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The Importance Of Push And Pull In Sales

David Brock — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 06:45:39 +0000

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?

Looking For Ideas In All The Wrong Places

David Brock — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 06:45:24 +0000

Top performers–whether they are individual contributors, managers, or executives are always looking for new ideas. They are driven for improvement and innovation. But too often, our efforts are stymied. It’s hard to improve or innovate. Often, I think it’s a result of looking in the wrong places.

When I get into discussions about this with people, I pose the question, “Where do you look for new ideas?” Often, the response are, “We look at our competition!” Sometimes, it’s, “We look at others in the industry.”

When I hear these responses, I’m reminded of the terrific quote from Gary Hamel: “Ideas that transform industries almost never come from inside those industries.” There are dozens of examples of this–the start up that has a completely different take on things, the game changer that was never on anyone’w radar. The Amazon’s, Apple’s, Facebook’s and others. It’s a dismal but too accurate observation–but we can do something about this.

Benchmarking our competition, looking within our industries is an important element of our business, sales and marketing strategies. We have to have competitive practices, we have to understnad the critical issues in our markets. But at the same time, it limits us. We restrict ourselves to the familiar, to the known, to our experience base. We become prisoners of our own experience, blind to what is happening outside our worlds.

The good news, our competitors and our customers do the same things! They are also blinded and limited. This creates a tremendous opportunity — both to outcompete and outperform our competitors, and to bring ideas and innovation and value to our customers.

If we just started looking in non-traditional places–the web and social media may be one of those new places for us to hang out. Different industries, different regions, different cultures, different business models all give us new ideas. The ideas we may be looking at could be old and stale in their own industries or regions—but they could represent great innovation in our own.

Innovation doesn’t need to be tough, it just means looking in different places, exposing yourself to new ideas. If you live in a B2B world–look at retail and B2C. If you live in a box/product solution world, look at services, subscriptions, knowledge based industries. If you live in high tech, look at high fashion. If you are a Boomer meet some X, Y, Z’s (and vice versa). Expose yourself to different things–different art, different music, different people, different ideas.

You could learn a lot. You might find ideas that twisted, tweaked, artfully adapted could have great applicability for you and your customers. They could set you apart from everyone else. You might also get a chance to see your new competitors–perhaps before they become competitors. That opens a whole new realm of possiblities.

Are you looking for innovation innovation and ideas in the right places?

Opportunity Solving

David Brock — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 13:29:12 +0000

As sales professionals, we learn a lot about problem solving. We focus on understanding our customers’ problems, determining their needs and presenting compelling solutions. We learn to identify and quantify the customer’s pain and seek to eliminate it. We go from customer to customer trying to find those that have problems we can solve.

This is a valuable activity for sales people. It’s easy to catch our customer’s attention–they are probably already aware of the problem, hopefully, they have recognized the pain, and are pursuing solutions. But I wonder if we miss an opportunity to better serve our customers, while simultaneously setting ourselves apart from our competitors.

What if we expanded our view of sales to also become “opportunity solvers?”

What if we helped our customers identify new opportunities to expand or grow their business? What if we identified new opportunities for them to better serve or attract customers? What if we identified opportunities to increase the quality of their products and services? What if we could help them understand new ways of improving their profitability?

What if we could help open our customers eyes–to help them discover something they had never considered before?

Our customers are no different than most of us. They are busy just surviving day to day. They’re focused on getting their jobs done. They have too much to do, with far too few resources, and no time. When they find a problem, they want to solve it quickly. They worry about their competition and trying to keep ahead of them.

They get so busy in the day to day, they never have the time to step back and think, “Are we missing something?” “What if we did things completely differently?”

When they do take some time to do this, too often they are constrained. They’re often to close to situations to really see what’s happening. They’re blinded by their experience and the way things have always been done. They are so busy, they don’t get the chance to see what others are doing. They focus on their competitors of today, not the opportunities or competitors of tomorrow. Netflix changed the rules for Blockbuster, Apple changed the rules for Nokia, Motorola, and others. Amazon changed the rules for Borders. Southwest did that to American, United, and others. Social media is changing the rules for the media industry.

To be certain, there is an entrepreneur somewhere that is doing that for your customers’ businesses and industries.

