Sales, training and top performers
Reluctantly, it has to be admitted, because it ‘dates’ me, my career spans selling, in a business-to-business environment, from 1963 until 2008, a period of 45 years! That has included large corporates such as ICI (UK and Australia) and IBM and two start ups, Dataview Ltd (sold in 1986) and Aviation Briefing Ltd, still plugging away. In recent years, there has been a regular teaching assignment at ISUGA in Quimper, France. Even semi-retirement brings a flow of coaching clients!
Anyway, to the point of this Post.
A number of people have suggested that it would be valuable to many people out there if some of my experiences could be documented. Grateful for the idea. Let’s start with Top Performers.
‘Our business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves,
to break our own records, to outstrip yesterday by our today’[i]
THE ATTRIBUTES OF TOP PERFORMERS
The behaviours of top performers are impossible to analyse beyond a certain point. There are attributes that distinguish those that excel and reach the very top in their chosen field but, thankfully, they are indicators rather than sets of components. How awful it would be if performance could be determined as simply as baking a cake from a recipe.
Top performance in selling has been surrounded by a forest of confusion, obscuration and plain ignorance. Even today books are written, courses are run and ‘experts’ propound sales theory which is more likely to reduce performance than improve it.
WHAT IS TOP PERFORMANCE?
Frankly, who knows? When we think of the ebb and flow of great sportsmen and athletes we think in terms of admiration of the performance rather than specific behaviours. The world’s winners exhibit something magical, something beyond definition that lifts us spiritually and emotionally.
Well it is, literally, beyond definition. Top performers very rarely understand just what it is that makes them so effective. In every field, including selling, top performance happens naturally and the individuals have great difficulty in specifying what they are doing that makes such a difference. That’s why very few top athletes make good coaches.
Sales Assumptions
Selling is a basic human activity. Many of the successes and satisfactions that we obtain in life are directly attributable to how well we can persuade other people to give them to us. The professional salesperson hones, to a much greater degree than the average person, some basic skills used in his total life to gain satisfaction.
Selling could be defined as the process of getting others to do what you wish without having any formal authority to coerce them to do so.
Because selling is primarily a process of influencing others without having any formal authority over them, it almost invariably has strong emotional components. Even in a highly technical sales situation, there is almost always an emotional factor.
There is a thinking component in virtually every sales process. The salesperson may have to use intuition (inductive reasoning) as well as an analytical process (deductive reasoning).
There is also a social dimension, a helping quality, in most sales situations. This usually involves three critical aspects:
- Real solutions are being promoted
- The solution will be reliable, and
- The customer is receiving value from their time and money investment.
Sales success is a function of your behaviour, because your behaviour influences what the customer does. The more aware you are of the impact your behaviour has on customer behaviour, the more successful you will be in modifying your behaviour to produce the positive responses from the customer required for a successful outcome.
(This is such an important point that it is worth re-reading a couple of times.)
In conclusion
There are many roads to sales success and equally many routes that bring failure. Behaviours that are appropriate for one situation may be inappropriate in another situation. Indeed, even different times can call for different behaviours. The professional salesperson is one whose behaviours are most appropriate for a particular situation.
The top performer has the ability to behave in a natural and unconscious way.
By Paul Handover
[i] Stewart B. Johnson
Learning from Dogs 
Being pretty good at “buying” and absolutely hopeless at “selling” I have concluded that it is hardly ever the product but the salesperson’s performance which clinches the deal. It’s (almost?) like personal relationships which always seem to boil down to “chemistry”. This, of course, varies from person to person and from situation to situation – elusive as “star quality” in actors.
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Well I would agree with you if, by saying the salesperson’s performance, you mean his or her behaviours. (And we are talking business-to-business selling which is much more ‘needs’ based.)
If it was reliant on ‘chemistry’ to a great degree then the behavioural element would be much less, which all the research into sales shows is not the case.
Successful sales people are very different to the caricature ascribed to them (pushy et al) and tend to naturally subdue their own personality in favour of letting the prospect feel they are taking the lead.
Good sales people must, by definition, be good listeners. More about this in a later post.
Appreciate your comments. Blog readership growing nicely but comments still scarce. Must be more provocative!
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illusive – or elusive if you prefer.
Paul – we need an edit button! 🙂
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Ah, but I have one! And, automagically, your request becomes my command!
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The consummate salesman’s reply? 🙂
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Point taken.
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