, sales leaders and, ultimately, the salespeople.  This thorough process results in a report that answers the 4 questions we’ve already discussed.  The answers to these 19 questions ultimately answer the BIG question – How do we grow sales?

If you’ve been looking for the answer(s) to that question, keep reading and let us know how we could possibly help you or find you the help you need.

1. How Does Sales Leadership Impact Our Sales Force?
2. What Are Our Current Sales Capabilities?
3. How Motivated Are Our Salespeople and How Are They Motivated?
4. Can We Generate More New Business?
5. Can We Be Better at Reaching Actual Decision Makers?
6. Can We Shorten Our Sales Cycle?
7. Can We Sell More Consultatively?
8. Are We Selling on Price and Who Can Become a Value Seller?
9. Is Our Value Proposition Consistent?
10. Can We Close More Sales?
11. Do Our Systems and Processes Support a High Performance Sales Organization?
12. Can We Be More Consistent with Our Sales Process?
13. How Well Are Our Sales Leadership Strategies Aligned?
14. Do We Need to Change Our Selection Criteria?
15. Can We Improve Ramp-Up?
16. Can We Improve Our Pipeline and Forecasting Accuracy?
17. Can We Improve Our Sales Culture?
18. Who Can Become More Effective in Their Roles?
19. What Are the Short-Term Priorities for Accelerated Growth?

Contact Tony Cole Directly:  513-226-3913 (call or text).  If text, use subject line: “I need answers!” along with your name. Or email: tony@anthonycoletraining.com

Additional Resources:

• Sample Sales Evaluation and Impact Analysis
• Sample Sales Manager Evaluation
• Sample Evaluation: Sales Professional (Strong)
• Sample Evaluation: Sales Professional (Weak)
• Sample Evaluation: Non-Selling Professional (if in professional services like accounting, legal, architecture, engineering etc.)

5 Things to Do to Own a Sales Team Built for Growth

I’m working on an article discussing the 80/20 Power Curve.  It’s the concept Perry Marshall discusses in his book:  The 80/20 of Sales and Marketing.  Normally, I focus on the top part of the curve. The part of the curve that represents about 95% of all the production generated by a sales team (See Figure 1 below)

If you look at your total sales results, you would find something close to the following:

                                         Figure1

Last week, I presented to a group of CEOs at the BISA CEO Summit held at Vanderbilt University.  This slide alone raised a few eyebrows and caused some thinking about the relevance, importance and cost of the 64% of the sales team only representing 4% of the results. (32 sales people responsible for 800,000 of the 20,000,000 in revenue.)  What alarmed me was the bottom part of the 80/20 power curve.  What does the bottom look like? (See Figure 2)

                                             Figure 2

Trust my excel spreadsheet.  The numbers add up and they don’t lie.  They may not represent your team exactly, especially if your team has less than 10 sales people, BUT do the math and you will arrive at a similar finding.  Figure 2 is telling the president of the company that of the 50 sales people in his company, the bottom 20 (40%) Represent 32,000 of a 20,000,000 book of business (.0016%).

Regardless of how you dissect it, spin it, negotiate it or defend it, this cannot be what you expected when you hired these 20 people.

So, what do you do? Here are the 5 THINGS:

1. Start with your sales manager. This is the person responsible for sales, productivity, and sales effectiveness. If ROI is one of the metrics you use to determine success, how would you evaluate the ROI on the bottom 20% of the sales team?
2. Next, I would look at the recruiting practices. As difficult as this might be, you have to answer the question about under performers – Did you hire them this way?
3. You will also want to look at the on-boarding and the development plan in place that should be there to improve the probability of success. As above, you have to answer the question – Did you make them this way?  If you didn’t hire them this way – already failures – then you’ve made them this way – turned them into failures.

* I anticipate you might say – “I didn’t hire them, I inherited the team.”  Like it or not, after a year, they are yours!

4. Look at your systems and processes to make sure they are designed, implemented and executed to support successful sales growth.
5. Look at your sales system and evaluate how well it is being executed top to bottom. My guess is that your best people execute a sales process and they execute it consistently.

Additional resources:

Hirebettersalespeople.com

Perry Marshal – 80/20 Power Curve

Sales Management Certification Program