Mid-year is approaching.  I’m talking to a lot of people about where they are with quota performance.  With too many, their hands start waving around, the stories start, the excuses start.

“We’re still seeing the effects of the economy, customers aren’t buying….”  I know their peers in the same company are making the numbers, their competitors are selling, so I wonder.

“Our marketing programs and collateral are really insufficient, I don’t have the tools I need to be successful…”  Again, there are a number of their peers faced with the same thing who don’t let this stop them.

“”We just don’t have enough leads….”  I’ve never met a salesperson that has enough leads, so I wonder, what’s stopping them from prospecting.

“The dog ate my sales call plan…….”

I may be a little hardnosed about this, but there is only one thing sacrosanct in sales, it’s The Number.  Our job, our responsibility, our obligation to our companies is to do everything possible to make our number.  There are simply no excuses.

Everything else about sales is changeable, but we can’t change our obligation to make the number.

If we don’t have enough leads, then we have to do something.  Can we get referrals, can we go back to past customers to see if they have a need?  How do we start prospecting to find new opportunities?

If our customers aren’t buying, how do we find those that are?  Can we create a different or more compelling value proposition.  How do we find those customers that are buying?  Let’s invest our time in those that are.

We don’t have the right materials and collateral—-well create it yourself!  Never let materials, tools, collateral stop you.

There are simply no excuses to do everything you possibly can do to make your number!

Does this mean you’ll be successful?  Well you won’t be successful if you don’t, that’s virtually guaranteed.  But doing everything you possibly can may still mean you don’t make the number.  But at least you have learned, you have solid data about why and you can leverage that data to improve.

Sales success is about leaving no stone unturned.  It’s about figuring out what it tales to win and owning the responsibility for that.  It’s about determination–not letting anything to keep you from achieving your goals. Sometimes it means we have to change our approaches.  What has worked in the past may not be successful, so we have to figure out what creates success.  We may have to develop new skills, we may have to change our process, we may have to go after different customers, we may have to be clearer about our value proposition.  Everything in sales is open to change—except for making the number.

Are you prepared to change everything to achieve your goals?  Are you totally committed to achieving them and will let nothing stand in your way?

Truth be told, most sales people would prefer to have a root canal than prospect.  Sales people do deals—we love the engagement with a customer that wants to buy and is willing to give us an audience.  We love the adrenaline rush of competing in the final stages of the customer buying process, convincing the customer that we have the superior solution and can create the greatest value for the customer.  Then, it’s capped off by the customer calling us to let us know we got the deal!

In an ideal world, we would be blessed with never-ending qualified opportunities in our pipelines.  Marketing working it’s magic somehow produces great leads, we qualify virtually all of them, then get into doing deals.  Life would be wonderful!

Unfortunately, the real world is seldom like that.  Too often, we don’t have healthy funnels.  As much as we try to increase our win rates, as much as we try to cross sell to increase our average transaction size, most of the time there’s a great gap–we don’t have enough opportunities to pursue to make our number.  We may be successful, we may be closing deals–but that empties our funnels.  Unless we have new opportunities coming into the funnel, we won’t continue to make our numbers.

Ideally, marketing is creating enough demand to provide the continued flow of new opportunities.  But if, for whatever reason marketing can’t provide that flow of great leads, we still have to figure out how to make out number—that’s our obligation to our companies and to ourselves.  It is unacceptable to go to our managers saying, “I’ve closed every deal in my pipeline, now I just have to wait and twiddle my thumbs until marketing gives me good leads.”

If marketing can’t create a sufficient number of leads, then we have to go out to find them.  We have to go out and prospect.  Hopefully, there’s a willing audience–a list of people that are willing to sign up for our seminars.  Ideally, we can go back to past customers, seeing if they have new opportunities.  If they don’t have opportunities, ideally they will introduce us to people who do–they’ll actively refer and sponsor us to new people in their organizations or other companies.  Getting a referral or introduction is very powerful in helping us identify new opportunities and we should leverage them as much as possible.

But what if that doesn’t produce a sufficient volume of great leads that we can qualify and fill our funnels?  We are still obligated to achieve our goals—anything less is just excuses.

So we leverage indirect relationships.  We ask people in our companies if they know people we should be talking to, we ask friends, neighbors, maybe the person sitting on the bar stool next to us (though I’d be a little careful with those).  We leverage our connections in LinkedIn or Facebook.  We do everything we can to leverage even the most distant connections or relationships—”Did you know you are the third cousin of my next door neighbor’s high school buddy’s roommate in college?”

