A Learning Culture for Sales

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I want you to ask yourself this question at the end of each day this week.

Did I do my best today to promote a learning culture in my company?

If you’re a sales leader this is your responsibility, but not one from a place of guilt or some piously purposeful motive.  Do it because it’s what drives results.

How many times have sales training programs been met with skepticism or even mutiny?  How common is it for the first reaction to some kind of training is a negative or skeptical one?  Often it comes back to the leader and how he or she set it up.  Leaders that sold the idea of needing the training get more buy in than leaders that didn’t explain the “why”.  This latter, compliance leadership is usually short lived and falling short of potential.

Learning gets compromised when we don’t make time for it.  John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, was said to have enjoyed practices as much as games.  At his core he was a teacher.  He loved to see his players learn.  He decided the place to learn wasn’t during games as much as it was during practices. Game time versus practice time.  It’s hard for salespeople to make time for practice. Leaders have to find a way.

I read an interview this past week in the Wall St. Journal of the CEO of Snap, Inc. Evan Spiegel.   He came under fire last year for making some courageous leadership decisions about the app Snapchat.  He was driven by the long view.  Spiegel shared that his parents forbid him from watching television until he was a teenager.  His parents encouraged him to find things he was passionate about.  They never held it against him when he failed.

So there are two lessons here. One, encourage learning and growing. Two, don’t make failure a negative thing.  How does that hold up in your culture?  What are you doing about it?

Recently I made it safe to fail when coaching a salesperson. He was wondering which tactic he should take next in trying to make progress on a sales opportunity.  I offered up one tactic and he had a different one. Because he was having a stellar year, and because his sales funnel was very healthy, I suggested that he try his tactic for no other reason than to use it as a learning opportunity, a sort of sandbox for selling.

What can you do to “do your best today to promote a learning culture in your company?”  Be a learner yourself.  Be curious and ask more questions.

Show others that it’s ok to fail. This can’t be lip service.  If they see you fail and live to tell they’ll be more likely to give it a go.  If you tell them failing is ok but then whack the snot out of them for failing, that’s not strong leadership.  So put yourself out there and dance like no one’s watching.

Provide resources for learning. Blogs, books, videos, etc.  The world is overflowing with ideas for selling. Salespeople need the next greatest idea for selling a whole lot less than they need to be reminded of a practical sales idea that they can put to use right now.

Mark Sellers

Author, The Funnel Principle, Named by Selling Power magazine a Top Ten Best Book to Read

Creator of The BuyCycle Funnel customer buying journey model

Author, Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

Founder Breakthrough Sales Performance

 

Would you like these results for your sales team?  A client of ours for 5 years this company has delivered double digit top line and net income growth annually the past five years.  Another client increased sales 35% year over year thanks to our coaching and sales training program.  A third client increased the value of its sales funnel by 55% in 9 months.

 

Check out this short video on The BuyCycle Funnel customer buying journey model

Download a FREE chapter from Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

Buy the book The Funnel Principle on Amazon

Buy the book Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

Buy the Kindle version of Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

Blindspots of Public Figures

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Blindspots, ironically, don’t discriminate.  Smart people have them.  Affluent people have them.  Highly educated people have them. People in power have them.  Good people have them.  You have them.

Several weeks ago Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau confessed to a “massive blindspot” – he was found to have worn a blackface outfit to a costume party when he was in his late twenties.

Obviously, this wasn’t clarity of judgment.  Blackface is offensive to African American people.  It is a form of theatrical makeup used mostly by white performers to represent a caricature of African American people.

I’ve never met the PM.  But I’m going to do something that I would do with just about anyone else in this pickle of a situation.  I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that he meant no harm by his extremely poor judgment.  I have read comments by people who know Mr. Trudeau and they’re favorable.  They say he’s a decent guy with good values who wants what he thinks is best for all of the people of Canada.

To his credit the PM said this at his press conference responding to the calls for an explanation:

“I always acknowledged that I came from a place of privilege, but I now need to acknowledge that that privilege comes with a massive blindspot.”

The Prime Minister’s blindspot hijacked his clarity of thought and integrity of action.  Whether you choose to forgive him for his action is a personal choice.  I wouldn’t judge you either way.  Forgiveness is perhaps the most powerful act one can choose, even forgiving someone for something he cannot see.  He’s still responsible and must own up to it.

