Understanding the Sales Force

You probably know Jeffrey Gitomer, author of the Little Red Book of Selling and a syndicated columnist in many business journals. In this week’s column, Gitomer presented five internal senses required for having a sense of selling.

He says that “you must interpret the customer’s words, questions, tone, mood and motives in order to determine both where your opportunity is, and when that opportunity has surfaced.”Generally good advice.  But what would happen if we took it one step further?

Up until now, whenever I’ve mentioned Seth Godin, it’s been to take him to task on the subject of the “Death of Selling”. Today, Seth made lots of sense with his post on Getting Referrals.  I’ve also written a post on getting referrals.

You want your existing salespeople to haunt their prospects when those prospects go into hiding.  That will prevent them from becoming sales ghosts that come around to haunt you!

You can’t let stuff like that bother you.  Can you imagine what would happen if all of the professional managers and coaches in sports reacted to the name calling and negativity they get from their fans and the media?  They’d be crushed! Just apologize if you offend someone, even if it wasn’t intentional, and move on.  Don’t get upset if they call you names.

Our four-year old son asked me to play baseball with him today, a beautiful, calm, but chilly fall day.  He couldn’t find the oversized whiffle ball that I used to pitch to him all summer so we used a significantly smaller, regulation size rubber ball.  I told him it might take a little while to get used to the smaller ball and he would have to watch it very closely.

Why aren’t salespeople confident enough that the truth will be enough to make the sale?  Why don’t they believe that their prospects will buy the product or service as it is?  Why do they feel they must embellish everything to make the sale?

Companies must reengineer their recruiting process, modify their selection process, overhaul their development programs and set higher expectations.  Only then will the wasted time, money and effort from inconsistent and ineffective sales hiring end.