October 27, 2009
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Creatures from Planet Sales
Matt Nettleton
Many business owners have two incredibly tragic and harmful beliefs that control the fate of their companies. First, they believe salespeople are magical and mystical creatures. Owners believe that you know them when you see them and you have no predictable bias or process for finding out which salespeople are naughty and which are nice. Second, owners believe that the sales process is a mystery – wrapped in an enigma, meshed with a puzzle. Consequently, while you can criticize in hindsight, it is virtually impossible to plan or prepare for a sales call using a consistent process. Both beliefs can be toxic and destructive. The following story is about an owner trenched in belief number one.
Last week I met with a business owner who invited me in to talk to a new guy he had just hired. He told me that as an owner, he had three big problems. First, he was tired of telling his salesperson to get going. “What do they think they are supposed to do all day?” he asked me. Second, he was tired of hearing about deals that were going to close. “Why can’t they just hand me a signed contract?” he wondered. Finally, he was tired of missed deadlines. “Why is he always running on his own schedule, three days behind the rest of the company?” The owner was tired of dealing with these sales guys that he just could not figure out. I asked him to sum up his problem. It was simple, “Geeks are from Mars, salespeople are from somewhere else. And I speak geek, salespeople baffle me.”
It is a common lament. As a business owner, you need to be able to find people who sell at least as well as you do or your business will never grow bigger than a one person shop. But most business owners simply know what they did to get sales and do not have the time or the energy to decode the messages that salespeople are sending them. The exchange doesn’t have to be this way.
At Trustpointe, our clients have an advantage. When it comes to interviewing we help them cheat. We know that successful salespeople have five measurable consistent traits: (1) Goal Orientation; (2) Initiative; (3) Vitality; (4) Ego; and (5) Time Competency. Each of these behaviors is a key to growing sales. Best of all, with the right tools you can go into a sales interview knowing if the person you are talking to has the right behavioral characteristics to do the job you are looking for.
What I finally said to the owner was simple, “Relax, salespeople are not from another planet. They are just people with a different but measurable skill set. When you learn to decode that skill set, you set your business up for explosive growth.” The next move is his…
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