A Sales Guy Consulting Blog

Do You Have the Guts?

It takes guts to be a leader. It takes real strength to be a leader. Unfortunately, these characteristics scare people, they scare companies. They disrupt the status quo. They challenge the systems. The create chaos. They create unpredictability. Corporations thrive on predictability and the status quo and unfortunately the cost to maintaining the status quo is the loss of great leaders.

Do you have the guts?

The arch-enemy of sales is the status quo. Selling something without changing the status quo is almost impossible. By definition, sales requires change, change effects the status quo.

We like the status quo. It’s familiar. It is comforting. It makes us feel good. We know what to do. We know what to expect. It’s this reason that makes the status quo such a respectable adversary

To slay the status quo and increase sales takes information, information to relief the anxiety of change. It takes patience, forcing change only strengthens the roots of the status quo. It takes understanding, understanding of what keeps the status quo in place. It requires a comforting alternative, one which can make the status quo not feel so good.

The staus quo is the enemy of sales. It looks to destroy sales at every corner. It has staunch team of supporters, those who defend it to the death. It has deep roots, that take hold and make it difficult to be uprooted.

Selling requires change. That’s what sales does; it offers something new, it brings change to the status quo.

To be successful at sales, you have to slay the status quo and that is no small order.

What are your weapons?

Sales leaders, pull out your 2012 sales strategy right now. Go through it and take note of how much of it is dedicated to sales support and enablement. How much of the budget is allocated to sales improvement or support tools?  How much of the plan focuses on training? How much of the strategy focuses on value proposition development? How much of the strategy focuses on marketing and collateral support? How much of the plan DOESN’T focus on direct go to market and numbers making? If  the plan as good coverage in all of these things, you have a good plan. But if your plan is like most, it’s lacking in almost all of these areas.

The best thing sales leadership can do is support the sales team. In order to do this, you have to build team support and enablement into your overall sales strategy. Like a go to market strategy, critical analysis is paramount.

Take a look at your plan then ask a very simple question. What does my team need today, that they don’t have to make the number? Ask the question over and over. Each answer should then become an initiative. If the answer is nothing, unless you’ve already asked the question, your not being honest with yourself.

Sales teams are not ready made, out of the box organizations. They require care and feeding. The best organizations understand this.

Ask the team what they feel is missing. Ask them what they think would make it easier to make their number. Ask them what you could provide to accelerate sales. Get familiar with the team’s weaknesses and strengths. Identify initiatives that will offset the weaknesses and leverage the strengths. Getting to your number, growing sales, and moving product is more than setting revenue targets and creating motivational rewards and recognition. Getting to your number means getting the most out of your team and that requires support.

Know what your team is lacking, know where it is weak, know where it is strong. Know what could make it stronger and then give it what it needs.

What is your sales support and enablement strategy? Do you have one? You should!

A word I can honestly say I rarely if ever hear in business is, self-confidence.   I do hear it a lot when discussing entrepreneurs and start-ups, specifically when the discussion is about the founders, but what about everyone else?  Why doesn’t the word self-confidence enter the business lexicon?   It should.

Self-confidence is at the heart of performance.  The decisions we make are driven by our confidence level.  The decisions we DON’T make are influenced by our self-confidence.   The impact of self-confidence sees no boundaries, from the board room to the mail room, the confidence people have in themselves impacts organizations.

Executives without it have frozen themselves and their company in its tracks, not moving when they should, not making the investments necessary, not removing the EVP who isn’t making their numbers, or not buying that start-up needed to penetrate new markets.

Sales people without it don’t make the cold calls, they don’t ask for the close, they don’t challenge the customer, they are uncomfortable making the customer uncomfortable, they struggle introducing new products.  Sales people who lack self-confidence can not reach their potential.

Lack of self-confidence isn’t solely an executive or sales person challenge.  It affects everyone.  When people, therefore organizations, lack self-confidence innovation is stifled.  People are afraid to suggest new ideas.  They are afraid to try different things.  They are uncomfortable asking for the extraordinary.   When self-confidence is absent mistakes are made, opportunities are missed, innovation is stifled, and energy and excitement are diminished.

The best leaders I’ve worked for have made me feel I could take on the world.  They’ve known how to make me feel confident in my decisions.  The best leaders create environments that build confidence in its people. They build confidence into their sales coaching. 

Environments filled with fear, politics, fighting, bullying, indifference, unrealistic goals, and that are unaccepting of failure, breed lack of self-confidence.

How confident are you in your decisions?  How confident are your direct reports?  How confident is the CEO?   They all need to be.  Confidence is critical.  Does your organization build confidence in its people?  It should.

To build a good organization, start building confidence.