Blindspot episodes are opportunities to grow, and it takes a humble soul to trust that an embrace of the pain of the situation you caused will somehow lead to a better outcome.  Weak leaders will double down on their behaviors and defend it.  This makes their pain sort of go away, but only for a while, like when a bad hangover finally subsides.  A pattern of defending blindspot behaviors causes weak leaders to build up a pressure cooker of unhealthy, undesirable emotions like bitterness, anger, judgment, or self-righteousness, to name a few.

Look around your office.  Does someone you work with consistently exhibit blindspot behaviors that bother you?  Make you mad?  Frustrate you?  Hurt you?  You could try forgiving them for what they know not.  Then, if you have the courage, and I don’t say that lightly, consider how you might make this person aware of his or her blindspot.

Consider telling the person how you are choosing to respond to his or her behavior, and how that affects you.  This makes it partly about you, because you still control your choice.  The minute you give that up you’ve relinquished control.  Resist the urge to create an instant “aha” that will turn this person’s behavior around.  It normally doesn’t work that way.  Recently I found myself in a car ride to a downtown dinner event and asked the guy driving us, the senior most executive of the business I was consulting with, if he thought he sent signals to his staff about his wanting them to push back on him, to not be “yes men”, that were counter to his telling the staff to push back on him.  He paused and considered the possibility.  That’s progress.

Finally, turn the gaze inward and ask yourself what blindspots am I missing about me?  Trust me they’re there.

 

Mark Sellers

Author, The Funnel Principle, Named a Top Ten Best Book to Read by Selling power magazine

Author, Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

Founder, Breakthrough Sales Performance LLC

Creator of The BuyCycle Funnel customer buying journey model

www.breakthrough-sales.com

614.571.8267

info@breakthrough-sales.com

 

Using Customer Buying Journey to Make Better Sales Calls

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Understanding your customer’s buying journey is not an exercise in pedagogy. It is practical and real.  It will help you be more effective in what you do today re: sales opportunities, meetings, strategies and more.  Let’s see how understanding your customer’s buying journey helps you make better sales calls.

Recall, a customer buying journey is the collective set of steps or stages customers go through when they buy.

Let’s say you live in a 22 year old house and the roof has never been replaced.  You’re wondering how many more years it can last.  But nothing’s leaking so far. You put it off.

In a different situation, let’s say you’ve had hail damage and you’re concerned about the roof’s condition. You’re compelled to call your insurance agent to get it looked at.

As a customer you’re in two different stages of your buying journey in these examples.  What gets your attention is different in each one.  In the first one you’re likely more interested in getting educated – how long should your roof last?  What happens if you wait too long?  What are some signs of the roof needing to be replaced?

In the second situation you’re probably more interested in knowing the process for filing a claim, how you pick a roofing company, how long the job takes, and the timeframe for all of this to happen.

If you’re in sales for a roofing company, and you had these two leads on your desk, you should approach them differently, and base your approach on where the customer is in the buying journey.  For the hail damage, you might get some direct mail out asap.  Other roofing companies will be doing the same thing.  With data on which neighborhoods were affected, you might make some cold calls or even canvass the neighborhoods. The message might focus on educating the customer on what happens to a roof during a hail storm, empathizing with the customer (it sucks to have to get a new roof), and giving the customer reason to trust you in this time of stress.

For the non urgent roof situation the message might be about the importance of investing in your home before a roof fails and educating the customer on the dangers of doing nothing.

I sell sales training and coaching services.  An early stage lead for me might be a referral from a client.  For these leads I focus on demonstrating competency, building trust, and learning what I can about the organization.  The leads I get from some of our channel partners often have progressed through several stages of the buying journey.  They bring me in to help close the sale.

In general, for early stage deals you’re safe to focus on this:  build credibility, earn trust, and don’t be overly eager or overly aggressive. Get the stakeholder to talk but don’t ask too many questions.

For later stage deals your selling activity should focus on qualifying a ‘commitment to fund’, meaning, qualifying that the customer is committed to buying something from somebody.  How much has been committed?  The answer to this critical question pivots your selling activities in one direction or a different one.  If you qualify the customer is committed to buy then you shift into “why buy from me” mode.  This is where the customer’s head is at.  Meet him where he is.  Finally, be prepared to tell the customer what a solution should look like.  This presents you as an expert.  Be careful to not come across too cocky.  Most customers like to have options too.

