From time to time all sales managers will have at least one rep who is under-performing and not demonstrating the right attitude. Considering the amount of time and money it takes to find and develop each rep, it serves to be patient with a slumping rep especially when they are demonstrating the right behaviors, but successful sales leaders are vigilant in attacking excuses, since a culture of excuses is kryptonite for sales performance (see also The Language Used by Leading Sales Teams).

Over the years I have certainly heard every excuse in the book from sales reps that are missing targets. Often I have been able to reset the rep’s attitude and get things back on track with a brief chat or two. But when my reps have consistently given me excuses about why they are unable to perform, been unable or unwilling to commit to the work that will lead to success or have an attitude that sucks, I have known it is time to part ways.

Unacceptable Excuses

Below is a list of unacceptable excuses from sales reps that I’ve never tolerated as they surely compromise any efforts to create a culture of success:

1. “I am waiting for…. ” – Time kills deals and sales reps who are always waiting for things to happen don’t close a whole lot of business.
2. “I didn’t pursue that sale because I wouldn’t get comped on it” – No doubt there is a strong relationship between commissionable goals and activities, but reps spend their time thinking about how to help customers lead to customers who buy a lot.
3. “Our prices are too high” – Customers don’t buy on price, they buy when they trust the rep and feel they can depend on the supplier, but they are happy to imply that the competition is offering a better price. The best reps don’t accept this and win business by selling on value.
4. “Our product/service is not good enough”  – There is no such thing as a perfect product or service. In fact, most products and services that are purchased are absolutely imperfect so assuming that the base customer needs are met, it is up to the sales person to build the relationships and trust with the customer and position the offering in a way that wins the business.
5. “That’s not my job” – Great sales reps do whatever it takes to win the business and if that means doing someone else’s job, they’ll do it.
6. “The quota is unachievable” – it is always easier to refute this excuse when other reps are hitting target, but the best reps consistently prove that where there is a will, there is a way.

A culture of success is critically important to high sales performance. Don’t let these types of excuses stand in the way of creating the right culture on your sales team.

To your success!

Photo Credit: KROCKY MESHKIN via Compfight cc

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021

Sales leaders don’t have enough time in the day and it’s costing them.

They are busy developing strategies and implementing tactics to drive their companies to the next level, and sometimes the necessary minutiae of managing their team can come in second. But there is help, and it is close by in your company’s human resources department. Yet, many leaders do not want interference from HR, and only look to them for tactical, not strategic, support. But the best leaders invest the time to teach HR what the sales department really does and the type of people that perform best within it. They take key members of the HR department along for a sales call or two, so they can see up close and personal just what it takes to succeed in sales. They give them a solid understanding of the duties performed by people in different sales roles and realize that with this knowledge, HR can provide a great deal of time and money-saving support, as well as provide invaluable advice in critical decision making.

Here are some areas where a strategic partnership with HR can pay off:

Employment Law: Hiring, staff management, compensation plans and terminations are all legal minefields. Even some of the top sales gurus have been known to unwittingly recommend practices of questionable legality. Sit down with your HR Department and get a firm hold on what you can and cannot do legally. Give them your list of interview questions to review. Discuss compensation, incentive and bonus plans with them. And, of course, if you are even considering terminating an employee, your first stop is the HR Department.

Recruitment: Once HR understands the structure of the sales department, what it is selling and to whom, HR can help to recruit for those roles. Here’s how.

Job Descriptions: Although no doubt sales leaders have a good idea what they want in a candidate, HR can take the job description you give them and put it in standard company format and check to be sure it is within the law. They can also search for similar job descriptions from other companies to show you additional responsibilities and metrics to consider incorporating into your plan.

Sourcing Candidates: HR can reach out to likely passive candidates from other companies or on online sources such as LinkedIn. They can also manage the relationship with sales recruiters.

Diversity: There are ethical reasons for building a diverse sales force, but it is also very good for business, particularly where customers are made up of both men and woman and are of varied racial and ethnic backgrounds. But when is it legal to proactively seek people of a particular gender, race or ethnicity? And if a company does not do that, is it open to legal action if its work force ends up comprised quite predominantly of white males? This is an area where Sales needs to seek the strategic advice of HR.

