Through the looking glass was voted by you as the number 8  Sales Trend for 2010.

Many sales people are tired of being told that they need to sell like someone else to be successful.  Many are unsure of what they should be modelling.  Too often they are told to ‘just be like’ someone else but with no reference to what that actually looks like they are left poking around in the dark mimicking the ‘star’ performer and left feeling unauthentic.   And ‘big sticks’, bribes or fear don’t help either.

Most people, and especially sales people, want to be the best they can be but without having to be someone else.   Clearly defining what good performance looks like is key.  Here is a model we use at Barrett where we focus on three key areas:

The Three Dimensions of Optimal Performance

1. KNOWLEDGE: General awareness or possession of information, facts, ideas, truths or principles.
2. SKILLS & PROCESSES: A series of actions directed towards a specific aim.  The ability to do something well, usually gained through training or experience.
3. INSIGHT: The ability to see clearly and intuitively into the nature of a complex person, situation or subject; a set of beliefs or a way of thinking that determines somebody’s behaviour and outlook.

Putting practical tools and processes into the hands of sales people and sales managers are an important step however, the first step is giving people insight into their own strengths and capabilities and allowing them to change from the inside out.   Seeing what is possible and being able to model their capabilities and attributes on top performers whilst retaining their own identity as a person is crucial.  Articulating exactly what that is by using the model above puts real content on the table.

With the product edge gone, the key differentiator will be your people.  In 2010 and beyond, enlightened leaders are focusing on understanding their people and helping their people understand themselves and what motivates and drives them.  They are taking note of how people think and make decisions.  Creating the best team for your business will be about how you play to your people’s strengths to achieve goals and fulfill ambitions.  Teaching people how to transform their capabilities, communicate more effectively, and how to manage their behaviours and mindsets are critical.

Gaining deeper insight into self and others is much more than just navel-gazing.  With proper resources and support, insight can be a life changing experience for people and can greatly enhance company success.  While for a number of years we have been focusing on skills and processes, we are now realising the importance of people and their role in business.  Enlightened leaders will be supporting their people in gaining deeper insight and more knowledge.

Insight means having Choices; working with clear Purpose; Self and Other Awareness; knowing your Capabilities; developing your Creativity; building Resilience; and Self Direction.

Knowledge means having a clear Strategy;  access to well defined Processes; good Information; Role Clarity; clearly defined Tasks; Standards of High Performance; Responsibilities; and the ability to make Decisions.

In addition to skills and processes, giving sales people access to insight and knowledge allows for the cultivation of sales wisdom because achieving sales mastery is about working from the inside out.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

I recently had the opportunity to MC and attend the Optimising the Sales Force Conference – OSF2010 which was the follow up to the inaugural OSF2009.  Building on last year’s success, this year’s conference was attended by over 120 high level sales leaders across Australia.  Once again I was privileged to be part of the panel of international and local experts presenting on this year’s topic, Sales Transformation.

This was the second time in Australia that we have had the opportunity to come together as a profession and share ideas and discuss important matters moving forward, and from the looks of it, we will be doing this again.  The feedback from our international sales experts was that this was one of the best forums in the world.  The quality of the speakers, content and discussions were of the highest standard.

Key topics included:

• Global best practice to achieve sustainable sales transformation.
• Great case studies on how to migrate your team to best practice performance and how to get a professional services firm to take on a proactive sales culture.
• What the new successful seller looks like.
• How to hire sales people who can sell.
• Using CRM to enable smart learning.
• Getting sales people effective before they achieve efficiency.
• Sales 2.0 – a Google look into the future of customers, demographics, tribes, buyer behaviours, collaboration and communication.

