Identifying Essential Sales Skills for Sales Recruiting
I have written many times about Sisu as a trait of top sales talent. It is a good example of an attribute that you will not find on any psychometric or personality sales assessment. Yet through 25 years of sales recruiting it is a competency I have identified in all my top sales talent. It is also a good example why successful sales recruiters require customized metrics to identify these harder to quantify traits.
In the recently released sales recruiting ebook Measuring Sales DNA, I identify Sisu as one of the key traits of winning Sales DNA. Sisu is a Finnish word that describes one’s ability to remain dedicated and committed to goals even in the face of adversity. It’s what makes us embrace a challenge rather than cower away from it. It is perseverance and optimism.
As I write this blog, Danish Team Saxo Bank has cycled into first place in the Tour de France in the latest round . A while back, we were talking about Lance Armstrong’s motivation. This week it is Team Saxo Bank’s Sisu. Why is the Danish team’s win Sisu and not just another team that has trained hard to take a stage of the famous cycling race? Team Saxo Bank is not in the top standings but, notably, it has taken some of the toughest stages, including the treacherous stage 17, a clear sign of singular perseverance.
Why do salespeople need Sisu? Salespeople live in a world where the word “no” is one of the most common words they hear every day. Theirs is a world of gatekeepers, objections, waffling, and worse. A salesperson with the wrong set of attitudes will quickly retreat from a difficult sale — a no-win tactic. A much higher percentage of sales close after three or more sales approaches. The sales person who perseveres wins. How do you measure and model perseverance?
The Sales Lesson: Successful sales recruiters need to identify sales skills when recruiting sales people, even if these are non-standard.
The Sales Question: A a sales recruiter, do you know what to look for when identifying sales skills?
Does your sales training develop the sales motivation to thrive on adversity?
Sales training should develop the sales motivation to take on challenges
Build adversity management into your sales management process
I’m hooked on Wii Fitness Plus and the balance games. As an entrepreneur, I’m particularly competitive as I attempt to navigate the pool balls, despite numerous obstacles, to their sink hole targets. The result? In addition to improving my balance, I’m also exercising my creativity.
So, how does Wii Fitness Plus relate to our challenging leadership and sales management environments?
As business leaders and sales managers, we are navigating new obstacles every day. As we reach an obstacle our fight-or-flight response kicks in. It is tempting to avoid the challenge and place our energy in another market or product area, one in which results are easier to achieve. According to Brain Creativity, if we stay and fight and think up innovative ways to overcome the obstacles we will become more creative. This, in turn, will sharpen our business skills and make us more effective sales people.
Sales leadership today is full of opportunities to choose fight over flight. A sales culture in which the sales team does not take responsibility will lead to a lower sales ROI. A culture of accountability, in contrast, will lead to a high ROI. With the right sales discipline, sales vision and sales direction, your sales team will choose to stay and fight and overcome obstacles. It is this commitment to overcome adversity that leads to high sales performance.
The Sales Lesson: Capitalize on the energy of adversity. When used as sales motivation, big problems are the stepping stones to bigger successes.
The Sales Question: What is your organizational attitude toward adversity in your sales performance? Do you hide from it as long as you can?
Sales Leaders: To Get a Future Focus, Take a Break From the Present
I’m a huge fan of management guru, Patrick Lencioni, having a number of his books in my bookshelf: The Five Temptations of a CEO, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. He’s currently getting a lot of exposure from Getting Naked his new book. In his wisdom to consultants, he advises them to help business leaders “enter the danger.” The 
expression is borrowed from improv actors who are encouraged to accept criticism from their peers. (I’ll learn more about this when I take an Improv class with Stevie Ray this fall!) In a sales business, or any other, entering the danger involves addressing those “messy” and most challenging aspects of your business that may be threatening your survival. By confronting the dangers we all too often prefer to avoid, Lencioni says that we can make better future-forward business decisions. These decisions will form the basis of your Strategic Sales Plan.
The concept of confronting both strategic business challenges as well as sales opportunities and sales effectiveness head on is hot. Lencioni’s books are flying off the shelves. So why am I advising you to stop, drop and roll? In the Leadership Shift, I advise sales leaders who are facing difficult business challenges to stop, drop and roll. Let’s look at drop.
Sales Effectiveness to the Rescue
Dropping is not about avoiding the dangerous territory but operating more effectively in the danger zone by removing the threats that can cloud your judgment. It’s about dropping bad habits that sabotage your sales effectiveness and taking a clear, focused look at your challenges and opportunities in order to be able to make forward-focused decisions.
You still need to face the danger but your analysis and decision-making power will be sharper and clearer if you drop to a smoke-free region, a safer planning zone. Here, you have alternatives. You can play “what if.” After all, there’s more than one route to the door, and without all that smoke in your eyes, you can evaluate and pick the best one.
The Sales Lesson: The smoke of the present shouldn’t blind you to the possibilities of the future. Reviewing your Sales Processes is a good place to start.
The Sales Question: Are you focused on what ought to be true about your current situation or what really is true about it? How does this affect your view of the future? An independent Sales Evaluation will give you a head-start.
Should Your Sales Teams Take the Next Detour?
As the Tour de France kicked off on the July 1st weekend all eyes were watching the world’s greatest cycling champion prepare to make his final laps in professional cycling. Lance Armstrong retired in 2005 due to a “ton of stress.” The seven time Tour de France winner knew when to stop, reevaluate his situation and gain perspective.