 

Mark Sellers

Author, The Funnel Principle, Named by Selling Power magazine a Top Ten Best Book to Read

Creator of The BuyCycle Funnel customer buying journey model

Author, Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

Founder Breakthrough Sales Performance

Would you like these results for your sales team?  A client of ours for 5 years this company has delivered double digit top line and net income growth annually the past five years.  Another client increased sales 35% year over year thanks to our coaching and sales training program.  A third client increased the value of its sales funnel by 55% in 9 months.

Check out this short video on The BuyCycle Funnel customer buying journey model

Download a FREE chapter from Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

Buy the book The Funnel Principle on Amazon

Buy the book Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

Buy the Kindle version of Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three– the power of marketing clout. In 2011 CEB published The Challenger Sale.  While it’s initial shock factor was stating that ‘relationship selling is dead’, the underlying driver of that claim became the lead story.  That is, why relationship selling was dying.  As customers became more ‘knowledge independent’ from salespeople they didn’t need salespeople to help them buy like they used to. Customers had less incentive tobuild relationshipswith sellers, especially since many weren’t paying off. Finally, with everyone’s schedules becoming super compressed, it’s become harder for salespeople to establish contact early in the process and develop the relationship throughout the cycle.

 

CEB coined and marketed a fabulous term for what was happening in the customer buying process called 57%.  Their Challenger research revealed that customers routinely go through as much as 57% of their buying process before engaging salespeople.  The implications are dramatic.  Customers are not engaging with salespeople early in the process.  Salespeople are therefore not part of discovery and shaping of solution images early.  By the time customers engage salespeople they don’t add much value beyond price and availability.  It’s harder to differentiate.

 

Your Customer Buying Journey: Why it Matters

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Do you sell the way your customers want to buy?

Nine years ago Selling Power magazine held its Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.  Speaker after speaker presented ideas on how to influence the “customer buying journey.”  This was a dramatic shift in sales thinking because for years salespeople were taught mostly techniques for how to open sales calls, how to ask questions, how to present, and how to close.  Of course these skills are important.  But they’re not enough.

Salespeople weren’t taught to understand how their customers buy. 

Today the concept of selling to the customer’s buying journey is table stakes, it’s the new standard.  Forward thinking sales organizations have built their entire commercial approaches on this concept.

Well known sales training and research firms confirm through studies and research the logic and benefit of selling to the customer buying journey.

CEB Gartner (The Challenger Sale) published a white paper earlier this year titled The New B2B Buying Journey and Its Implication for Sales.  “As B2B buying behavior rapidly changes, traditional sales approaches will dramatically underachieve”. 

 Aberdeen Consulting Group reported that companies with sales funnel stages defined by the customer buying journey had 33% more accurate sales forecasting and 40% more salespeople making quota. 

 CSO Insights reported that defining how customers buy must be the first place executives begin when conducting sales transformation efforts.

Miller Heiman’s annual Best Practices Study 2017 reported that organizations they rated to be ‘world class’ knew why their customers buy from them 30% more often than non-world class organizations. 

What’s Driving This Shift?

In a word, your customers.

It occurred to me fifteen years ago that customers had more information, more access to it, and more timeliness to it.  And that customers were being influenced more by their peers than by the salespeople calling on them.  Today, for salespeople these trends are only getting worse. Salespeople have to fight to be relevant.

When Customers Shift, Sellers Need to Shift

Your organization’s performance and results are at stake.  There will be casualties to underperformance.  If your team’s underperformance is due to a failure to act, to change how you sell, then you will have committed an unforced error.  In their book Shiftability, authors Mitch Little and Hendre Coetzee say that salespeople need to adopt a growth mindset, one that looks at the world through a learner’s perspective.  This is the mindset that selling to the customer buying journey requires.

Your customers are expecting this from you.

A Customer Buying Journey Defined

A customer buying journey is the collective steps a customer takes or the milestones or stages the customer completes that starts with a problem or opportunity and ends with a solution.  Often these are called “sales funnel or pipeline models” because the stages are used in CRM to guide salespeople in managing their funnels.  With funnel stages, companies can run valuable reports, analyze data and forecast more accurately.

But don’t let the sexiness of using this model to analyze and forecast better cause you to overlook the vital, dirty work of using this approach to sell better, one deal at a time.  This is the real value of a customer buying journey model.