Key highlights and messages for me were:

1. In B2B sales, customer loyalty is heavily weighted to the experience a customer has with the sales person far exceeding brand, product and price value ratio.
2. Selling has moved beyond solving problems and satisfying needs, it’s about transforming the lives of your customers – helping them achieve results and offering accelerants which take them to their vision of success.
3. We are in ‘ideas’ businesses not ‘product’ businesses.
4. We ‘lead people to a better place’ not ‘lead with product’.
5. Sales transformation is a committed journey not an event.
6. It’s the little things that count – put real tools and processes into the hands of sales people and keep it simple, accessible and applicable.
7. Bring back the Sales Manager as trainer – we need sales managers who can train and coach; 3-5 hours per sales person per month is what is required to get sales people performing to better standards: Empower sales managers to get out from behind their desks and in the field working with their people.
8. Take a laser approach to sales training not a cannon ball approach – most sales training normally fails because it fails to address long term learning and specific learning needs.  We need blended learning.
9. Sales is about reaching better standards of performance not about ‘standardisation’ – too many large organisations try to control and standardise sales performance instead of giving sales people the responsibility to achieve higher levels of performance.  This requires thinking outside of the box, innovation and having a ‘challenger’ mindset – all of which are at odds with standardisation.
10. The war between ‘Urgency and Importance’ – do we want our sales people to be firefighters or builders?
11. Google’s perspective on the world of the user and the amazing views we can get from our buying and viewing habits – truly amazing presentation into the future of consumer sales.

One international speaker, an expat from Melbourne now residing in New York, said that Australia was ahead of the game when it came to connecting at a global level and understanding how to sell into different markets.  He stated that we tend to be less parochial and more worldly even if our footprint is smaller per head of population.  We seem to connect with more people more easily which of course bodes well for selling.  On the down side, it was noted by others that our ‘tall poppy’ syndrome did not help when we came to promoting role models and shining the light on the ‘best’ in the field.  We needed to honour our home grown talent and realise that what we offer here is note worthy.  We need to celebrate that Australia has some great role models and be recognised as leaders in the profession of selling.

I am looking forward to OSF 2011, hope to see you there.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

As the saying goes, “If you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen”.  Once again MasterChef has served up some great life lessons.  Last year I wrote about the great leadership, coaching and mentoring we can learn from MasterChef.  Again Garry, George, Matt and the other guest chefs showed us how to excel in this area of leadership.

On this occasion, I want to comment on ‘Resilience’ and dealing with setbacks and challenges, and how MasterChef gave us a window into how people handle stress and demanding situations.  The time pressures and increasingly difficult tasks set for the contestants showed us how well they were able to manage themselves under pressure and produce the goods.  You could often see the demands of a given situation getting to a number of the contestants.  It was unrelenting at times.  Those who were able to hold it together and ‘manage’ themselves on every level when under added strain performed better.  The constant practice enhanced their skills for sure, but it also taught them how to deal with pressure which is just as important.  Prior to the final episode, we saw Adam, Claire and Callum put under pressure and it was Adam and Callum who held it together better than Claire.  Claire is an extremely talented cook but got rattled more than the others thus affecting her performance.  Unlike Jonathon who survived eight out of nine elimination challenges, Claire had only been in one before and you could tell.  She wasn’t ready for it.

Luckily for the MasterChef contestants they were only subjected to this for about three and a half months.  Working chefs are required to take the ‘heat’ everyday albeit in environments they can control.  This got me thinking about those professions where every action and the outcomes of those actions are scrutinised every day, placing pressure on those to perform at their best.  Professional Chefs and Sports People, Air Traffic Controllers and Surgeons come to mind and I am sure there are several others.  With the exception of weather for both the Air Traffic Controllers and some Professional Sports People, for the best part, all of these professions allow their people to work in environments they can directly control and influence.

Sales people also have the scrutiny of performance in common with these professions however, they are often working in environments that are not of their own making or design.  They need to be able to deal with, and adapt to things outside of their control, i.e variable conditions and new environments, meeting new people, going to new places, uncovering new issues; variables of many kinds.  And unlike recipes, which if executed correctly should turn out like they were intended, sales people are often presented with the ‘Mystery Box’ (same ingredients different outcomes) on a daily basis several times a day.  They have to be able to think on their feet, and create outcomes their clients need and want.  They need to know how this goes with this to that.

How do they handle the stress?  How do they develop their resilience to perform at higher and higher standards every day without cracking?  How do they pay attention and make sure every client feels like they are special and important when you have listened to 5-25 people already that day?

As sales people, our actions are assessed by ourselves, our managers and our clients.  We deal with acceptance and rejection of our offering every day.  Our activities are tracked and mapped.  There are league tables, etc.

