Sales Blog with Sales Tips

I received an email from Courtney of Seattle, Washington asking the following questions, “Scott, can you share with everyone your feelings about using our faith in God to help us in our sales job? Is this a cop-out?”

Courtney,

Sales can be an extremely rewarding career for all kinds of reasons. At times it can also be incredibly stressful. I’ve directly managed literally hundreds of sales professionals over the years and I’ve found that many of them rely on their personal faith in their sales careers.

Some might think that relying on faith smacks of desperation instead of determination. Before we throw out faith as a possible legitimate aid to our sales career, let’s consider just some of the challenges that we have to contend with, many of which are out of our control.

1. Sales budgets to reach each month/quarter/year. Sales success is measured by one metric and one metric only, total sales. Nothing else matters to employers. Worse yet, at the end of each month/quarter/year we have to start all over again. A sales career is the poster child for, “What have you done for me lately?”
2. Rejection, rejection, rejection. I know we’re supposed to be thick-skinned sales professionals and all of that, but, at some level, we have to feel accepted by others. If we are in a heavy prospecting mode over an extended period, the avoidance behavior of prospects can take its toll.
3. Competition. Have you ever tried to explain to someone who works at the home office what it’s like to have people (i.e., competitors) trying to take your job on a daily basis? I don’t think I’ve ever found anyone outside of sales who understands the pressure this puts us under.
4. Work hours. We can’t even imagine a 40 hour workweek. A hard hitting sales professional knows that we must contact customers and prospects during the day and attack the colossus of administrative tasks at night or on the weekends.

We all like to come across as tough and capable people in our sales jobs, but most of us need help that extends beyond what our sales managers and employers can provide. Sales is a very demanding profession and, quite frankly, it scared me when I thought about the goals that were expected of me when I was a salesperson.

I have no problem in admitting to you that my faith has helped me to feel more complete and confident with many things in my life, including my sales career.

Courtney, use your faith; it’s a valuable tool. I think that if you shared these thoughts with your sales peers that you would find that you are far from being alone. Thanks for your question.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

It’s been 20 years since Neil Rackham published his 1988 book, SPIN Selling. For those of you who are too young to remember when this book was a business best seller, I can tell you that it turned a lot of traditional sales training concepts upside down. To a great extent it set in motion some major changes in how we currently view the customer/salesperson interaction.

1950’s style sales training wasn’t very pretty, nor was it very effective. Neil started a trend with his book that made us challenge those outdated views of the sales process. He also made us look more objectively at how sales professionals are trained and how we interact with prospects and customers.

Let’s review what made this book so noteworthy in relation to sales skills and concepts.

1. The author took time to research his material. Prior to the writing of this book (and even today) much of what passed for sales training was just the writer’s personal experiences and biases. Neil used a scientifically crafted approach to prove his points. This is a trend that fortunately is becoming more prominent in sales training today.
2. Neil broke the sales process down into four basic steps which you’ll find in most current sales training. Prior to his book these steps were not so clearly defined and understood.
3. He introduced ideas that were probably thought to be sinful to even consider in sales training circles 20 years ago. Things like: first impressions are greatly overrated, using scripts is a great way to destroy the sales process, questions are everything when it comes to selling, etc.

While I certainly don’t agree with all of the content in SPIN Selling, I have to applaud the author for researching his subject so well and not being afraid to be a contrarian. We need more Neil Rackhams in sales training.

While we don’t talk as much about this book today, many of its concepts have been integrated into current sales training. We shouldn’t forget the powerful contributions that were made by this book.

Should you read this book? It would be most helpful to those that are involved in consultative sales versus transactional sales, but I would encourage it as a classic sales training must-read, regardless of what type of sales environment you work in.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer

We all know the Pareto Principle, which broadly states that 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes. Countless sales organizations have gotten themselves into deep trouble by mindlessly applying this principle to their sales organizations. I call it the Pareto Protocol.

Sales management thinks something like the following, “We’ve done an analysis and find that 80% of our sales comes from only 20% of our sales force. We need to fire 80% of our salesforce, which will lower our overhead and increase our profits!”

They think that if they can increase the sales of the 20%-super-producers by just 25% they won’t see any decline in revenues, while simultaneously realizing an 80% reduction in their base sales payroll. It sounds too good to be true, because it is.

I’ve seen the results when the Pareto Protocol is applied to sales organizations and it is consistently a disaster. I am fully aware that every sales organization has salespersons that need to find another career, or at the least be encouraged to work for a competitor.

I am also fully aware that every sales organization has its high producing heavy lifters, but to think that they can and will do even more lifting, all the time, is an ill-advised sales strategy.

Before your sales organization is tempted to partially or fully implement the Pareto Protocol, please consider the following:

1. Your top producers are in that position because they are already working at high capacity. Do they really have an additional 25%+ of bandwidth to give you?
2. You have salespeople at differing levels of development. Firing 80% of the sales force will undoubtedly nip many future super stars in the bud.
3. After applying the Pareto Protocol your sales force is now theoretically comprised exclusively of superstars; you’ve unintentionally created headhunter heaven. Be prepared for your superstars to be rapidly and easily gobbled up by your competitors.
4. Sometimes sales management tends to put their heads in the sand and pretend that everyone on the sales force has exactly the same opportunities. Not true. Accounts, products, geography, experience, sales management, etc. are variables that have to be accounted for and leveraged for each salesperson.

There is a normal distribution of sales capabilities within all sales organizations. Please see Sales Managers, Invest in Your Average Performers.

Sales management needs to focus on improving/removing the bottom 15%, improving the middle 70% and rewarding the top 15%. Sales management also has to look at its own skill levels at managing the sales force most effectively, but that’s for another post.

© 2008 Scott R. Sheaffer