Why Sell to Your Customers’ Buying Journey

You want to know the stage your customer is in when the customer is considering buying because that helps you best influence the customer.  It’s key to making a difference for the customer and your salespeople being relevant.

For example, if a customer you’re calling on is early in the buying journey they’ll want to be educated, not sold to.  They’ll respond a lot more favorably to insightful information you provide.  They want to know what you know, and they don’t mean product or service.  What do you know about their kind of situation that could help them decide to act on it or lower its priority?

On the other hand if the customer is well into committing to a solution, if they’ve already been through determining the impact or upside of the situation, if the checkbook is out, then they’ll likely want to know why should they buy from you versus another alternative.

Not knowing this stage information puts you at a serious disadvantage. You’re more likely to commit common, costly selling mistakes like making assumptions about everything.

Don’t Overthink The Customer Buying Journey

You could be tempted to get ensnared by the lure of research and data by big sales training companies that suggest this data tells you all you need to know about your customer’s buying journey.

While I have been intrigued by the research, I have learned overwhelmingly about customer buying journeys from my clients the past 20 years.  What I have learned most is that my clients know how their customers buy better than any consultant can tell them.  Including me.  My company’s job therefore is to pull it out of them and keep the design simple.   Brilliantly complex customer buying journey models for selling don’t get used.

There’s still time for you and your team to adopt this approach.  But don’t wait too long.

About Breakthrough Sales Performance®

We are the one sales training company to have devoted the past 20 years to helping clients define their customers’ buying journey.  120 global sales teams have implemented The BuyCycle Funnel™ customer buying journey model of selling created by Mark Sellers.  Clients have seen remarkable results, including:

  • Year over year sales increase of 68% for a large engineering consulting firm
  • 57% increase in year over year sales for a technology client
  • Double digit increase of sales of higher margin products for a client in the chemical industry
  • 240% increase in forecasting accuracy for a client in the construction/energy industry
  • Double digit growth of top line and net income annually for five years in a row for a client in the HVAC industry

 

Contact us today to learn more

614.571.8267

info@breakthrough-sales.com

www.breakthrough-sales.com

Buy The Funnel Principle book here

Buy the book Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching

Check out a video on The BuyCycle Funnel customer buying journey model

 

 

Blindspots Blog #5: Getting in Your Own Way

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When you stop to think about the blindspots you might have, you’re obviously going to struggle to see something that you can’t see.

Think of your blindspots as you ‘getting in your own way’.

Frasier Crane, played superbly by Kelsey Grammer for so many seasons, routinely got in his own way. In one episode he planned the perfect evening with a lady friend, in control of every well-thought out detail, only to see it collapse due to something the audience could see coming, yet he was blind to.  In another episode, he orchestrated a public ceremony in honor of himself, gratuitously attended by hundreds in a downtown park, only to miss it due to a string of transportation snafus brought on by his insistence on wearing a particular pair of Italian shoes that were painfully too small.

Frasier got in his own way because he committed a lot of unforced errors.  But since these are blindspots how do you become aware of them?

You get in your own way because of the ‘vice in the virtue’, that is, when your  success traits, your virtues, eventually betray you, and become your vices.  Here’s an example.

One of my success traits is discipline.  I’m naturally effective at getting something done that I put my mind to.  Could be a house project, like the 22 x 20 deck I built mostly by myself two years ago.  Or, publishing my latest book Blindspots.  But because I am good at starting and finishing things I’m not quick to seek help.  Therefore, I sometimes lack the patience to slow down the start or finish of a project to take in someone’s advice.  Therefore, I often miss out on getting some really good advice.  I could point out lots of opportunities in my career where I would have been better off reaching out to someone for feedback or coaching. Thankfully, I am getting better at this.

When a new sales manager doesn’t take the time to get to know his team, the business, and if appropriate the marketplace if that too is new to her, she’s likely to double down on success traits that worked for her in the past.  And it’s only a matter of time before this leads to her getting in her own way.

I’ll brag on my wife for a second.  She’s held leadership positions in three companies in her career.  Each of those was in an industry that she had never worked in. What did she do?  She asked tons of questions of the people who reported to her. She asked questions of people in other departments.  She visited customers.  She avoided jumping to conclusions early.  She was patient.  Instead of trying to form what she heard and learned into a pre-formed framework or model of what worked in the past, she used her rich experiences to create new models and frameworks for how to lead.