But the opportunities don’t have to be that dramatic, they don’t have to be game changing. Many years ago, I sold a $20 M computer for just one second. I had the idea that if the customer, a credit card processing company, could save one second on each transaction, they could dramatically improve customer service, retention, and employee satisfaction and productivity. The operations VP didn’t have a problem, he just needed to make sure the transactions were processed efficiently and correctly. He was doing that well, but he was so busy, he never had the time to consider doing something differently.

Another client was so busy competing and trying to grow in their traditional markets, they didn’t realize there was a whole new set of customers they could address. With only some new marketing materials and a sales team focused on the new market, they created an entire new revenue stream.

Sales people need to be opportunity solvers. Sales people need to help their customers see what they can’t see. Sales people need to change the conversation–to move beyond just talking about problems, but to helping their customers discover new opportunities.

What are you doing to help your customer discover new opportunities?

Sales People, We Need To Be More Pushy!

David Brock — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 06:30:29 +0000

I can imagine any buyer encountering this post is going to groan. The last thing customers need is a pushy sales person. We know the type. After the friendly, “Howdy,” or “Hello,” as soon as possible, the conversation shifts to “I want to sell you something,” or “I need a sale,” or “When am I getting the order?”

The last thing we need is a sales person trying to sell us something we don’t want or need. We don’t want to waste our time with sales people who only care about the order or their commission checks. That kind of pushiness is misdirected and totally inappropriate.

But, we do need to be much more pushy! We need to help our customers–I think the solution is not backing off, working with the customer at their pace, but I think we need to be aggressive to the point of “appropriate” pushiness.

As sales people, our job is to help our customers achieve their goals. Whether it’s to solve problems they have, help them address new opportunities, our role is to demonstrate how our solutions can help them to achieve their goals.

Time to solution, time to results, payback are all critical concepts–they should be very important to our customers. It’s our responsibility as sales people to help our customers accelerate their ability to get the results. We can’t let our customers cheat themselves from a single dollar, euro, yuan, yen of additional revenue, cost savings, or profit.

But our customers struggle with buying. They have trouble aligning themselves around a problem definition, they struggle in defining requirements, they search for alternatives—all while trying to hold down their day jobs. They get diverted, the project slows. Sometimes, they get consumed in the transaction–worried more about the price, focusing on what they are buying, not why they are buying. They say, “Maybe later.”

Sometimes there’s a window of opportunity. If they don’t make a decision on a key component, or program, they’ll miss a product launch, they’ll miss a key event.

A few months ago, I was pushing a prospect for a decisions, I was anxious to move ahead. The customer misunderstood. The key executive said, “Dave, we need to slow down. We’re just not sure we should do this.” I responded: “I’m really worried about this. I’m worried that every month we wait, you are missing a minimum of $20M in revenue. I know revenue and growth is a top concern for everyone in the organization. I just can’t stand to see you losing that much new revenue every month.”

All of a sudden things changed. The customer had gotten so involved in the task, they lost track of what they were trying to achieve. Realizing what was at stake, realizing that I wasn’t concerned about “the order,” but was focused on helping them achieve their results changed the conversation. Within 24 hours we decided to move forward.

That example may be a little dramatic, but as sales people we see this every day. Customers need to produce results. They need help, they sometimes lose their way. They need leadership. It’s our responsibility as sales people to help accelerate their attainment of their goals. We need to be appropriately aggressive and pushy.

A couple of days ago, I was coaching a client on a stalled opportunity. Their customer was dragging their feet on a decision. The customer had a critical product launch coming up. My customer and their competition had a 3-4 month lead time in supplying their components of the product. We were reaching the critical deadline for my client to meet their customer’s goals. If the customer didn’t make a decision, their launch date would have been impacted. Every month they deferred the launch meant lost opportunity in a highly competitive market. Additionally, their customer had already bought “shelf space” in the retailers for the product. Missing the deadlines would have meant empty shelves and lost money. I advised my client to get pushy with their customer–not for the order, but for the customer to realize their goals and to not waste what might have been millions of pesos.

