Inside Our Head

Paul Nutt, author of Why Decisions Fail, studied 400 decisions made by senior executives in medium and large businesses. Decisions studied include Disney's EuroDisney failure, various components of the Denver International Airport construction, etc.

Nutt's research found that fully half of the decisions had failed. A decision "failure" was defined as a decision that either was not implemented or a decision that was not still in effect two years after it had been made.

Professor Nutt found that the primary reason for decision failure is that decision makers make a premature commitment. They "latch-on" to the first solution, the quick fix, and that many of the buying process activities occurring after that are actually only efforts to justify their ready-made solution. Decision makers become anchored by the first information they observe and give it more weight than information that arrives later on.  

Is your sales team performing far below potential?

Mine was. As a first-time sales manager many years ago, my office ranked dead-last out of 64 offices. We had ten salespeople, nine of whom had less than one year of sales experience with our company and were performing far below standards. The lone exception was Norm, an 18-year veteran with the company, who was selling more than the other nine salespeople combined.

Eighteen months later the office had moved all the way up to #5, having posted the biggest increase in sales of any office in the company. Here are steps that you can take to turn around your sales team.

Step 1: Do not tolerate mediocre sales performance.

You must have high expectations of your salespeople, or they will not perform. You must make the decision that if one or more of your salespeople is not performing, you must address the situation. Some sales managers allow underperforming salespeople to continue their underperforming ways, by avoiding or delaying without confronting the situation. You must provide them constant feedback.

Poor performers must make a decision themselves to either recommit themselves to the necessary behaviors and activities, or leave the company. And you, as a manager, must decide to commit yourself to providing the direction for the poor performer to perform these duties.

Your team is only as strong as its weakest link. You cannot tie your ship to your poor performers' anchor. The classic line in the movie Network said it best: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." As a sales manager, your responsibility is to grow sales. If you have an under performing sales team, it is up to you to turn it around. Ask yourself the hard questions.

Step 2: Do Nothing

Take the time to understand your organization's situation, and gather information about the people involved. Analyze your problem(s).

My problem was that my salespeople didn't believe in themselves. They hadn't yet experienced success, and there was no role model -- someone whom they could say, "Yea, there's somebody like me who's making it." Sure, Norm was making great money, but new salespeople couldn't relate to Norm and his 18-years of company experience.

When a new hire signs on with you, which salesperson(s) do they look up to? What kind of example is that person setting for your new hires?

Step 3: Find your role model.

Some salespeople avoid accepting responsibility for their poor performance, they had a variety of excuses: lousy territory, poor pay plan, etc. But what they really lacked was a success role model.

Who do your salespeople look up to besides you?

I knew I needed a success role model, and that person unfortunately, was not already on my team. So, I began recruiting like mad. I knew that my next hire was my most important hire. When I found him, I told Bill Zeeb "you'll probably hear some stinkin thinkin from some of our other salespeople... and you need to ignore it. If you stick with me, do exactly as I teach you to do, you will succeed."

Step 4: Set and install performance standards for your salespeople.

Raise the BAR: with Behavior, Activity and Result standards.

For example, one behavior standard was to arrive in the office every morning by 8AM. An activity standard could be to make a minimum of 25 telephone prospecting calls every day. A result standard could be that a sales rep with 7-9 months sales experience must sell a minimum of $15,000/month. On result standards, I recommend a lower "keep your job" standard, and a higher quota standard.

If a salesperson falls below his/her minimum standard for a three month period, he/she is placed on probation. If sales don't pick up, that person is fired.

Step 5: Identify training needs

Find areas you can add more value to your prospects and customers. Install a common language your salespeople can use. Without a common selling language, your salespeople tend to sell on their instincts, and some wander aimlessly through a sales process without a plan, missing many opportunities during the buying process to intensify the customers' needs and differentiate your solution.

Step 6: Let your worst performer go.

Your salespeople will be wondering, "Does he/she really mean it?" And, "As long as I sell more than John, I'm safe." The first person you dehire will send a message, loud and clear, that you walk your talk.