Any self respecting, self managed, self aware sales person would be able to tell you where they are at each day.  They will also tell you that they have learned not to take ‘No’ as personal rejection – that’s a fatal mistake made by many a new sales person.  Selling is the ultimate ‘thinking on your feet’ and ‘doing’ job.  Like athletes, we need to be continually exercising and getting fitter, developing our skills, knowledge and mindset all at the same time.

Why don’t we teach ‘How to Build Resilience and a Healthy Mindset’?

A healthy mindset is just as, if not more, important as product knowledge and selling skills.  However, most businesses usually only train their people in business skills, product knowledge and processes.  What we need to do is help people become more emotionally aware, intelligent and resilient in a number of ways.  We need to work with the whole person and provide people with access to a range of tools, processes and techniques which give them insight and teach them how to manage their emotions. We need to teach people how to develop healthy and resilient attitudes so they can take the heat and really excel.

We can’t all go on MasterChef to have our resilience and cooking skills tested, nor do all of us have the opportunity to be elite athletes and learn what it is like to work under obvious performance pressure however, we can learn how to develop resilience every day in small ways.

Higher performers, unlike many other people, have searched for and found tools, processes and techniques that help them develop strategies to enhance their self awareness and emotional resilience, and allow them to make the most of their capabilities and the situations they find themselves in on a daily basis.

Developing a Healthy and Resilient Attitude

The first step to becoming more emotionally aware, healthy and resilient is the acknowledgment that there is room for improvement and taking the time to learn more about yourself.  It’s about honest, constructive feedback and learning not to take things personally.  That is what MasterChef is all about – continuous self improvement and self awareness.  That’s what MasterSelling is about!

Next week we will look at some of the tools, behaviours and attitudes that help build self awareness, health and emotional resilience.  If you want further information about this, please contact us directly.

Thanks to MasterChef for another excellent season – truly inspiring stuff!

Finally, Mary Anne Radmacher’s words sum up for me and probably many sales people and entrepreneurs our lot: “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’.”

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

The New Competition was voted by you as the number 7  Sales Trend for 2010.  Over the coming years, we will see collaboration become the new competition.  Markets around the world are crying out for collaboration as innovation and differentiation become scarce in a sea of commoditised products and services.

Sales people who see themselves as collaborators, both internally (colleagues, departments) and externally (customers, competitors), will prosper more than ever during 2010 and beyond.

A large 5 year long research study conducted by B. Rosenbaum, Business Horizons, entitled Seven Emerging Sales Competencies and published in Jan/Feb 2001 revealed what makes highly successful sales people.  His research, among other key findings, showed that the most highly successful sales people are indeed collaborators.  In his research of over 1,000 B2B sales people across 5 years he found that top performers:

• collaborated with colleagues and did not allow competitiveness to get in the way of good business, and often assisted their colleagues in achieving their best by sharing ideas, information and resources;
• orchestrated internal resources so as to benefit the company, its people, and the customers and their people;
• invested time building collaborative, customer focused relationships inside their organisation;
• created an alignment between the customers’ and suppliers’ strategic objectives;
• looked to further the interests of their customers’ firms as well as their own;
• expanded the customer’s understanding of what a business relationship can be;
• built a flexible relationship that is responsive to marketplace changes;
• creatively drew on the full resources of the firm or business;
• introduced customers to other suppliers and potentially valuable support resources; and,
• invested time building collaborative, customer focused relationships inside their organisation.

These findings are not new as you can see.  However these qualities are still seen, if they are seen at all, as a novelty by most senior managers which is a major risk moving forward in such changing times.  Rosenbaum’s research revealed that, sadly, the vast majority of sales managers were completely unaware that these and other distinguishing qualities were what made their high performing sales people highly effective and successful.  What he observed is that these sales superstars where acting and performing this way despite management.  They knew what they needed to do to get the results.  It’s such a pity that their managers did not.

As I wrote recently, many sales teams are still held hostage by old school sales management practices and outdated mindsets that encourage internal competition, league tables and the like.   Too many sales leaders are still stuck in the 1980’s with ‘greed is good’ and ‘carrot and stick’ philosophies which do not work in the long term and only serve to hold us back in a 21st century world.  Most sales rewards are still self serving, endorsing selfishness which is completely at odds with the new world of collaboration and our natural state of being.

Daniel Pink’s new book Drive focuses a big spotlight on this very issue – what motivates us.  He reports that what business thinks works by way of motivation is not what the science shows or the vast majority of people want.