We have to first earn the right to be pushy. We have to focus on the customer’s problems and goals. Our solutions need to produce distinctive business value. The customer has to understand and buy into that business value. Then our focus has to be on how we help our customer get that value, how we can accelerate it, how we can reduce the risk. We can only be pushy when the customer knows our motivation is for their success–not our personal deadlines and goals.

Our impatience must be focused on helping them achieve their results, not on getting our order. After all, our goals–both our customers’s success and getting the order are aligned. If the customer achieves their goals, then we will achieve ours.

It’s important to be impatient with our customers. It’s important to be pushy. We want our customers to be successful. We want them to start seeing the benefits to their business as soon as possible. As long as our focus is on the customer and helping them get the results they need to achieve, pushiness is never wrong.

Innovation In Sales

David Brock — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 06:30:36 +0000

Innovation In Sales—sounds a little like an oxymoron, something like sales intelligence. I was intrigued by the question my friend Lauren Harper posed on Focus.

Innovation is critical. The pace at which customers are changing the way they buy, demands rapid change and innovation. Without it, we will be left behind. We will become uncompetitive, our products and services will be commoditized, we will be left to fulfilling orders at the lowest possible price.

Yet innovation is tough–or we make it tougher than it need be. I think the problem is that we have a tendency to associate innovation with “The Big Idea.” Coming up with the big idea is tough. It takes a huge amount of time, very smart insightful people, lots of research and debate. Implementing the big idea is tougher. It probably means aligning lots of disparate interests, many moving parts, great change management efforts, and huge risks. It may take months or years to know if there is a payback.

I tend to like to think of innovation in sales as dozens to hundreds of little ideas or experiments. Innovation starts with each sales person looking at what they do every day. Trying something new–perhaps a new way to do a prospecting call, perhaps a different way of engaging the customer in a conversation about what they are trying to achieve, perhaps a different way of presenting a solution. It’s looking at each deal and asking, “What if I tried something a little different?” Perhaps it’s exploring personal performance, asking “What can I do to shorten my sales cycle?” ”How do I improve my ability to win?” It may be asking the customer, “How can I be more effective in working with you?” Perhaps it’s getting rid of some bad habits. The biggest enemies of innovation at a personal level is being on autopilot, sticking rigidly to the script, not paying attention, going through the motions.

At an organizational and managerial level, the same principles apply. It’s encouraging your people to try some different things. It may be seeing one high impact thing a sales person is doing and sharing that “best practice” with everyone else — letting them experiment and adapt it to their own territories.

Ideas can come from learning from other organizations in other industries (that’s one reason networking events can be really powerful). It maybe seeing someone or organization doing something clever; then adapting it, tweaking it, and trying it in your own situation or organization. Reading, attending conferences, constantly learning, also provide great ideas. It may not come from a conference speaker focusing on the big idea, but from that conversation you had with someone during a break.

Not every idea will succeed, but since you are working on dozens to hundreds of little ideas, the risks of failure are probably very small or even inconsequential. Plus, even for those ideas that fail–there is something to be learned, perhaps even a new idea or innovation.

Set a goal for yourself and your team to come up with 5 new ideas that can be implemented tomorrow at no cost. Try them out, throw away those that don’t work, adapt those that do. When you’ve exhausted those 5, come up with another 5, repeat the same cycle. Dozens of ideas and innovations, executed rapidly can have a higher and faster payoff then the one “Big Idea.”

Who Is Our Customer — A View From The Fashion Industry

David Brock — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:14:36 +0000

It might come as a surprise to some of my readers that I consult within the fashion industry — it must be my keen sense of style they want to leverage. It really is difficult to be an icon of fashionability and coolness…….

I’ve always admired the connection with the customer that my fashion industry clients have–it’s something all of us can learn from. These clients are always trying to understand what’s “hot” with their customers, what drives them, what are the great trends or fads they will buy. They focus intently on understanding “who” their customers are.