As my former boss told me, "There's only one thing worse than someone who quits and leaves, and that's someone who quits and stays."

Step 7: Stay the Course, Things are likely to get worse before they get better.

Bill knew that I was counting on him, and he didn't let me down. In his fourth month he produced 200% of quota. Overnight, the attitude in the office changed from, "lousy territory", "poor pay plan", to "what's Bill Zeeb doing?" That's when individual salespeople who wanted to believe in themselves first openly questioned themselves. That's the day when they stopped making excuses and finally accepted responsibility for their own poor performance.

I have a book published by Harvard Business Review titled Business Classics: Fifteen Key Concepts for Managerial Success.  The book contains the 15 articles in HBR’s history that have sold the most reprints.  One article, published in 1964, was titled, “What Makes a Good Salesman,” by David Mayer and Herbert Greenberg.  The author’s research found that there are two qualities that make an effective salesperson: ego-drive (or personal ambition) and empathy.  Empathy is your ability to project yourself into the heart and mind of your customer to see things as our customer sees them.

And yet, nearly five decades after that article was published, salespeople are seldom selected for or taught empathy.  The predominance of sales training literature is still focused on the steps of the sale, the things that salespeople need to do to sell the customer: prospect, approach, question, qualify, present, handle objections, close, etc. Are we still in the 1950s or what?

Situation: a company's top sales rep is promoted to sales manager, but does not receive sales training on how to perform a sales manager's duties and responsibilities. Here's what happens next...

Untrained sales managers:
Don't know how to be an effective sales manager, so they continue to do what comes naturally -- they continue to sell. But this leads them to spend more time with their top salespeople, who are working on the biggest deals, which leaves the rest of the sales team out in the cold, without a leader/coach.

Allow the inmates to take control of the asylum. Untrained sales managers don't define standards of performance and they don't coach to standards. When unsuccessful sales behaviors occur the manager fails to confront the situation, and what you don't confront you condone. Without sales discipline there can be no team excellence.

Hang on to low producing salespeople far too long. Because sales managers aren't coaching reps on a consistent basis, the manager doesn't know why the rep continues to turn in a poor performance. The manager then reacts to a rep's poor production by "buying" the rep's excuses, erroneously assuming the rep will turn it around. But by this time the problem is too old to fix, the sales manager's opportunity to correct this problem with the sales rep occurred months ago, and the coaching opportunity was missed. Intuitively the sales manager knows this. She blames herself for the rep's continued failure to perform and, out of guilt, gives the rep even more time on the job to fail some more. The manager's acceptance of one salesperson's mediocrity brings the entire team down.

Become high paid, administrative assistants to the salespeople. Untrained sales managers think that if they solve the problems that salespeople bring to them then reps will automatically sell more. Not true. Managers need to expect salespeople to solve their own problems instead of doing their thinking for them. When a salesperson comes to the manager with "a monkey on his back" it is the manager's duty to
a) ask the rep how the problem should be solved
b) see that the rep leaves with the monkey!

Fail to follow-up. Untrained sales managers make suggestions to salespeople on how to improve and then assume salespeople will implement their suggestions. After all, when the manager was a salesperson, he/she implemented the boss' suggestions. Managers who fail to follow-up create a team culture that's lacking in accountability. Without accountability there can be no team excellence.

Don't manage time effectively, or set priorities. There are actually 29 specific timewasters that sales managers suffer from. Sales managers become buried in "stuff" work, reactive fire-fighting, feeling overwhelmed. They're working harder than ever, but unable to catch up, and no time for what should be their #1 priority - to coach. The result? The individual on the team with the most highly developed sales skills - the sales manager - has no time to coach. No time to teach his or her talents, skills and energies to those individuals on the team who need and want it the most.

When sales managers somehow do find the time to coach, they jump in and take over the customer meeting, which prevents the salesperson from learning, and implies to the customer that the salesperson is unskilled. This is the syndrome I refer to as, "Move over Rover, let the great one take over."

Unsure how to diagnose a sales performance problem, so problems in sales competence and willingness persist. Managers harp on the bad results, but don't address the unsuccessful behaviors and activities that created those poor results.