She operates this way because she has a strong desire to learn, she has empathy, she’s humble, and she has no personal agenda to drive.  She commits few unforced errors.  She avoids getting in her own way.

If you know of anyone who seems reluctant to try new things, or consider alternative points of view, or who doesn’t seek much input or feedback, don’t be surprised to see this person often getting in his own way.  These people double down on success traits to a fault – until they become vices that get them into trouble.

Maybe that person is looking back at you in the mirror.  Think about your top 3 or 4 success traits.  Traits or characteristics that for sure helped you succeed.  Think about how you could ride these traits too far to where they get you in trouble.  This week be more aware of how you are using these traits, in meetings with customers, with people on your team, or with your peers.  It’s important not to judge yourself if you catch yourself pushing it too far.  If you judge you’ll be tempted to shut down the observation and the lesson could go to waste.  You’ll have to learn to accept that your next significant growth will come by failing or ‘falling’ and learning.

 

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Everyone Has Blindspots

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For the past several weeks since my new book Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching was published, I’ve been on a tear spreading the word about this phenomena I call blindspots.  I’ve suggested that they are killing your coaching and leadership.

It’s possible that some of you are still struggling to understand how this really affects you, because you believe you’re doing just fine, you know there’s always room to improve, and you don’t believe you have any problems that could be having a significant effect on your leadership.

I understand how this is possible.  I denied my blindspots for many, many years.  In the book I share my story of what it finally took for me to see clearly.

In this blog I want to tell you about two very well-known leaders who fell hard because of their blindspots.  I would bet my next commission that both men would’ve said that, before the respective pivotal events that rocked their worlds, they too were completely blindsided by what occurred.

Before the start of the 2018 college football season Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer unwittingly professed to his own blindspot regarding his program. Meyer was heavily criticized for not being 100% transparent with information he knew regarding an assistant coach.  This was serious stuff – an investigation into a domestic abuse allegation made by the wife of an assistant coach on Meyer’s staff. Meyer was also heavily criticized for not knowing more about this situation.

The PR damage crushed Meyer, the football team and the university. Though Meyer was never seriously considered culpable regarding the allegations, and the assistant coach was never charged, Ohio State president Michael Drake suspended Meyer for the first three games of the season.

Why did coach Meyer think it could be OK to not be fully transparent with what he did know? I’d say it was because of a blindspot.

In the press conference the day before his first game back following the suspension, Meyer was asked if he thought that members of his staff were reluctant to bring him negative information. “I hope not”, he said. People need to feel comfortable coming to me. I always thought I created that atmosphere.” Well, maybe coach was wrong.

If you’re a college football fan you know that Urban Meyer strikes a serious and intimidating demeanor. Would you like to bring him bad news? His blindspot was in not seeing that his serious, intimidating demeanor might actually create the opposite of what he wanted – instead of people feeling comfortable coming to him with negative information his demeanor discouraged them from doing so.

I know people who personally know coach Meyer.  I have every reason to believe that he is a good man who cares deeply about his players and coaches and his community. The expectations of a public figure like coach are reasonably high, easily matched by the public’s appetite for castigating perceived missteps.

The  second public figure is Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. Recently, someone uncovered photos of the PM at a party when he was 29 years old dressed in a ‘black face’ costume. Other, very public political figures have dressed up like this in their pasts.  Most educated people should know by now that this behavior is considered very offensive to black people.

Mr. Trudeau  was quick to confess to the “massive blindspot” in his thinking.  He said, “I have always acknowledged that I came from a place of privilege, but I now need to acknowledge that comes with a massive blindspot.”

This is not the venue to debate anything about these two events and the sensitive subject matter of both. I  would bet my next commission check  that both Meyer and Trudeau are deep down good men with honorable hearts, and like all people they made some big mistakes due to their blindspots.

The paradox of the blindspot is that these hard lessons are  gifts meant to  teach us something about ourselves.  I wouldn’t begin to attempt what those lessons are for Meyer and Trudeau, but if they don’t learn big from the lessons then the gift is wasted.

In my next blog I’ll reveal some of the reasons that you get in your own way.

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Why You Have Blindspots

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In my new book Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching I suggest that something I call your blindspots is killing your coaching and leadership.

In this blog I want to reveal why that’s happening so you can do something about it.