Screening Candidates: With the direction of Sales, HR can help provide structure (processes, scorecards and scripts) which helps to weed out unlikely candidates and preinterview more likely ones. HR can also give valuable insights into the candidates they pass on to Sales for further interviews.  HR can also provide scheduling support and arrange travel which allows the sales team to focus its time on selling.

Personality Testing: This is one of the most important ways HR can help Sales. HR can arrange for personality testing that will help Sales decide who to hire and give insights on the best role for each candidate. For example, a candidate who shows a very healthy ego but low empathy may be a top performer in new account acquisition, but may not have the patience required for nurturing existing accounts. This is a critical aspect in order to hire the right sales person for your company and that is why we utilize industry leading psychometric testing in our recruiting process.

References and Background Checks: When sales managers are on the fence about who to hire, they will probably want to call key references themselves. But for those calls that are meant to check the veracity of resume and interview claims, including previous income, HR can be a great help. Of course, HR can also do background checks that go far beyond the resume.

Compensation Packages. Sales leaders will have their own ideas about how to compensate their staffs, but HR can help them to align sales goals with the broader goals of the company. Sales vice presidents should also familiarize themselves with all benefits offered, and discuss them with HR if they do not come up to the benefits packages offered by the competition. The compensation plan is how to motivate the sales force and influence them to support business goals; its importance cannot be underestimated.

Onboarding: It’s no secret that the first days can be critical to a salesperson’s ultimate success and their impression of a company. HR will should not be responsible for sales and product training, but they can help make onboarding a lot less painless. For example, they could mail all those tedious forms in advance, so your new hire can minimize time on the job filling out w-9s and contemplating health care options. HR may also be able to help you coordinate the logistics, if not the content, of training events. This may not be all that strategic, but this source of support should not be overlooked.

Termination:  Before terminating an employee, sales management must follow a structured plan. It bears repeating that sales vice presidents and managers should sit down with HR well before there is a need to terminate in order to get a good understanding of legal issues, then sit down with HR again if it is necessary to terminate. Here are some ways HR can help:

• Review plans for goals and metrics salespeople must meet in order to remain employed with the company
• Review sales management’s termination decision, so if termination is necessary, it can never be claimed it was a personal vendetta
• Advise on how to document the employee’s activities and performance, and compare them to the job description, the expected numbers and other written expectations
• Advise what the sales manager should do in the form of warnings and written instructions so the problem employee can attempt corrective action
• Be present as a witness at termination meetings
• Conduct an exit interview to inform the person of the details of any packages or benefits they will receive

Exit Interviews: Of course many employees leave of their own volition. For all employees leaving the company, HR should conduct exit interviews which may give valuable insights into how the culture of the company can be improved and how to retain more sales staff in the future.

The key take away: Don’t overlook the value that your HR department can bring to your sales recruitment and talent management plans.

Sources

Closing the Credibility Chasm between Sales and Human Resources, Sales Benchmark Index

Sales and human resources — a perfect collaboration, Philadelphia Business Journal

How to Fire an Employee Without Being Sued, INC.

How to Set Up a Sales Compensation Plan, Elizabeth Wasserman

Who Makes for the “Best” Hire?, Allan Schweyer

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles | freedigitalimages.net

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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021

Sales Managers are supposed to be kingmakers—their job is to inspire and guide sales superstars towards glory – and effective sales managers unlock the potential of their sales team, especially when rewards and retribution alone aren’t driving sales results. They boost their team’s confidence during sales slumps and rally them to work together in the pursuit of profit— and fulfilment. In the end, the best sales managers are not managers at all, but are guides, advisors, trainers, cheerleaders and coaches all rolled into one.

In order to be exceptional at their jobs, sales managers need to have one skill above all else— they need to be master motivators. They need to be able to drive sales results through the efforts of others.

Highly Motivating Sales Leaders

Master motivators abound in the sports. A coach who understands how to motivate people can transform a bunch of fresh-faced recruits into world-class athletes. And once-great teams can slump quickly in the hands of insipid leaders.

It’s a similar story in the sales world. As recounted in the Harvard Business Review, research conducted by Gallup shows that “having the right manager can improve a seller’s performance by 20%.”