React to the issues of the day with no strategic plan for developing the team. Questions that sales managers should consider in their strategic/team development plan include:
Which salesperson is ready to step up and assume the role of the "bell cow" on this team?
If I were to set a team goal to increase sales by 30% over the next 12 months, what obstacles would stand in our way?
Is there anyone I need to de-hire?
What step of the sales process are we weakest in, and what specifically can I do to correct this?

Think primarily of job tasks, spend little or no time thinking about non-task issues such as team morale, individual rep motivators, career planning for sales reps, etc.

Effective sales management is a skill set that is altogether different from selling. I don't understand why many companies seem to believe that, without any training, a great salesperson will automatically become a great sales manager. One thing I do understand, however, is that the companies that do train their sales managers will see faster ramp-up time for new-hires, increased sales productivity and morale, and more satisfied and loyal customers. In short, the entire sales team will improve results if a company will make a training investment in a their sales managers.

Quick review: there are Three Levels of Management within the Student role you play during Step 1 of the Buying Process. The three levels of Management are: CEO, Core Level, and the Support Level. If you can reach and do business with the CEO, you will discuss issues of competitiveness, cost cutting and efficiencies, and you will like be holding better margins.

Core Level management is interested in solving problems NOW and maximizing Key Success Factors, those areas which contribute most effectively to the organization's overall ability to succeed function to function. We also discussed the ways to contact Core Level managers and determine which have influence and which have authority without influence. The overall recommendation was to find influential sponsors who will sell your message to the Core managers in various relevant departments.

Now we look at the Support Level of Management, which is the bottom level providing support to the CEO and the Core levels.

Support level reacts to the needs of upper management. It includes areas like purchasing, legal, training and accounting. If you are dealing with a purchasing type in Support you will likely find an emphasis on the most machine for the money and consequently margins begin to shrink. This is the price-driven or "Transactional Sale." Engaging business at this level is a Win-Lose: the purchasing agent is looking for the most machine at the lowest price. He wins. You lose.

To find big problems, which yield big sales with healthy margins, you need to be talking to CEO and Core level managers because these larger problems and longer view issues are their natural habitat.

How to be a Good Student: Change how you think. Forget your product. Imagine you work for the customer. Imagine you are selling for your customer. Walk two miles in his moccasins. This way you begin to focus on his goals and concerns.

If your product helps him expand his business and solves problems, price is no longer the top issue.

For example, a copier rep trying to sell a machine to an owner of an ice cream store. At first the reps pitches features and benefits. Customer could care less about copy quality and speed and so forth.

Then the rep imagined he was selling ice cream for the man. He started asking questions. In the process he learned that the man sold ice cream to local retail outlets, but he wanted to expand and provide specialty desserts to restaurants.

The rep then suggested that the man get the logos of all the restaurants he wanted to work with, and produce customized menus of ice cream products to be sold through each establishment. The man immediately loved the idea, bought the copier at retail and implemented the new marketing plan. The rep had created a solution to enhance the man's business and that solution required the rep's product.

By imagining that you sell for your customer, you will quickly understand your customer's business strategies, and then you will be in a position to identify innovative sales opportunities that achieve value for your customer.

Negotiate Price Late in the Sales Process, Never Early

There is no reason to discuss price until buying desire has been aroused. If you customer doesn't need it, any price is too high. Discuss price only when buyers recognize what they need and why the need it. Lowering price does not necessarily make a product or service more attractive to a buyer, in fact it rarely does.

Carefully Consider the Consequences of Any Concession You Make

Without profit there is no purpose. Therefore, carefully analyze each concession before making a commitment. Any concession will become an expectation later on. Don't give away the store or that's all you wind up doing, all the time.

Don't Propose a Solution with an Already Discounted Price

Purchasing agents are often evaluated by how much they save the company. If you cut price right away in your initial proposal you may actually be doing that purchasing agent a disservice. If you don't start with significant gross profit built into the deal you don't leave yourself any negotiating room. There are exceptions of course. If you get into a deal late, you may have to shoot your best price just to be considered.