The main reason for your blindspots is explained with a paradox.  One of my favorite paradoxes is ‘to speed up sometimes you have to slow down’. Another one I like is ‘nothing succeeds like failure’.  These are paradoxes because the two things seem to be at odds with one another. Yet, within the paradox is the deeper meaning that reveals the connection.

You’ve probably heard of Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team.  I heard that Cuban was a mentor of sorts to former Uber CEO and founder Travis Kalanick during Kalanick’s early days with the company.  Kalanick left in 2017.

Cuban said of Kalanick, “The thing that’s impressive about Travis is he’d run through a wall for you.  And the thing that’s troublesome about Travis is he’d run through a wall for you.”

How can both be true?

It’s a type of paradox I call the vice in the virtue.  Kalanick has some impressive virtues, eg some traits that have been instrumental in his success.  I don’t know and don’t need to know what those are to know that those same traits that helped him succeed have at times also betrayed him.

Here’s an example maybe you can relate to.  Do you know someone who is very disciplined?  I bet this discipline has helped this person in both his or her professional and personal life.  Discipline helps someone get things done, stay focused, and accomplish things.

But take a moment to consider how being disciplined can get this person into trouble.  Being disciplined usually takes having forethought and good planning skills.  If taken too far however, too much planning and forethought could mean missing out on important, maybe fun things happening right in front of her.  Taken too far and the disciplined person lacks valuable spontaneity that makes for a richer life.

In his thought-provoking book Range, author David Epstein tells the story of Frances Hesselbein, the former CEO of The Girl Scouts.  Hesselbein had basically four professional positions her in her life,  a career that spanned six decades.  Each position sort of fell into her lap.  She apparently never sought out any of them.  This wouldn’t likely be at the top of someone’s career building advice but it certainly worked for her.

As  a planner I surely can relate.  My wife has taught me to ‘be open to the possibilities’, and it’s made a big difference in many aspects of my life.  The saying ‘life is what happens when you’re busy planning’ has a lot of truth to it.

Discipline usually comes with sacrifice because it means saying no to something to be able to say yes to something else.  The value of making sacrifices is not debatable, but again if taken too far then saying no to some things could be a bad decision.

The New York Times conservative columnist, and author David Brooks knows too well the vice in this discipline virtue.  He’s had a celebrated career.  He’s written several books.  He’s a sought after speaker on popular news programs.  He also has gone public the past few years with his personal struggles that culminated in a divorce after 27 years of marriage.  He confessed to being a workaholic who said for most of his life he “prized time over people and productivity over relationships.”  Sacrifice gone wild.

It takes courage to share that witness with the millions of people who know and follow him.

The question you should be asking is “what are my virtues, my impressive traits that are helping me succeed in my life?”  That will be an easy, quick exercise.  Your big challenge is in seeing the paradox of how those traits have and will continue to betray you.  Be honest and don’t judge yourself.

 

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Your Blindspots Are Killing Your Coaching and Leadership

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Your blindpots are killing you and everyone else. They’re killing your coaching and leadership.

Blindspots are behaviors you exhibit, routinely, regularly, that prevent you from creating an emotional connection with the people you lead.  They’re blindspots because you don’t know you exhibit these behaviors.  They’re hidden to you but are usually in plain view of everyone else.

The problem with not creating an emotional connection with the people you lead is those people won’t give you all that they have to give, and eventually their performance suffers.  Just think of a sports team – did former US Women’s national soccer team coach Jill Ellis know how to get everything her players had to give?  Did Tiger’s father know how to motivate Tiger in his prime? Did Michael Jordan inspire his teammates?  Yes, yes and yes.  They all made emotional connections.

No manager or leader is immune to having blindspots.  Everyone is cursed with them.  Titles don’t matter.  Nor does years of experience.

Let me give you a personal example of what a blindspot looks like.

I was playing golf with my father Monty and good friend Ned several years ago. On the 3rd and 4th holes I made birdies. My friend Ned was giving me high fives and big smiles. When I made birdie on the 5th hole, my third birdie in a row he was really excited. I admit I was a little amped up too.

I then birdied the next two holes to make it five in a row and by now Ned was roaring with praise. He couldn’t have been happier if I were his own flesh and blood.  Dad on the other hand, didn’t say a word.  Not even a ‘great job’ or ‘keep it up’.