The Dale Carnegie Training Institute also confirms the importance of managers who are great coaches. “Over 55% of employees who express confidence in their manager’s leadership ability and who are inspired by the communication with their direct supervisor feel engaged.”

“having the right manager can improve a seller’s performance by 20%.”  Gallup

The Sales Manager’s job thus, is not just to manage sales, but to also manage and coach the people who get the sales.

Unfortunately, most sales managers are abysmal at coaching others. According to research by the Objective Management Group (OMG), only 7% of all sales managers are effective at sales coaching (In fact, OMG research shows that Presidents and CEOs find 4 out of 5 sales managers ineffective overall – ouch!).

Six Reasons Not to Promote your Top Reps to Sales Management 

When to Promote Your Top Sales Rep to Sales Manager 

Clearly, sales managers who can coach well are rare. This means that companies need to be extra attentive when headhunting for potential sales managers. Here are a few questions to ask candidates to figure out if they are experts in the art of motivation:

1. How are they motivated?

Inspirational managers lead from the front—they are motivated to perform, and focus on constant self-improvement. They earn respect most often by simply living out the principles that they are trying to inculcate in their teams. If candidates cannot explain what motivates them, or how they continually improve, they will be unable to ignite passion in the hearts of their team members.

There is a wrong way to answer this question though. If a sales manager is overly coin operated, concerned only with numbers, and not with the people bringing in those numbers, then even if that leader can stimulate results in the short term, the numbers are likely to suffer over the long term. You need a charismatic leader, not a glorified accountant.

A great sales manager is almost always motivated by the opportunity to inspire and lead others. Great sales managers will always want to invest in their sales reps not because they expect returns for themselves, but because they thrive on watching others grow.

2. What’s their motivational style?

Experienced sales managers can often develop bad habits. They increasingly rely on either carrots or sticks to “motivate” their sales teams. The problem, as Dr. Paul Marciano points out in his book Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT, is that neither of these techniques is effective. People who are motivated by the fear of losing their jobs work with less drive and energy, and those who are enticed by big payouts quickly become complacent even when receiving the payouts.

What motivates people then? According to Frederick Herzberg’s Motivator-Hygiene theory, real motivation comes from within. John Baldoni, author of Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders, agrees that true motivation comes from wanting to do something of one’s own free will.

Master motivators realize this truth. They know that financial rewards or competition are not enough to motivate someone. Instead, salespeople need to be allowed to set their own targets and encouraged to be creative in solving their own problems. This is what will lead to a sense of fulfilment and self-drive.

The best sales managers, thus, believe in creating an environment of growth and appreciation which will spur their salespeople to develop a strong sense of internal motivation.

3. How do they motivate different types of people?

Ask your interviewees: “How have you inspired overachievers to continually excel? How do you motivate those who have chronically underperformed?”  The motivational tactics will differ in both these cases, and so should your candidates’ answers.

Truly exceptional sales managers make it their mission to discover what triggers each of their employees. They will be obsessed with helping each of their salespeople—hunters and farmers— realize their individual potential. If your sales managers have a “my way or the highway” attitude, or if they only focus on inspiring the top salespeople, you will soon have conflict on your hands.

“Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.” – Eddie Robinson

4. How do they give feedback?

Great coaches are supportive and approachable. They listen patiently before providing unconditional support and solutions to empower the person seeking help.

Unfortunately, such a supportive atmosphere is rare in sales. Most sales managers believe they are providing “constructive criticism,” but are usually just fault-finding.

Master motivators will instead approach feedback as an interactive process, by assisting their sales reps in figuring out how to improve their own weak points. For great sales managers, feedback is not a chance to point fingers, but an opportunity to refuel their team’s fire to succeed.

5. Is the person sitting in front of me charismatic?

In his best-selling book Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson illustrates a unique concept: the Reality Distortion Field. He describes how Steve Jobs, the most famous motivator in Silicon Valley, could distort others’ perception of reality through the sheer power of his personality and convince his team to achieve milestones that seemed impossible at first.

Bud Tribble, a software designer at Apple, is quoted in the book as saying: “Steve has a reality distortion field. In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything.”

Jobs would set out ambitious goals for others and use the force of his charismatic personality and self-belief to convince others to complete month-long, industry-leading projects in a few days. This is largely the reason why Apple managed to zoom to the top position in so many product verticals in the tech industry.