Be Patient

Relax! Slow down! If the prospect wasn't interested, you wouldn't be negotiating. Take the time necessary to achieve a true win-win.

Never Give a Concession Without Getting One in Return

To a prospect asking for a lower price you might reply with a willingness to discount if the prospect will agree to purchase several more units during a specified time. The prospect wins by obtaining a lower unit price. You win by increasing the size of the sale. (Discuss other real life requests prospects make and how you might respond by asking for a concession.)

Customers have higher expectations, and more buying power than ever. They have more options as well. Therefore, companies striving to be the best have made customer satisfaction and retention the cornerstone of their business strategy. To achieve business success, the best companies add to this cornerstone product innovation and quality, and a productive and responsive group of employees who are encouraged to focus on customer service in a vibrant corporate culture.

With radical, comprehensive and pervasive changes in technologies and markets have come changes in the way sales people achieve customer satisfaction. The days of "hit-and-run selling" are over. Sales people must now act as account managers who are responsible for the ongoing quality of the company's relationships with customers.

The message is clear: to be successful today, sales people must get closer to customers, not just during the sales process, but after it, too. By applying the last role, that of a Farmer, you can solidify your customer relationships for years to come.

The number one killer of customer satisfaction is complacency on the part of the seller. The day you take your customer for granted is the day your competitor takes that customer away from you.

Just because you do not hear complaints does not mean your customer is satisfied. According to a recent consumer affairs study, 96 percent of unhappy customers never complain.

To avoid becoming complacent with your customers, stop thinking "account maintenance" and start thinking "account development." Don't just hold your ground, move forward. The best way to keep the business is to grow your business.

The requirements for a long-lasting and profitable relationship are mutual trust, understanding and value achieved. If you put extra effort into achieving customer satisfaction by becoming proactive with your customer after making a sale, you will be generously rewarded.

Your role as Farmer entails nourishing the relationship with the customer, sowing new applications for your product, cultivating the account, reaping the fruits of your labor, and planning your next season.

You accomplish these tasks by keeping in mind: your customer wants to realize the results expected, that the product is performing as promised. The customer also expects to be treated in a way that makes them feel as important after the sale as before. And the customer wants to be reassured that he paid a fair price.

Achieving this quality relationship with your customer allows you to grow the account, and it allows you to ask for referrals! To truly understand selling you must understand buying, and that's why you must get into your customer's head!

You can increase your sales and enjoy greater customer satisfaction by changing your approach to match your customers' changing perspective throughout the sale. At TopLine Leadership, we teach eight specific roles that match customers' needs at each of the eight buy-learning steps.

Make every single person an expert at something.

Arrange for training, coaching, and perhaps “certification” on equipment, software, processes, etc. Then make up a list of people and their special skills.

Start meetings and training sessions on time.

People who are prompt should not have to waste their time waiting for latecomers. That’s demotivating.

De-hire people not contributing to your team’s goals.

You know them – the people who have nothing good to say about anything or anybody… the ones who can suck the energy right out of the room. Keep them away from your important projects, your important employees, and your important customers. If possible, “encourage” them to take their sour attitudes elsewhere.

Acknowledge those who display initiative and take the time to train, help, mentor and develop others.

The opportunity for development is a prime employee motivator. And your “teachers” are at the very heart of that.

Hire for attitude, train for skill.

It can be tempting to fill a vacancy with someone who has the required technical skills but has questionable attitudes and behaviors. Do not give in to the temptation of adding this “warm body” to your team. Bad hires drag down the entire team.

Invite representatives from other organizations to see, firsthand, the good work that’s being done at your office.

It’s unbelievably motivating for employees to know that people from the outside are coming in to watch them perform their magic.

Create a “Wall of Fame.”

Look for people who have made positive contributions to the organization over time. Designate a place in a prominent hallway to display their pictures and a description of their contributions.

Periodically conduct “climate surveys” to stay informed of how people feel about their jobs, the type of work they do, and the quality of leadership they experience.

Share the results with everyone. And be sure to use the feedback you receive to develop improvement plans.