Several weeks later Ned told friends my birdie binge story at a party and finished it by saying, “And you should have seen Monty. Boy was he pissed!” I was really surprised to hear Ned say this because I was there of course and I didn’t think Dad was mad. Plus I know Dad and he would have no reason to be mad at me for making a bunch of birdies. Still, Ned clearly got that impression?  How?

Dad can come across as very serious, reserved and quiet.  A guy with a good poker face.   When I played competitive golf in high school he taught me to not get emotional because that usually lead to making a mistake.  I didn’t think twice about it at the time.

Years later when I started writing Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching this story came into my head because I thought it was a textbook blindspot example.  Let me tell you why.

I called Dad and asked him if he was mad at me making those birdies, though I knew what the answer would be.  Then I asked, “Can you think of any reason why Ned would have thought you were mad at me?” Again, Dad was flabbergasted, speechless.

This is why Dad’s behavior was a blindspot.  Dad had no idea he came across to Ned like he did.  You could even say I had a blindspot too in not seeing what Ned saw.

Let’s change the players and the narrative.

Let’s say you’re a salesperson and you have a manager who doesn’t know that he doesn’t endear himself to you. There’s no emotional connection. Maybe he always tries to impose on you how he used to make sales calls.  He doesn’t let you have your style, which is just as effective.  Maybe he does a poor job of recognizing your efforts, and you need that emotional fuel to keep going.  Maybe he steps in too often on sales calls with you, dominating the meeting without that being the pre-call plan.

This would annoy the hell out of most people.  It would cause some to leave to go work for a different manager.  If your manager does this once, he’ll do it eight hundred times because it’s how he’s wired.  It’s a blindspot.

Let’s change it again.   One of my clients has a challenging salesperson, a prima donna who puts lots of points on the board but who creates more chaos in the home office than a two year old at Target who was just picked up from a sleep deprivation clinic.  This salesperson consistently has unreasonable high demands, has short lead times for what he requests from people that support him, never wants to play nice with partners, and has been known to undermine those who challenge his domain.  Other than that he’s a charm.  Here’s a shocking statement – people like this don’t think for a second that their behavior is in any way inappropriate.  Their blindspots are hidden to them but are in plain view of everyone else.

If you’re wondering if blindspots are some kind of a death sentence, a flawed character trait that can’t be controlled or contained, it doesn’t have to be fatal.  But doing something about your blindspots is no easy adventure.  Self-awareness is big first step.  Being honest with yourself is key.  Being vulnerable is important.

Don’t think that blindspots are limited to behaviors that are biting, or toxic.  I know a manager who cares so deeply for her team that she’s always putting them first, and believe it or not that’s sometimes a blindspot. If she doesn’t take care of herself too, and sometimes before others, she might lack the energy and insight to look after her people properly.  I know another manager who’s blindspot prevented him from doing what was pretty obvious to me and the person who hired me to coach the manager – he couldn’t fire one of his salespeople that should have been let go long ago.

Blindspots affect your leadership and coaching and ultimately the results you seek.  The good news is there’s a way to deal with them.  It will take commitment and effort.

 

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Sales Managers Stop Asking These 3 Questions

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In the pursuit of the truth, sales managers routinely set themselves up for not getting it, by asking these three questions:

1) What’s your confidence level on this deal? 2) Who’s the decision maker?  3) What’s your next step?

What’s your confidence level on this deal?

Sales managers ask this question when their funnel/pipeline stages have ‘confidence measures’ assigned to them.  Stage 2 might have a 30% measure of confidence in winning the deal.  Stage 5 might have 80% confidence.  The intent is to drive a logical, objective conclusion of the deal status which drives the manager’s coaching regarding next steps.

The problem is the confidence measures too often steer the manager away from the intended objective – what’s really going on?  They get squishy replies like ‘I have a good relationship’, or ‘they like our solution’. A manager confided in me not long ago that he lost count of the number of deals he ‘felt confident’ were going to close that didn’t.

Instead, managers should ask pointed, specific questions to inside the confidence measure. Questions about stakeholders and influence, about what matters and what doesn’t, about why they want to change and why change now.  Managers should seek ‘tangible evidence’ in the reps’ replies.  They should ask questions that challenge assumptions, especially about relationships.

Who’s the decision maker?