Of course, a reality distortion field isn’t a physical phenomenon, but it works! The best sales managers continually apply some version of reality distortion to break the mental barriers of their sales people and convince them to rise above and beyond what seems possible.

Such managers are interpersonal superstars, with unfailingly positive attitudes even in the face of low morale or negative experiences. Through their charisma, they are capable of changing both the skill sets and the mind set of their salespeople.

However, when you spot someone with an allure, a presence or the elusive X factor, make sure that they aren’t just all talk and no action. Consider how they measure up to the standards we’ve laid out above, and use multiple interviews, behavioral questions and panels to ensure that their charisma holds up in the long run too.

Download our free eBook: Make the Right Sales Hire Everytime to make your sales hiring process more effective today.

References

• How To Motivate Employees: 4 Vital Management Skills— Dale Carnegie Training
• The Most Challenging Leadership Job— Harvard Business Review –
• Underlying Science— Objective Management Group
• Presidents  & CEO’s: 4 Out of 5 Sales Managers Are Ineffective!— Dave Kurlan –
• Carrots and Sticks Don’t Work: Build a Culture of Engagement with the Principles of RESPECT—Dr. Paul Marciano
• Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders— John Baldoni
• Steve Jobs—Walter Isaacson
• Photo Credit: angietorres via Compfight cc

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• About
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Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021

Pressure can be paralyzing for some and energizing for others. Just as top athletes experience butterflies before an important event, top sales people experience nerves before a big meeting or negotiation, but what separates the elite level talent from the rest is how they react.

Stress is Linked to High Performance Author Dr John Eliot, has extensively studied top athletes and business people. His research shows that performance anxiety is a very natural and important part of overachievement. In his book, Overachievement, he notes that “the physical symptoms of fight or flight are what the human body has learned over thousands of years to operate efficiently and at the highest level…anxiety is a cognitive interpretation of that physical response.” Simply put, we need performance anxiety to have an opportunity to achieve at our highest level.

The best players in any high-stakes field – business, entertainment, law, surgery, as well as sport – recognize that pressure occurs at the moments when meaningful accomplishment is possible. In fact, that is the reason why performers perform: for the opportunity to tackle challenges head on, to do something significant, to demonstrate what their hard work and talent can produce. ~ John Eliot

A Double Edged Sword The problem with having a brain is that it tends to do a lot of thinking which can get in the way of not only performance, but even performing the most simple of tasks when required. As reported in the University of Chicago Magazine, “during the relaxed execution of a practiced skill, communication between the motor and reasoning areas of the brain decreases. A beginner’s brain, on the other hand, is abuzz with motor and reasoning cross talk, trying to translate newfound knowledge into action. When anxiety increases, experts can start to think like novices, and their performances suffer.” This is probably not news to former baseball player, Bill Buckner, who committed one of the most infamous chokes when he misplayed a routine ground ball while playing for the Red Sox during the 1986 world series.

Tapping into the Subconscious Research conducted by Sian Beilock, a Psychology Professor at the University of Chicago, and author of Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, indicated that athletes performed better when they were given tools that enabled them to stop analysing their acrtivities and trying to control their performance. Her team found that even something as simple as whistling can avoid the analysis paralysis that stands in the way of great performance…which reminds me of that scene in the movie Bull Durham where Crash, a veteran minor league baseball player, played by Kevin Costner, is coaching a rookie, Nuke, played by a young tim Robbins. Crash tells Nuke that in order to pitch well, “don’t think; it can only hurt the ball club.” Dr. Eliot’s research also indicated that while all high achievers are innately confident, it is not so much winning that creates the winning attitude, but the process of becoming a winner.

We tend to view confidence as a product of accomplishment rather than part of the process that leads there.

Preparation In fact, in all pursuits, whether it be sports, business, music and particularly the military, practice plays the important role of conditioning the the body to stress and creating familiarity with the situations that typically cause the body to feel anxiety. Athletes train and play sequences of events in their heads to visualize desired outcomes, while military personnel practice with live ammunition to get as used to battle conditions as is possible. In all cases, training is a big part of performance and ideally we are so familiar with an activity, we are able to operate outside our conscious awareness – like pedalling a bike. The more familiar something is the less likely we are to feel. I know from my own experiences and being involved in negotiations on a daily basis, what used to make me nervous, say walking into a room full of A-type executives, now hardly raises my blood pressure at all and I sometimes find myself coming up with ways to make meetings more exciting to create the uncertainty that gets me excited.