One of my clients is a fashion leader for powersports, they create clothes and fashions for various segments within the motorcycle industry–both riders and “wannabes.” It’s not just one segment they address, motorcycle fashions go far beyond leather jackets with gang logos on the back. It’s fascinating to go to their design studios. Two walls are filled with “pictures of their customers.” They create “lifestyle boards” for each of their customer personas–they’ve identified about 10. Their design studios have 10 different sections, each representing a different customer segment. Each of these lifestyle boards is filled with information—dozens of pictures of their customers–not in motorcycle clothes, but in street clothes, party clothes, everywhere. They have the magazines each segment reads posted on the walls, music they listen to, movies they are seeing, gadgets they buy, the cars they drive, their hobbies and toys. They have pictures of the places they hang out–clubs, restaurants, they know where they go on vacations. They have pictures of tatoos, jewelry they wear. They track the websites they show up at, watch YouTube videos. They also have all the statistical data posted on the walls—demographic information, census information, jobs, income levels, all sorts of data.

Their designers hang out with their customers, they take pictures and videos, they include these on the lifestyle boards. With each of the lifestyle boards they’ve established, they are really trying to understand who their customers are–they are trying to get into their heads to see what excites them. What’s important in getting this “picture of their customer,” is they go far beyond their customers’ riding motorcycles — they know just understanding their motorcycle riding experience is far too limiting–even misleading.

These designers know it’s important to understand who their customers are. They leverage this knowledge to create new fashions–things that compel their customers to buy. They know “Twilight,” vampires and such are important to one segment–incorporating these as design elements into some of their clothing lines. They know in Lady Gaga is important to another segment, incorporating colors and themes consistent with the little monsters into those lines. They know the lifestyles of young professionals and what they want to see, or the older professionals, or the retiree that takes adventure riding vacations.

We can learn a lot from those motorcycle fashion designers. Too often, when we try to understand who our customers are, we focus too narrowly–how do they use our products, what problems do we solve. It’s too limiting, we need to understand who are customers are as people–where they live–what drives them professionally and personally. We need to get a very broad picture of them. We can develop these views for our customers–as individuals and enterprises. Once we really understand our customers, then we can map our product development plans into things they consider important, we can focus our marketing messages on the issues they are most interested in, we can engage them in their buying process–focusing on the issues they worry about, rather than regurgitating our features and capabilities.

We’ve seen our high technology clients learn from these fashion designers–people in the semiconductor industry, software companies, integrators. We’ve seen our industrial products clients get great leverage from learning from these motorcycle designers. We’ve seen these approaches become the cornerstone to customer engagement in the financial services industry.

Take some time to look at the fashion industry–they know their success comes from understanding who their customers are. We can learn a lot from them.

Your Value Proposition Is No Longer Sufficient

David Brock — Wed, 25 May 2011 06:00:29 +0000

Too many sales and marketing people struggle with value propositions. For some–the value proposition is still internally focused, basically an advanced form of Features – Advantages – Benefits. Others think of the value proposition – the elevator pitch that, when stated in a compelling manner, the customer will melt and immediately issue a purchase order.

Others recognize that value is in the eyes of the beholder, they work to understand what customers value, then present their solutions in the context of what each customer values. They recognize, they need to do this for each person involved in the decision. They understand that value is dynamic–that what customers value may change over time and these sales professionals respond to those changes.

Even in its best execution, the problem with value propositions is they are rooted in what we sell. We base value propositions on our products and our solutions. It’s increasingly difficult to differentiate our products and solutions—more importantly, that’s not what’s important to the customer.

Please don’t misunderstand me, Value Propositions are critical. We still have to understand what customers value, define, communicate and deliver differentiated value, but customer needs are moving far beyond this. We need to focus on Value Creation.

Value Creation is different from your value proposition. Value creation includes a number of elements:

The customer experience—whether it’s the customer buying experience, their experience in using your products/services, the experience of working with your company, or how they engage you in the social world.
It’s about how we engage our customers through the life of our relationship with them–each touch, each interaction, creates value—not solving world hunger, but in every interchange having them think it has been a good investment of their time.
It’s about how we help them think about their businesses differently. How we help them identify new opportunities to grow, how we help them expand into new markets, how we help them better understand and respond to their customers, how we help them operate more efficiently and effectively (this is where value creation comes close to value propositions).
It’s about how we help facilitate our customer’s buying processes.
It’s about helping the customer understand and manage change. Sales is all about change, we create value in helping our customers embrace and manage it.
It’s about collaboration and innovation–working jointly with our customers, building capability and capacity within both our organizations.
Value creation is about higher levels of relationships and trust–running both ways.

Value Creation is less about products and solutions, and more about customer centricity, customer experience, people, and relationships.

Value Creation is not about a specific business case — our value propositions may focus on a specific decision and business case for our solutions. Value Creation is about how we sustain value over the life-cycle of our relationship with the customer.

Value Creation is not about a transaction—but about 100′s and 1000′s of interactions that create meaning for our customers—as enterprises and individuals.

Value Creation can never be reduced to price—but it’s about the importance–or value–we bring in a long term relationship. It becomes inconceivable to all parties not to have this relationship—the costs are too high.

We need to master Value Propositions, it’s the starting point for Value Creation. But in the new world of buying, our most sustainable form of differentiation is becoming how we create and maintain value with our customers, suppliers, stakeholders, partners and employees.

The Difference Between Good And Great

David Brock — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 17:46:14 +0000

What’s the difference between good sales people or sales managers and truly great ones? I guess we can come up with lots of lists, but I think they reduce to one thing. The truly great sales people and sales manager always focus on getting better, the good ones are content with being good. It’s a subtle, but important difference. It has a profound impact on performance.

The great sales people and sales managers are already high performers–but they don’t settle for that, they know they can get better.

They are constantly seeking to learn knew things. They see every training program as an opportunity–even if they have had similar sessions in the past. They read voraciously.
They set ambitious goals and keep stretching themselves to achieve more. Quota is something they pass on the way to achieving their goals.
They are open to different points of view, they know they don’t know everything, they recognize there may be different and better ways to do things and actively seek these out.
They readily admit what they don’t know–but seek to fill that gap. They seek advice from others.
They readily admit when they make mistakes, knowing that learning and growth can come from understanding mistakes.
They don’t make excuses or blame others. They hold themselves accountable.
They freely share their knowledge and experience with others, not forcing it on them, but knowing that sharing knowledge improves both parties.
They revel in others’ success—perhaps more than they revel in their own.
They look for potential and opportunity in everything. They are pragmatically optimistic.
They have no time for negative people, they don’t listen to the things that can’t be done.
They experiment.
They are flexible, adaptable.
They are masters of collaboration, they know they can’t be successful without the support of a team.
They are insatiably curious.
They are problem solvers.
They have high personal standards and ethics. They tend to expect much more of themselves than they do of others.
They do not view others as competitors, but as people to learn from or to collaborate with in achieving goals.
They have great empathy, they understand what drives others.
They care, they want to help others achieve their goals and objectives.
They are disciplined, methodical, and focused. They no that success and randomness cannot coexist.
They measure what they do, so they can track their performance and improve themselves.
They embrace and drive change because they recognize change is necessary for growth.
They persevere despite the obstacles and challenges, recognizing excellence is the result of hard work. They don’t quit.
They are mentally tough.
They lead balanced lives. They take time for friends, families, community. They take time for themselves.
They don’t harbor grudges since those distract them from achieving their goals.
They don’t seek failure, but aren’t afraid to fail.
They are impatient with the status quo.
They are jealous of their time and try to avoid wasting it.
They value stillness and reflection.
They seek greatness in everyone and everything.
They find joy in everything they do.

Are you settling for being good or do you aspire to be great?

Does Success Blind Us To The Real Opportunity?

David Brock — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:46:56 +0000

My friend, Gary Hart, were having an email conversation about performance. We were talking about an organization both of us know well that outwardly seemed to be successful. They were meeting their numbers, managers were proud, but both Gary and I saw they could be doing so much more.

Often I get into conversations with very successful sales professionals or leaders. They have a track record of meeting their goals, consistently meeting quota. Justifiably, they’re proud. But then, I pose the question, “Are you achieving enough? Are you reaching your full potential?” Often, the reaction is, “What do you mean? We’re consistently hitting our goals, meeting our numbers. Are you trying to tell me we’re not doing enough?”

Actually, I am, very often, I see individuals and organizations not performing to their full potential. They are meeting their goals, but could be doing so much more.

In some cases, success can be blindingly devastating. Take the organization that is always meeting their numbers. But then you take a broader look, their competitors are growing faster than they are. They are losing customers. They are missing opportunities. Their channel partners are shifting focus to other product lines. Their people are moving to “more exciting opportunities.” Within the organization, we sometimes let our success blind us. We think we are doing well, but don’t consider, “Can we do better?” “Are we missing something?” “Could we be more effective.” We get so focused on the “goal” that we lose site of everything else. Or we let our “success” lull us into a sense of complacency.

One of the nice things about failure is that it forces us to examine what we are doing. A nice thing about this past economic downturn is that all of a sudden, a lot of the sins our past successes masked became vividly apparent. Too often, we succumb to being prisoners of our own experience. We continue to do the things we always have done–those things allowed us to achieve our goals. We never take time to reassess, to consider something different, something that could make us more effective, achieve new levels of performance, extend our success.

I see similar things in talking to sales people. Poor to mediocre sales people obsess on the quota. Thebad sales people complain, “Management doesn’t understand, they are trying to screw us!”. The mediocre sales people worry, “I dnon’t know how to hit these numbers!” My conversations with really great sales people are different. They don’t care about their quota—it’s just a milestone they pass on the way to achieving the goals they have set for themselves. Great sales people are always looking to achieve more, they are continuously looking at how they can improve. While they have been very successful in the past, they don’t care about that, there’s always something more they can do and achieve.

Success is great, we all want to be successful, we need to be successful for our organizations. Our companies strive for success.

The real question is, are you just settling for success? Could you achieve more?

Do You Trust Yourself And Your People Enough To Let Go?

David Brock — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:57:13 +0000

I hear from sales people all over, “My manager won’t let go!” “She’s micro managing me!” As I listened to these complaints, as I started to watch and see this happening, I begin to wonder, as managers do we trust our people enough to let them be successful?

Too often, I see well intended managers constantly riding their people. Checking in with them before and after each sales call, “What’s your plan?” “How did it go, what are the next steps?” Or in reviewing deals, they go on autopilot, “Here’s what you need to do next……”

When I try to point out this behavior, I usually get responses, “You don’t understand, we have to get these deals to make our numbers.” “I’m really experienced, I know how to get deals done. I just need them to do it my way, then I know we’ll make our numbers.”

Ultimately,this approach to management is doomed to fail. Our job as leaders is to get things done through our people. We are most effective developing them, getting them to achieve higher levels of performance. If we tell them what they should be doing, if we dictate, if we are constantly checking everything, the whole system breaks down. Micromanaging shifts the accountability from the sales person to the manager. All of a sudden, it is the manager that’s responsible for identifying the next steps, managing the deal, even managing calls. Even if that was the right thing to do, the sheer numbers are impossible to manage–no manager simply has enough time to be calling the shots on everything–the manager starts to become the bottleneck, things slow down as sales people wait for direction, productivity plummets, sales plummet—the manager and the organization fail.

Think of the organizational impact. We’ve all worked for micro managers before–it’s terrible! We are demotivated, we are uninspired, we go through the motions. If, as managers, we have done the right job of hiring, hopefully we’ve built a team of independent thinkers, aggressive sales people who want to close business. Then we take all that away by micromanaging. The best people will leave–then all you are left with are poor performers.

Our jobs as managers is to magnify our impact. We do this by passing our experience on to our people through coaching, training, and development. We help them grow to perform at higher levels.

If we’ve done our job as managers, we’ve hired great people. These great people have different, perhaps better ways of doing things. As managers, we understand what they are doing, assess whether it produces the desired results, coach them in how to improve. If we’re great, we let them teach us, learning from what they do, incorporating their approaches into our best practices, coaching others in how to improve even further.

If we are great managers, we give our people the same opportunities we had in developing—including the opportunity to make mistakes. Each of us learns through our mistakes. Too often, I see managers trying to keep their people from making mistakes. People are going to make mistakes, our job is to help our people learn from them, to recover, and to move forward. We can’t let mistake avoidance overwhelm both us and them. We have to encourage thoughtful risk.

Being a great manager is ultimately about trust–both in yourself and what you’ve done to coach and develop your people and in them! Do you trust your people enough to let go?

Reminder: Don’t forget to visit Future Selling Institute. We’re having conversations about these and all other sales leadership topics there, join the discussion!