We hoped you enjoyed this 5 part series on Sales Management Training -- Motivating Your Team. To receive more hands-on training, please attend our next Sales Seminar.

This is the 5th and final blog post in our 5 part series focusing on motivating your team through sales management training.
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Click here to read the fifth post in the series.

Hold a contest, for example an afternoon off of work to go golfing as a team.

Set a team goal that must be met for anyone to qualify, then set individual goals

Create an individual development plan for each employee.

Work with team members to create development plans that are customized to each person. The plans should identify things like: current and desired skill strengths; job interests; areas for development and enhancement; and strategies (training, assignments, coaching, etc.) for achieving the next step.

Respect people’s time.

If you expect team members to believe that their work is important, you have to believe it too. More importantly, you have to behave like you believe it! Don’t expect people to drop whatever they’re doing every time you need something. Instead, ask if they have a few minutes to chat. Better yet, ask for a time when they’ll be available to meet with you.

Reward initiative as well as results.

When someone tries something new, or wants to make a positive contribution, recognize their effort. Success may not be immediate, but repeated effort and initiative should count for something.

Add motivational notes to your written internal communications.

Look for opportunities to reinforce individual and team contributions, as well as acknowledge positive things that are happening within the entire organization.

Reserve an hour once or twice each month for people to come together and exchange ideas on any topic they choose.

It might be ways to improve customer service, how to enhance quality, or even where to find the best places for child or elder care. Sharing ideas enhances teamwork and energizes people.

Create games and contests that encourage healthy competition between teams.

Offer prizes for things like met or exceeded sales quotas, reduced absenteeism, improved safety days, received positive customer acknowledgements, etc. Post the on-going results for all to see. Games and contests typically energize people around a challenge. Just be certain to keep the competition positive and constructive. And look for ways to make sure that every team wins something.

Promote your key contributors.

Few things build motivation and a winning attitude more than seeing that good work pays off.

This is the 4th blog post in our 5 part series focusing on motivating your team through sales management training.
Click here to read the first post in the series.
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Click here to read the third post in the series.
Click here to read the forth post in the series.
Click here to read the fifth post in the series.

Have an important decision to make? Let the team decide!

Or at least invite them to consult with you. They are, after all, the ones who will feel the impact the most. Besides, you’ll probably end up with a better decision – one that team members will support because they helped make it.

A Crash course on motivation:

Words that motivate others

• "That’s an honest mistake. Let's focus on what we’ve learned"
• "Let me pass along what I have learned"
• "I’m really glad you’re here"
• "You did a great job because…"
• "What do YOU think?"

Manage your negative emotions and anger.

Nothing can be more damaging to team morale than losing your temper in a group setting. The next time you feel angry do one of the following: take a deep breath and count to ten; take a walk outside; or simply go back to your work station and look at a prized photograph. No matter how angry you become, keep it inside.

Follow up on agreements.

When someone commits to do something by a certain date, make sure you follow up on it. If it’s done, recognize the achievement. If it’s not complete, find out why, and see what you can do to help it reach completion. You boost morale when your bias is to help rather than discipline!

Look for opportunities to show interest in all team members.

Ask about their life outside of work. Make an effort to learn about their families, their hobbies, their recent vacation, etc. Inquire but never pry. Keep track of names, dates, and events that are important to them, such as birthdays and anniversaries of employment with your company. Showing your team that you care about them as people is one more way to build team sprit. When the sprit is strong, the motivation follows right along.

Invite your boss into the recognition process.

Next time someone on your team does something really special, tell your manager. Ask him or her to write a note to that person. Not only does this make the employee feel good, but it also keeps the boss informed of the good work being done by people in his or her area.

Always tell people “why” something to be done is important.

There’s a much better chance that people will be motivated and give their enthusiastic support if they understand reason behind a goal, assignment or decision.

This is the 3rd blog post in our 5 part series focusing on motivating your team through sales management training.
Click here to read the first post in the series.
Click here to read the second post in the series.
Click here to read the third post in the series.
Click here to read the forth post in the series.
Click here to read the fifth post in the series.