Public speaking, which I do often, but not as often as I am involved in business negotiations, is another personal example of dealing with stress. Obviously repetition breeds comfort and I have done a lot of speeches, but when I step up to the podium to begin a speech in front of a large audience, like most people who speak in public, I experience a sense of pressure from wanting to deliver a great presentation and make a positive impression – even if I have prepared well in advance. To use this to my advantage, I have a little routine that helps me achieve my goals and prevents the situation from controlling me. First, at the outset, I anticipate my anxiety coming on and when it does, I smile because after giving many speeches my nerves are as familiar to me as an old friend. To a large extent I stay focussed on what I am doing, how I am going to do the things I have practiced and give the performance I have prepared to give, but I also try to drink in the energy in the room and I want that nervous feeling because its a valuable tool for getting all my juices flowing and starting my speech with a bang. It excites me. Plus I know from experience how quickly nervousness subsides once I get rolling, so I can consciously ride the wave until I hit my groove.

Make Pressure Work to Drive Sales Whether it be cold calls, or important negotiations, there are many situations where sales reps, even the best ones, will feel pressure and performance anxieties. There are many ways we can prepare for these situations to improve outcomes.

• Role Plays – Practicing activities such as cold calling or negotiating can help people get more familiar with situations that would otherwise be unfamiliar and stressful. Going through the activities over and over can help.
• Repetition – One of the best ways to get over cold calling anxiety is to schedule time to do a while of them back to back. For me personally, I always found the first few cold calls on any given day were tough, but after a few calls, I warmed up, found a rhythm and was able to react effortlessly to all questions and objections that were thrown at me.
• Scripts – Writing down meaningful responses to likely questions from prospects in advance of sales calls helps a sales rep visualize doing the right things when they have to which, aids in actually doing the right things when required. More importantly, it can help the right spend more time thinking about what to say, over stressing about saying the wrong thing.
• Meditation – Beilock’s research showed that relaxation techniques such as singing or meditation, even in small amounts, allow people to separate themselves from over analysis, which in turn results in higher performance on high stakes tests.
• Positive Thinking – If we think of all experiences as positive in that we always are learning and always building a foundation for future success, then there really is no way to fail. And if there is no way to fail, then there is less chance of analysis paralysis. Just act and trust that things will ultimately turn out well.
• Keeping Things in Perspective – Unlike armed forces personnel, we in sales are not in life threatening situations, nor are we performing life saving duties like a doctor. Often we are not even in life changing situations. We need to keep in mind that the worst case scenario is often not as bad as we think it might be.

High performers experience pressure, which is both natural and necessary for high achievement, and the highest sales performers know the importance of embrace that pressure to win. But all sales reps can benefit from learning to manage stress and if a sales leader not only promotes these stress mitigation practices, but also demonstrates them in their own behaviour there is a high chance that the sales reps will also adopt them and experience better performance – which is great for overall sales force performance and numbers. To your success!   References: Overachievement – the New Model for Exceptional Performance University of Chicago Magazine – Performance Anxiety Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To

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• About
• Latest Posts

Connect:

Eliot Burdett

CEO at Peak Sales Recruiting

Before Peak, Eliot spent more than 20 years building and leading companies, where he took the lead in recruiting and managing high performance sales teams. He co-founded Ventrada Systems (mobile applications) and GlobalX (e-commerce software). He was also Vice President of Sales for PointShot Wireless.

Eliot received his B. Comm. from Carleton University and has been honored as a Top 40 Under 40 Award winner.

He co-authored Sales Recruiting 2.0, How to Find Top Performing Sales People, Fast and provides regular insights on sales team management and hiring on the Peak Sales Recruiting Blog.

Connect:

Latest posts by Eliot Burdett (see all)

• 20 Of Our Favorite Books About Sales Management and Sales Leadership – October 20, 2023
• How To Make Progress On Your Sales Goal Without A Sales Leader – September 15, 2021
• Augment Your Recruiting Strategy During “The Great Resignation” – July 26, 2021