There are at least two problems with this question.  The first is that it’s not always clear what it means as therefore you’re handicapped in coaching to it.  Does it mean final approval?  Veto authority?  Does it mean the ability to disqualify your solution from further consideration?  When your rep Kyle says yes Mary’s the decision maker how do you coach Kyle to the next activity?  The second problem is this is the same question your reps will be asking the stakeholders they call on.  They will often get misleading or insufficient information.  They’ll ask someone in purchasing “Are you the decision maker?” and she says “Yes I am!”  And yet, as my clients have shown me the past 20 years that question too often misleads.

A better question to ask is around role in the buying process.  What role does the head of engineering play in this buying process? What role does the IT manager play? What role does the construction supervisor play?  You’re more likely to identify the stakeholder whose role is to deliver on a top line or bottom line objective, and that includes being able to make investments to achieve those objectives.

What’s your next step?

Every manager in a deal review discussion has jumped to the question “What’s your next step?” ‘What’s next’ is internally focused on the rep’s activity.

Problem here is this too often leads to busyness and busyness doesn’t always lead to effectiveness.

A better question is one that is based on the customer buying process.  Customers have to make commitments to buy something.  All of those commitments collectively make up the customer buying process.  So let’s trade ‘what’s next’ for ‘what does the customer need to do next?’

For example if a problem isn’t a priority then some stakeholder needs to take time (commitment) to make it a priority.  Or, if your salesperson knows the cost of the problem, then a stakeholder has to commit to acting on information.   Otherwise the deal is stalled or even dead.

 

Mark Sellers

Managing Partner, Breakthrough Sales Performance LLC

Sales training, coaching and consulting with businesses from 25M to 250M in revenue

Author The Funnel Principle – named a Top Sales Book to Read by Selling Power

Author of Blindspots: The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching (to be released in 2019)

 

 

A Sales Manager’s Most Difficult Task

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If you’re privileged to sit in the sales manager chair long enough you’ll experience the most difficult task a manager has – you’ll fire one of your salespeople.

I’ve had many conversations with my clients about people they are considering firing.  Some clients use me to pressure test their conclusions and some want a sanity check.  None of them have taken lightly the responsibility.

Firing a salesperson is difficult for at least the following reasons:

It’s personal. Someone’s livelihood and life is affected.  Their income stream is now cut off.  Their ego is likely injured.  They have to go home and tell the wife or husband.

You think you’ve failed.  All managers are affected by firing someone but some believe they have failed.  They think about what they have done, and what they have failed to do.  In the song These Days, Jackson Brown says “these days I seem to think a lot about the things that I forgot to do – for you.”  That’s a heavy burden to carry, so it’s reasonable that a manager would put it off.

You avoid conflict.  Some people are wired to avoid conflict and certainly firing somebody falls into that category.

You hang on with hope.   Let’s face it.  Deep down us sellers are heavily optimistic and romantically hopeful in our trade.  We resist purging our funnels of Plymouth Rock deals, and we often put too much stock in what a stakeholder tells us.  We like glasses colored rose.

The challenge is to know when you have a ‘necessary ending’ on your sales team.  In his wonderful book Necessary Endings, Henry Cloud gives us an entire field guide for understanding the complexity and necessity of endings.  He says we need to make them a normal part of life throughout our lives, instead of making them artificially unusual and often overly traumatic.

Anyone downsize lately? Yikes.  Anyone have that box (or boxes) of stuff in your basement that you haven’t opened in 12 years?  The ones that have survived 3 moves?

One way to know if you have a necessary ending on your team is to consider the following:

  • Is this butt in the right seat? People who aren’t an ideal fit for the sales job can still succeed in it.  However they might need to expend an enormous amount of energy.  Over time they can flame out. Can you afford to keep this person on?  Can you invest time and training in them?
  • Have they gotten your best effort to make them successful in the job? Be honest.
  • Have they repeatedly not taken the message of direction, strategy and what you need them to do? The scientific term for this is thick skull.
  • Do they show a pattern of not being coachable?

With such a dramatic outcome at stake it’s always a good idea to get another person’s opinion.

Finally, for those that need to go, this is your responsibility to your entire team.  You can’t shirk that duty.

Good selling,

 

Mark Sellers

Companies in the range of 25M to 250M hire me to train, coach and consult around sales matters

Author of The Funnel Principle, named by Selling Power magazine a Top Ten Best book to Read

Author of the soon to be released book Blindspots:  The Hidden Killer of Sales Coaching