Understanding the Sales Force

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?

Your salespeople want a better, easier, simpler way to succeed. Yet as much as they want it, they very much want to hold on to what they know, the routine, approach, beliefs, strategies and tactics they’ve always used. Their security blanket.

Guy Kawasaki is at it again. This time he is behind Alltop, a magazine rack that points us to the best reading on the internet.  This week, sales.alltop.com debuted, pointing us to the best sales blogs on the web.  To make it even more interesting, to get people more engaged and undoubtedly to generate some buzz, they are running a contest. 

This afternoon, Chris Mott and I were discussing Obama and McCain. Since I don’t like either candidate, I feel somewhat protected and free to provide my political sales correlation. I’ve never dared to venture into a political editorial and I don’t mean for this to be one either. Please read the following thoughts as they would apply to competing salespeople fighting for the same big account.

Wouldn’t it be cool if your sales force got easy sales the way amateur golfers get easy pars at Charity run best ball golf tournaments? 

I’ve seen plenty of salespeople who sell smart without maximum effort and they get mediocre results. I’ve seen plenty of salespeople who put forth the maximum effort without selling smart and still perform quite well. So the clear advantage goes to the salesperson who puts forth maximum effort supported by maximum smart.

When companies attempt to improve sales they often look first to sales skills. If you’ve been reading this Blog for a while, you know that I believe skills are important, but only to a certain degree.  The problem with putting an emphasis on developing only the skills is that without the proper combination of strengths and incentive to support the use of those skills, the skills alone don’t get it done.