“You are the CEO of your own business.”  I said this all the time during my years leading sales teams. I would say it to every sales person and sales team that worked for me. I believe it.  Great sales people are like CEO’s.

More than any other position, sales has a tremendous amount of autonomy.  Like a CEO, this freedom gives sales people an infinite amount of lattitude in how they are going to attain quota.  Sales is a performance based role, like that of a CEO. Therefore, the best sales people approach sales like a CEO.

Great sales people, like CEO’s

• Leverage others to help them accomplish their goals – they don’t try to do it all themselves.  Great sales people know how to leverage the entire organization. Good and average sales people try to do it all themselves.

If you sell, getting people to change their minds or switch is part of the job. Sometimes people already have what you’re selling and you need to get them to try something else. You need to get them to switch. Getting people to switch is like selling to the monkeys; hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. No one is paying attention.

We don’t like to switch. We are normally very happy with our choices and unless there is a compelling reason, we will defend our choices to the end. We don’t want to listen to anything new, because we’ve heard it already. We don’t want to see an alternative, because we’ve seen it all before and we don’t want to talk about anything new, because there is nothing new to talk about. Considering a change without a compelling reason calls into questions our original decision and we don’t like to think we originally made a mistake

Getting people to try something new is hard. It’s even harder if you don’t have a compelling reason.

People don’t switch just to switch. This is especially true in b2b sales. To get your customers to switch, create a compelling reason. Make it difficult NOT to change. It can’t be because your new. New isn’t compelling. Save your customers 2X more money. Grow revenue by 25%. Increase productivity 2 fold. Shorten production by 15%. Reduce operating costs 30%. Shorten the sales cycle by 30 days. Make a real impact.

Selling to the monkey’s isn’t easy, they aren’t going to pay attention for a different banana. You need to bring ice-cream covered in chocolate. They’ll pay attention then.

After we’ve done something for awhile something begins to happen. Our vision gets blurry, this is especially true in business.

In the beginning we wear rose colored glasses. Everything looks like an opportunity. Everything is fresh, exciting and new. Things look clear and defined. Experience, failure, and success don’t blur our vision. As the business grows, experience develops and success is had, our vision get’s blurry. New ideas are more difficult to see. Change becomes the enemy. Protection becomes the goal. Talk is still about growth, change, and winning, but the conversations change. The conversations switch from how, to why, and from let’s do it, to why do it.

When our vision gets blurry we move slower, we are less sure of where we are going, we have less confidence in our choices and have a tendency to stay where we are. We feel there is more to lose.

To increase sales, grow, compete, change, enter new markets, and add new products requires the same vision as the day you started, nothing has changed, just your vision.

As success is had, put the rose colored glasses in a drawer not too far out of reach. Soon, very soon, they will be needed again. Wearing rose colored glasses is far better than blurry vision.

Twitter is a real tool for making your number and part of a legit sales strategy. It connects you to your customers. It gives you insight into your competitors. It generates leads. Twitter is a power sales resources for making your number. 

Don't be Allen! 

The feedback has been fantastic on our recent 8 Part Series on Account Governance or account management. 

Therefore, to make it easy to get to all 8 posts, I figured I put them all on one page. This way if you're like me, you won't have to click so much. 

I had fun doing the series and hope it helps you get more out of your existing customers. Also, be sure to download all the helpful templates. They make all the difference in execution. 

Enjoy!

Account Governance — Part 1

Introduction to account governance and why it matters

Account Governance — Vision

The importance of establishing and account vision and how to create one that works.

Account Governance — Account Plans

How to build the perfect account plan

Account Governance — Relationships

Learn how to build account relationships that actualy turn into new business, not just more lunches. 

Account Governance — Cadence

How to build a pro-active account cadence that keeps you ahead of the competition and connected to the account. 

Account Governance — Strategy

Learn to build an account strategy that increases revenue, creates more opportunity and grows the account.

Account Governance — Reporting

Learn how to use reporting to know if the account is healthy, how to increase revenue and manage resources. 

Account Governance — Tools 

Identify what tools are at your disposal and which you should use to better manage your accounts. 

We just launched our new eBook: How to Hire "A" players. 

Making your number or "winning" in sales starts with getting the best people. Like a sports team, the best sales team has the best sales people on the field. 

Too often I hear sales leaders lament over their inability to pick the right sales people. They complain that sales people are too good at selling themselves. Confused and frustrated the sales leader ultimately makes a bad hire. This is NOT an uncommon challenge for many sales organizations, but one that needs to be avoided. 

Hiring great sales talent is a skill of the best sales leaders. Developing the skill and a repetable hiring process increases the chances of making your number and increasing sales. 

The How to Hire "A" players will help you build a process to ensure you are hiring "A" players. 

If you suffer from the following, this eBook is for you: