Understanding the Sales Force

You learned the three R’s when you were in grade school but selling in today’s economy is about two R’s – resistance and recession – and they are related.  While resistance is always lurking in the background, the recession brings it to the forefront and your salespeople must be able to sell – despite it – and therein lies the problem.

Last week we brought our six-year old son to the batting cages where, for the first time, he hit against little league pitching.  Big deal?  You bet.  Up until last week, he was clobbering whiffle balls with whiffle bats from about twenty feet away.  At the cage, he was wearing a batting helmet, swinging a heavy metal bat, and seeing baseballs thrown at 35 MPH from 45 feet away.  It was a huge difference.

I write for two different audiences. On the blog I write for management, while I write for salespeople over at my Baseline Selling Tips.  Today I’m killing two birds with one stone, a case history for both audiences.  Click here to read Case History – Dealing with No Responses and Negative Responses.

We were also asked to be judges in the Central Mass Sales Awards contest. This morning, I personally reviewed several dozen applications, some of which were very worthy of consideration. Yet I repeatedly saw some of the same patterns in the nomination applications as I see when Objective Management Group evaluates sales forces.

Brad Ferguson suggested that there might be a correlation between racquetball and sales improvement!

This weekend we visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY and I was struck by a few things:

1) Why don’t we have a Hall of Fame for Salespeople? I know that companies provide awards for their own salespeople but is that limited recognition enough for those who are motivated most by recognition?