Any time we have anything we can leverage–a close relationship, a past relationship, a powerful referral, a distant relationship, whatever—we leverage those because it’s out job to find a sufficient number of opportunities to achieve our goals.

But what if we’ve exhausted all of those and we still have a gap in our pipelines–maybe not for today, but what about tomorrow?  We still have an obligation, a commitment to reach our goals.  We have to continue to look for new opportunities. We have to……. I’m hesitant to say…….  I guess I’m scraping the bottom…..  God forbid…..  but we have to cold call!

There, I said it, the dreaded words—”the cold call.”  Well actually, it’s the well researched call to someone we may not know and to whom we have no possible introduction.  We have to do the research and find a meaningful way to pick up the phone or email or show up in their office or whatever.  We have to find a way to engage theses “total strangers” and reach out to them with a well researched and prepared “cold call.”  And we have to do one, and another, and another…..

Cold calls are tough, they’re tough, they take a lot of work.  Clearly, if we can leverage anything else that is more effective, we’d be foolish not to.

As sales professionals we have an obligation–it’s our commitment to make our goals.  Again, in an ideal world, we have perpetually healthy pipelines and never have to prospect.  In a real world we have to prospect, we have to go out and find new opportunities.  We have all sorts of ways to do it, and we should choose the simplest and most efficient possible.  but if that doesn’t produce the right volume of opportunities we can’t stop there–we have to keep exploring, we have to keep searching, we have to find new opportunities.

When we have a gap in our ability to achieve our goals–today’s and tomorrow’s, it is irresponsible not to exhaust every single alternative in our prospecting efforts–there is simply no excuse.

The other day, my friend Jill Konrath wrote a compelling post, Silence Is Complicity.  Please make sure you read it.  The post resulted in an email discussion between Jill and me on the topic of Intolerance.

In the national media, we are pummeled by pundits spewing messages of intolerance.  Whether they wrap themselves in their country’s flag, claiming patriotism, or in the “rightness” of their issue, or claiming a religious position, or are just plain mean; we’re surrounded by intolerance.  Their messages are nothing but poison.

These people refuse to recognize other points of view, other ideas, and positions.  Through arrogance, conceit, ignorance or fear, rather than engaging in a healthy exchange of ideas, or in listening and understanding, they seek to destroy, to tear things down.  This behavior is shameful.  To see so called leaders or influencers spewing this venom sets a terrible example and makes all of us littler, stop all progress, and keep us from growing.

One doesn’t have to look far back in history to see the damage done by intolerance.  Millions of deaths, decades of repression, cultures and economies destroyed.

Intolerance is the enemy of progress, of innovation, of growth and creativity.  Intolerance does not create success, but instead drives failure.  It impacts all of us because it stops the exchange of ideas.  It stops us from seeking to understand and to be understood.  It stifles our growth as individuals, communities, organizations, and nations.

At a time when so many are searching for answers, whether to achieve our personal goals, to find ways for our companies to grow, to provide solutions for our communities, or to be better world citizens; intolerance stops all of that.

It’s differences that make us great.  Differing backgrounds, differing experiences, differing beliefs, different ideas, different points of view.  No single person or group can have the answers.  But the healthy exchange of views and ideas enable us to consider new things.  Rather than trying to shut down or shout down those who hold a different point of view, we need to encourage them to speak up, we need to listen, we need to respect them—though we may still not agree with them.

Ideas, conversations, differences in views are the stuff that create growth, and isn’t that what each of us is trying to do?

Intolerance is around us every day.  It’s just not the garbage we hear in the news.  We see it in very subtle ways every day.  It’s the bullying, it’s people who don’t listen, it’s people who stop learning.  It happens in little ways, but accumulates, and worsens.

The only way we fight intolerance is to refuse to succumb.  We must continue to question, we must continue to explore, we must continue to learn.  We cannot stand by and say nothing, because if we do, Silence Is Complicity, and silence destroys each of us.

Sales management is one of the toughest jobs around—particularly that of the first line sales manager.  Fundamentally, our job is to maximize the performance of our sales teams–both tactically and strategically.  I read a post, How the VP of Sales can Inspire their Sales Team with 4 Simple Habits.  It got me reflecting on how managers maximize their impact, and where managers should spend their time, not just the Vice President of Sales, but all levels of sales management.

The post offers some interesting suggestions, frankly a number of them I disagree with very strongly.  Let’s start with the areas in which we are in real alignment.

The biggest impact a sales manager at any level can have is by being out with their people in front of customers.  Yet too often, exactly the opposite thing happens–managers spend too much of their time internally focused.  They are chained to their desks, conducting internal meetings, conducting internal reviews, spending time reporting on what’s going on.  Some of this is necessary-we need to communicate to the rest of the organization, we need to get resources and support for our people, we need to get help for our customers.  But too often, managers are consumed with this.  They stop visiting customers, they stop visiting their people.

Being chained to the desk, being focused on reporting, staying internally focused on internal politics do not produce revenue or improve the capabilities of sales people.

Without a doubt, the number 1 and the number 1 priorities of sales managers are Customers and Your People!  If the majority of your time isn’t spent in the field working with your people and visiting your customers, you are prioritizing things incorrectly.  Nothing trumps spending your time here–period.  A number of years ago, I was EVP of Sales for a large organization.   I was scheduled to do a presentation at our Board of Directors.  It was an “important” presentation.  As the day approached, a critical customer situation arose.  It was clear that my involvement was needed and, unfortunately, the only time available with the customer conflicted with my ability to present to the Board.  The decision was easy for me–I conveyed my apologies to my boss, the CEO, and to the Board Members, saying Customers and this situation were more important.  Fortunately, my boss and the board applauded that decision–and we did get the order.

So managers need to prioritize time with customers and with their people.  We need to unchain ourselves from our desks and spend the majority of our time in the field.  Take a moment right now and look at your calendar for the past 30 days.  If you haven’t spent a minimum of 50 percent of your time in the field with your people and with customers, you’re not maximizing your impact.

Now once we’ve committed to spend our time in the field, where do we have the most impact?  This is where I think the article is dead wrong.  It suggests that managers spend the bulk of their time with A players and calling on their customers.  I don’t want to ignore the A players, but this is not where the problems are, this is not where managers have the most impact—both in driving performance of sales people and in contributing to closing business.  By definition, the A players really don’t need your help, so it’s irresponsible to focus the bulk of our time with them, unless all you want is “feel good” meetings.

Where we as managers have the greatest impact and leverage is with our B and even C players.  Maximizing the performance of that huge middle range of our people—the B players has the highest return on a manager’s time.  Working with them, we have so much more impact, so much greater room for helping them improve.  Likewise, the impact we have working with them, on their deals, helping strengthen their competitive positioning and moving the deal through the customer’s buying cycle.  (For a different perspective the value of focusing on your B players, look at what the authors of Challenger Selling have to say.)

It may be more fun hanging out with A players and their customers, but that’s not our job as sales managers.  Our job is to maximize the performance of our organization.  We have to invest our time where it has greatest impact, and frankly where we’re needed.  By  definition, it won’t be with our top performers.

This doesn’t say we ignore our C players either.  Our job is to maximize performance, this includes dealing with performance problems.  Coaching our C players–either getting them to be B’s or A’s, moving them into roles where they can be B’s or A’s (and that may be out of the company) is our responsibility as managers.

Whatever level of manager you are, spend your time where you have the greatest impact–it’s always with customers and sales people.  Once you get out to the field, don’t hide out–head straight for the people and customers where you can bring the greatest value and impact, and where you are most needed.  Don’t ignore your A players or your great customers, but they don’t really need you as much.  It’s your B and C players that need you and your attention.  It’s the tough customers where you can help both your people and the customers the most.

Serve your people, serve your customers, the rest takes care of itself.

One of the things I love the most about sales people is the eternal optimism.  It really takes a tremendously positive outlook to be a great sales person.  After all, we face rejection every day.  We face challenges and obstacles in every situation.  Some are challenges come from changing customer expectations. We always face market and competitive challenges.  Sometimes we face challenges from within our own companies.

It requires tremendous resilience and optimism to succeed in selling.

But sometimes that optimism hurts us.  Sometimes it prevents us from looking at reality, from seeing things the way they really are, not how we want them to be.  This is, perhaps, the most dangerous challenge sales people face.  It’s one of our own creation.  And it’s funny, it sneaks up on us–it never smacks us in the face, it kind of creeps in.  All of a sudden we find ourselves mired in a very difficult situation, struggling to understand and work our ways out.

It happens all sorts of ways.  Our pipelines aren’t as full as we want.  Our managers may be pressuring us to increase the numbers of deals in the pipeline.  We relax our qualification criteria to get more deals—but because they aren’t in our sweet spot, our ability to win is threatened.  All of a sudden our win rates go down.  This makes our pipelines look worse, we relax our qualification criteria further…. you know how this story ends.

Or it’s the deal we just can’t let go.  We’ve invested a lot of time and resource.  We believe if we just do a few more things, we can persevere.  We do those, it’s not sufficient, we do a few more…… it goes on forever.  The deal’s dead, but we can’t let it go.

Or we are busy, our days our filled with meeting after meeting, call after call.  But we aren’t making progress.  We confuse busyness with progress and accomplishment.

Facing reality is critical to our success.  If our pipelines aren’t full, we mask the real problem by filling them with junk.  If a deal just won’t move forward, continuing with wishful thinking doesn’t change things–it keeps us from really understanding what it takes to win–or even if it is winnable  And busyness masks everything.  We don’t have the time to reflect, to understand if we are making progress or just filling our time.

Facing reality is tough.  We may discover things we don’t want to confront.  We may not be as strong as we had hoped we were.  We may discover we need new skills to improve our ability to compete.  It may tell us we’re spending our time with the wrong customers–that we may have to find new customers.

Facing reality is important.  Good or bad, it provides the ability to understand the issues most impacting our performance.  It helps us identify and solve our problems.  It allows us to improve or fix things that keep us from achieving our goals.

It’s easy and tempting to fool ourselves, to the point of hiding our heads in the sand.  But that doesn’t fix the problem, it makes it worse.

If you aren’t achieving your goals, are you really looking at what’s happening.  Are you seeing things the way they are or the way you want them to be?  Facing reality is the only path to performance improvement.

There has been an important revolution in marketing thinking over the past years.  The move from thinking about campaigns to rich content programs and nurturing is important.  It recognizes something important, that customers want to learn, they want to be educated.  These programs enable us to develop “relationships” with customers and nurture them up to the point of their deciding they need to take action and start a buying process.

In our nurturing programs, we design them to have the customer take different actions through the program that help us gauge their level of interest, their urgency, and their readiness to buy.

This is important and needs to be the cornerstone of our marketing programs.  But there is a problem with this–it requires a customer to have an interest–to want to learn–to want to consider a change, to be thinking about their needs.  Not necessarily to do something today, but to be thinking, “perhaps we need to change at some point in the future, I should start learning and looking around now.”  In essence, nurturing works best when the customer raises their hand.

But what happens when the customer should be raising their hand, but isn’t?  What about the case where the customer is so busy just surviving day to day?  What about the customer that isn’t looking to learn, that isn’t thinking about the future, who isn’t thinking about how they might improve their business?

They may never be a part of our nurturing programs because they don’t recognize the need to be nurtured.  They may be part of our programs, but they aren’t taking the actions they should be taking—but aren’t.

Pull is an important part of developing the customer need, knowledge and enabling us to enter a buying cycle when decide they need to buy.  But I think push is still critical.  But it’s push in a very different sense.  It’s helping the customer recognize that they need to change.  It’s helping them understand they are missing an opportunity.  It’s helping them understand that them see new ways of running their business or function.

Sales people must bring ideas to their cusotmers!  Sales people must provoke and challenge their customers.  Sales people must create the reasons for customers to raise their hands, to say–I need to do something now–entering into a buying process.  Alternatively, to say–that’s something I need to start looking into.  I might want to do something later.

I get concerned as I start to see the sales pendulum swinging to “pull” oriented sales strategies.  I think exclusively relying on pull–which I see many organizations seriously considering is irresponsible.  It’s not because we “aren’t” driving our sales growth as aggressively as possible–though that is irresponsible.  But it’s really irresponsible because we see that our customers are missing opportunities to grow and improve and we aren’t taking action to help them understand this.  It’s irresponsible because our customers often look to their sales people for ideas–to understand things that are happening in their markets, best practices for their functions, how to be more efficient.

We have to help our customers understand new opportunities–if we are truly customer focused, value based, trusted advisors, we need to get them to raise their hands.  Our nurturing programs may not do this.

Creating great value for the customer, developing meaningful relationships requires a careful balance of push and pull.  They can’t exist by themselves–we can’t have push only strategies, nor can we have pull only strategies.  We have to purposefully execute both.

Not long ago, my wife had to be away from home for a week. It happened to be a week that I wasn’t traveling so, I had to fend for myself on meals. The first day, I struggled with what to do. The easy answer was to go to a restaurant. But I spend too much time on the road in restaurants. I considered take out, but that seemed to be a variation on the same theme.

Then I discovered something amazing—and it was less than a half mile from our house. It was this thing called a grocery store. It was an amazing discovery (I’ve led a sheltered life). I walked in and found all my meal and eating problems had been solved!  I could get everything I wanted.  Imagine that, all the answers to my food and eating problems right there–less than a half mile from my home.

As I’m prone to do, I started thinking of the broader implications of my discovery.  Did others know about this?  Perhaps so many people are blind to the fact that grocery stores might be just around the corner.  Perhaps the solution to world hunger was at hand, I just had to make this visible to the world through my blogging, writing, and speaking!  It was so simple….

When I read many of the books, blogs (including my own), or listen to speakers on sales, marketing, leadership and business strategy, sometimes, I think we have just discovered the local grocery store.  We do some thoughtful research, but on a very narrow set of premises, discover some patterns, some things that work, then immediately declare, We Have The Answer To Your [fill in the blank] Problems.

It could be a prospecting approach, how we present our elevator pitch, developing our value proposition, winning deal strategies, how to coach, how to lead.  It could be about how we measure and compensate our people.   It could be new approaches to marketing, or any number of other things……

Sales 2.0 companies and many of the “solutions providers” do the same thing.  They have something that helps certain situations, certain parts of the process.  These solutions truly provide value but to a certain small set of problems and customers.  Too many, however, position themselves as the answer to a sales person’s success or a sales manager’s performance problems.

We all tend to position ourselves as having “the answer,” but after all we are selling something as well.

I was reminded of this the other day by a very thoughtful reader.  In my post, Order Taker or Solution Creator, a very bright commenter wrote, “but Dave, sometimes all a customer wants is to know features and functions and to place an order.  When they want that, I’ll be an order taker.  Sometimes they want to be challenged, when they want to be challenged,  I’ll challenge them.”

Sales, marketing, and business is complicated.  There are no simple answers or miracle cures.  There is no right or wrong way.  There are lots of bright people who have great ideas, tools, approaches.  Things worthy of reading, understanding, applying.  Some solutions and approaches help some of us — for example, I tend to write a lot about complex selling situations, so hopefully, my advice and experience is valuable to those involved in those situations.  But it’s probably not very useful to those who are involved in transactional sales situations.

What I learned from Natalie’s comment is that great performers are truly adaptable.  They learn lots of different approaches.  They  are skeptical, they know “one size does not fit all.”  They don’t blindly drink the latest batch of Kool Aid, regardless of how popular it may seem.  They know there are no miracle cures or get rich quick solutions.

Great performers are constantly reading, learning, evaluating, and adopting.  They take a great idea, combine it with other great ideas, and execute what’s appropriate for the situation they are involved in.  For another situation, they do something else, leveraging other ideas that are more appropriate.

There are lots of great books, bloggers, speakers.  There are great tools and great ideas.  The variety of ideas and approaches, in fact, inform us there is no single path or approach to success, but there are many different ways.  Great performers look at, study and understand all of these.  They continue to learn, they continue to to explore.  Most importantly, they adapt approaches that are appropriate for the situation.

Be skeptical.  Don’t look for silver bullets.  Don’t accept someone’s cure for every problem you have.  Collect lots of approaches, tweak them and own them for yourselves.  Think about each situation and use whatever is most appropriate for the situation.  Realize there is not just one path to a solution, but there are different paths–choose the one that works best for you.

Hold me, and people like me accountable.  When we start talking about the miracle cure, push back.  Make sure you understand the specific circumstances where it works.  Make sure you understand the limitations.  We’ll all grow, learn, and improve our effectiveness.

Over the past few months, I’ve been involved in a lot of discussions on sales compensation.  Last quarter, the conversations focused on commission and bonus plans people were looking to put in place for this year.  Last week and this week, I’m involved in a lot of discussions about people being disappointed in the bonuses they received or didn’t receive for last year, how to manage the issues and so forth.

We talk about pay for performance all the time.  Everyone likes pay for performance when there are great years.  When we’ve blown out the numbers or overachieved our goals, people are excited about pay for performance.  But when we have had a tough year.  When business is down or we haven’t met our goals—despite how hard we worked and how much we tried—we don’t like pay for performance.  I can’t count the discussions I’ve had about, “my people think they should be paid for their hard work and effort.”

I have to admit I’m a little hard nosed about this topic.  We can’t have it both ways, it’s just an insane argument.  When we perform well we should be compensated for it.  When we perform poorly, we should be compensated for that performance—not our effort.  If our performance has been down from the previous year, our compensation should be less than the previous year.  We’ve produced fewer results.

I suppose it’s human nature to focus on ourselves and our compensation.  It’s natural to always want to see progression and increases.  But failing to produce results impacts more than our compensation.  It ripples through the entire company, it impacts shareholder perception, suppliers and others. 

If the sales organization as a whole doesn’t produce results, people lose jobs.  Even though we have worked very hard, even though we have put in long hours, we haven’t produced the results.  We can’t pay the bills in the organization, we can fund new projects and programs through good intentions and hard work.

Accountability is tough.  There are upsides and downsides.  We can’t choose to be happy with the upside only and not have to bear the consequences of the downside.  Accountability is blind to that.

I’m tough on this.  People say, they should be better compensated.  My answer is very simple, you can be better compensated.  It is totally in your control.  Meet or overachieve your goals.  Your compensation will increase when that happens.

Perhaps my view was shaped many years ago when I was having a similar discussion about my compensation with my manager at the time.  I thought I deserved an increase because of my dedication and efforts.  His response was succinct and clear:  “Your increase will become effective when you become effective.”

Are you being effective?  Are you achieving your goals and producing results?  If you aren’t you have no basis for any discussion on your compensation.  Sales is a job in which we are compensated for our performance, so it’s our responsibility to perform.

I’ve been reading a number of different posts on the topic of “Who Should We Be Coaching?”  There seem to be a variety of views, most of which I struggle with.  Some say focus on the middle, suggesting the return on coaching time for both high performers and low performers is not high.  Some focus on the high performers and middle.  In general the low performers lose out.

I’m struggling with some of the ideas, these ideas, frankly, I think it’s the manager’s job to be coaching everyone.  This doesn’t mean each person requires the same amount of time in coaching.  Nor does it mean we have a cookie cutter approach to coaching everyone on the same thing.

Also, I think too many people tend to view things as relatively static.  If competitive sales practices stood still and we didn’t need to improve or innovate, then perhaps we could reduce our coaching for top performers.  But things are always changing, everyone needs coaching and development to continue to improve and innovate.  Without this, top performers soon become mediocre performers.  The bar on selling is continually being raised.  In fact a large part of our job as managers is raising that bar–continuing to innovate and improve, consequently, helping our people develop new capabilities, skills and coaching them in these improvement initiatives.

It seems to me, that coaching needs to focus on several areas for each person:

• Top performers:  No one is perfect, top performers, in fact, always look for the little edge or the little improvement.  Managers need to spend time helping these top performers discover these improvements.  The world of selling never stops–leveraging your top performers for constant improvement and innovation is an important aspect of coaching–managers should be leveraging top performers to help innovate and improve, taking what these top performers discover and leveraging this across the sales organization.  Finally, part of the manager’s job is to coach people not only in maximizing their performance today, but to maximize their potential contribution in the future.  Manager’s need to look at developing top performers to take greater responsibility–whether it is moving to a higher level as a sales person, moving into management, or moving into some other role.  Coaching is not just about today, but it is about preparing people for tomorrow.
• Mid-range performers:  There’s no argument here, we want to see continued improvement in the performance of our mid range performers.  Unlike our top performers, there is clearly a need to improve what they are doing today.  As managers, most of our time will be focused on performance in their current roles.  At the same time, we must also prepare them for the future–if the bar is being raised, we have to prepare these people to meet these new challenges.
• Low performers:  We can’t afford to ignore them, we can’t write them off.  As managers, we need to coach them—getting them to improve their performance, meeting our expectations.  Alternatively, we have to move them into a job where they can be a top performer (sometimes that’s moving them out of the company).  All of this is part of the manager’s role in coaching, doing nothing is not an option, that is if the manager is doing her job.

As managers, we are responsible for the performance of all our people.  We have to make sure each person is performing at the highest levels possible in their current roles, we have to prepare them to grow in their job and to grow in their ability to contribute to the company.  If we can’t get them to reach the levels of performance required, we have to move them into areas where they can perform.  All of this is part of what managers do in coaching.

I wish it were simpler, but they aren’t.  Managers have to coach everyone.  The time we invest has to be appropriate for what we are trying to achieve with each person.  We can’t “schedule 15 minutes of coaching” for each person–it doesn’t work that way.  What we coach each person on is different–we have to coach to maximum impact for each individual.

What do you think?  Am I missing something?

There is an interesting discussion on Focus on transforming sales organizations from Push to Pull.  I can see the reason for the discussion, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard a comment about “pushy sales people,” I’d have a huge pile of nickels.  It’s also both fashionable and realistic to talk about the customer’s buying process.  Customers are in the driver seat, social business can provide customers a lot of information that sales people previously provided.  Marketing is developing rich content strategies to nurture and develop relationships with customers–theoretically enabling them to “pull” when they have a need.

There are a lot of important changes that enable us to engage customers in different and more impactful ways.  However, with all that said, I remain an unabashed proponent of the sales person’s obligation to Push!  I don’t believe sales can afford to be Pulled–in fact it’s irresponsible to be Pull only.

The problem is sales people (and businesses) have always gotten the notion of Pushing wrong.  It’s always been focused on the wrong thing:  What’s our elevator pitch?  Let’s go pitch our product!  I need to get this order now!  It’s been almost exclusively focused on the sales person, the sales person’s goals and the sales person’s company.  It should be clear why customers react so poorly to this, it’s not about them.

Push is important, it’s the obligation of sales people–but it must be correctly focused.  It has to be about the customer.  It has to be focused on them and what they can achieve.  It’s the obligation of the sales person to help their customers think differently about their businesses, to discover new opportunities, to discover opportunities to improve–operations, customer satisfaction, quality. profitability, reduce risk, or whatever.  Customers are sometimes buried in the day to day, losing perspective about opportunities to grow their businesses.  Often, as prisoners of their own experiences, they don’t realize that they might try something new, there might be a different or better way that improves their results.

Whether it’s called “Challenging,” “Provocative,” “Solutions Oriented,” or “Customer Focused,”  top sales people bring new ideas and opportunities to their customer.  They create a vision and engage their customers in owning the vision.

Push doesn’t stop there, it continues through the buying process, helping the customer engage the right people, structure their process, and make a decision.  Great sales people help the customer keep focused on the goals they are trying to achieve.  As the buying decision stretches out–as it often does, the great sales person pushes the customer–helping them realize the lost opportunities and opportunity costs of delaying the decision and implementation.  The objective is not the order, but helping the customer achieve their goals on as aggressive a schedule as possible.

Push is critical, push is important–but only if it is focused on the customer and pushing them to achieve their goals.

But Pull plays an important role in supporting Push.  Pull is a measure of customer ownership  and engagement in the opportunity, and the business result.  If the sales person has done the right job in Pushing, all of a sudden the customer starts to Pull.  They embrace the initiative, they get actively engaged in the opportunity and in owning the results.

Great sales people look for their customer to Pull as a result of their appropriate Pushing.  By itself, Pushing can be slow, but if the sales person can get the customer engaged in Pulling as well, the entire process gets accelerated.

A Pull only strategy is the kiss of death for sales people.  However powerful our customer nurturing and development programs, if we wait for the customer to Pull, we are in a seriously disadvantaged position.  The customer has already done their research and arrived at some decisions.  They have evaluated alternatives (correctly or incorrectly) and narrowed alternatives to a short list.  At this point the value the sales person can create is seriously constrained–primarily to responding to the customer need.  At this point, too often, the difference between alternatives is very small–often leaving the key differentiator to be price.

Pull is bad for the customer, as well.  It puts too much responsibility on them.  They probably can never be a knowledgeable in solutions as the people who build those solutions.  While there is a wealth of information in the web, the customer in their research may emerge informed, but not well informed.  They may emerge mis-informed.  Pull is even worse from another perpective–it puts the onus of recognizing opportunities on them–they may miss opportunities, or be late in recognizing them.  Customers get great value from others making them aware, challenging them, Pushing them.

Push and Pull, artfully combined is the winning formula for the customer and for sales.  They work well with each other, but to my mind, it all starts with a little Push.

What do you think?