Besides the commoditisation of products and services, Rosenbaum’s research, Daniel Pink’s findings, and other corroborating research, the advent of social media and the multiple levels of engagement we can now have with our clients, suppliers and key stakeholders means that we need to work collaboratively with each other.  And this collaboration needs to take place across marketing, sales, service, supply, production and finance if we are going to create the ideas and solutions needed for our success in the 21st century.

Those 21st century enlightened salespeople will be the conductors or connectors of viable and valuable relationships across many levels.  They will be open-minded, humble and astute, and they will see patterns of connection and synergy in many places.  They will recognise that we are all interconnected and without kindness and cooperation we cannot exist.  They will identify competency and harness talent to achieve effective solutions. They will know that they are working towards something larger than themselves.  And they will know that their success is a shared success they will celebrate collectively.

So we need to get with the program and rethink our approach to sales motivation, sales mindset, sales skills, sales rewards and teamwork if we are to remain viable in this world.  Collaboration calls for a team effort.  Sales teams where everyone is pitted against each other to achieve ‘top dog’ status will be replaced by a ‘lead team’ approach.  Companies that want to bring in new business and grow and develop existing customers will rely on the united hands of many – rather than just one.  Successful sales people of 2010 and beyond will leverage the power of collaboration over competition because they understand that relationships never work if they are forced and manipulated, and that the sum is greater than its individual parts.  Synergy and collaboration will prevail.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au

Many sales cultures are traditionally based on respect for authority, status and success, and encouraging competitive, challenging and achievement-oriented atmospheres. Although this is not true for all businesses, especially in the 21st Century! There are a growing number of businesses adopting more collegiate, lead team approaches. However, despite different types of cultures, sales performance and results are usually derived from the efforts of individuals. Harnessing those individual efforts to achieve synergy (the sum is greater than its individual parts) is a key task of management, yet so many get it wrong. Let’s take a look at one case study and see why.

What is wrong with the following scenario?

• Sales team has great products and service proposition and is part of an international business
• Sales team is made up of individuals who are measured on achievement of individual sales targets
• Each sales person is given a base retainer but earns the vast majority of their income on commissions made from sales converted
• There are a couple of high achieving sales performers, some average performers and some new sales people yet to prove themselves
• Annual staff turnover of sales staff has been about 30-40%
• Average tenure is 18 months
• The sales team is a state team all working in the same city
• Sales performance is purely measured on sales revenue results
• Sales League Tables are on public display showing who is ‘top sales dog’ each week
• The sales culture is based on respect for authority, status, success and competition
• The workplace atmosphere is competitive, challenging and achievement-oriented
• The sales people do NOT work to specific territories/markets or customer segments to manage and grow, instead it is ‘first in best dressed’
• The competitive environment encourages sales people to fight over leads that come into the business leading to ‘bullying’ tactics, attempts to ‘outdo’ each other, squabbling and fighting over who got to that client first
• Sales people ‘sand bag’ lists of clients just to make sure that the other sales people do not get them even if they themselves are not working on those leads at present
• Management provide no selling skills training, no sales coaching, no sales support, no CRM, no documented sales strategy nor a ‘go-to-market’ plan
• There are no formal sales management practices in place except for the weekly sales meeting which deteriorates into an ‘I’m better than you are’ bun fight

This is an example of lazy and ineffectual management. Only focused on outcomes with no regard for strategy, team structure, performance quality, clear leadership, staff retention, values or culture, this sales team is not geared for high performance and continues to lag behind its true potential.

Why create competition where it doesn’t need to be?

Why make selling harder than it needs to be?

‘Old school’ sales management said that you had to have sales people competing with each other or they wouldn’t sell. You weren’t a legitimate sales team if you didn’t have league tables. They said that internal competition would motivate people to sell more. Well they are wrong. The scenario above is not uncommon. It reflects an actual real life situation – happening right now.

This archaic approach doesn’t work. It’s outdated and old fashioned. If you want to generate real sales growth, try harnessing the energy, talent and ambitions of your sales people in a constructive way where they can all achieve their individual goals along with those of the company without trying to ‘kill’ each other in the process. Remember the old saying ‘a team of champions will not beat a champion team’?

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au