Had Lance kept going around and around lap after lap, he knew that he would burn out.
In the sales management process, we often get caught in the same loop, clocking lap after lap. We keep focusing on the green jersey in front of us but our sight starts to become blurred. Our defenses against our competitors surrounding us weaken. Then, our judgment wavers as we lose our focus. All of a sudden, we find we are crashing more and our sales wins are going to the competitors.
At this point, as I advise in the Leadership Shift, it is time to put on the breaks. A good sales leader knows when to stop and reassess the situation. Entering the 2010 race Lance Armstrong is not only physically and mentally strong but he has a renewed focus: he has reentered one of the world’s most grueling races to raise awareness for cancer and his charity LIVESTRONG. When he returned in 2009 he placed an impressive third. Now he is cycling for his eighth Tour de France, or maybe not. His only goal may be to raise awareness for cancer.
Whether competing in a sales cycle or a cycling race, the reality is if you are not thinking clearly because the competitive threats are getting bigger and the stress is intensifying, you need to call a time out before you crash. Rethink your thinking and your Strategic Sales Plan and come back with a renewed focus.
The Sales Lesson: When the facts of past and current reality become overwhelming declare a moratorium on those facts for a short time. Give yourself permission to worry all you want about those things later, but not now. Then, get to work on your strategic sales plan and review your current sales processes.
The Sales Question: When was the last time you stopped to rethink and refuel your sales management processes?
Forward-focused Sales Teams Are Rolling Into the Future
In the Leadership Shift, I encourage presidents, CEOs, owners and VP of Sales to ask forward-focused questions. For example, “If you were your own competition, how would the future look to you?” I encourage asking even questions. i.e. “What is the worst case scenario for your business?” and “What actions will lead you there?” Better still, I challenge us to consider what actions will not take you there but to a brighter future?
Companies that have excelled in the market downturn are not afraid to ask these tough questions. ReconRobotics — maker of the first throwable, mobile robot — is an example of a forward-focused company. No doubt, the company has been riding high looking towards a robotics market that is forecasted to grow into the billions.
This is a company on a roll. It wasted no time moving out of stealth mode and building a large sales team before it had any significant revenue streams. With a sales force in 35 countries, it is steadily growing revenues as government spending picks up. Its robots are in action in military and civilian operations, including firefighting and police forces.
Forward thinkers like ReconRobotics are laying the foundation for the future today. In all fairness, they have a natural advantage in the reconnaissance business. Their robots tell military, police and fire professionals what is ahead and behind the next corner. We can all apply this forward-focused intelligence to our business planning. ReconRobotics is not waiting for the economy to pick up. They have surveyed the market ahead and are rolling forward with an expanding sales team and new products and markets.
Lesson: Future-focused doesn’t mean you have no regard for past and current problems but you do have the luxury of perspective.
Question: What if your current conditions were the perfect foundation for the future you envision for your company? How can you bring that future about, starting from the real, imperfect conditions that affect you right now?
Creating a Servant Leadership Sales Team
“Good People Make Good Companies.”
The quote is from Ken Jennings, author of The Serving Leader: Five Powerful Actions that Will Transform Your Team, Your Business and Your Community, and a consultant who has helped to bring servant leadership to electronics firm Entegris, and many other companies. The natural next question is, how do we make good people? How can being good become a 
transformational leadership tool in your sales organization?
In a more competitive environment, misguided sales organizations have driven their sales teams harder and harder in an effort to meet sales performance goals, ultimately leading to burnt out and demotivated salespeople. These disengaged employees often lead to disengaged clients. If you are guilty of taking a bottom-line approach, servant leadership can help realign your moral compass and put you back on the path to higher sales performance.
The proven path to servanthood is easy to follow. Start by putting serving first. Turn your salesforce into “passionate advocates” of supporting, advancing and meeting your goals. For the real transformation to take place you must practice servant leadership, setting an example for others to follow.
Servant Leadership and Sales Management Process
One of the servant leadership heros is Zig Ziglar; primarily because he’s the first professional speaker I heard (1982 in Bismarck, ND! Ask me about the story of my first interaction with him.) He succinctly captures this servant leader philosophy: “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”
Adopt this mantra throughout your sales management processes and soon enough helping people get what they want will become a reward in its own right. Doing good will put your sales team back into alignment and focused on the greater good. Loyalty to a service-oriented culture will lead to higher sales performance.
The Sales Management Lesson: Relationships always come before results, also sales results.
The Sales Question: Do you set an example and inspiration in servitude for your sales team?
Starbucks, Sales and Servant Leadership
The success of companies that are led by servant leadership should be enough to entice most sales leaders to take a closer look. AT&T—where Robert Greenleaf coined the term—Mead and Ford, to name a few. In fact, servant leadership aligns with the key model I’m working with on my M.A. in Transformational Leadership at Bethel, the 4R Model of Leadership. This model 
emphasizes that our Relationships with people—co-workers, managers, clients and peers–are a first step in delivering sales Results.
So Servant Leadership can Increase Sales?
Howard Behar, former President of Starbucks North America said it best It’s Not About the Coffee, which, fittingly, is the name of his new book. Starbucks was a medium-sized business realizing healthy sales growth when its leaders started to practice servant leadership, and the rest, as they say, is history. Howard helped build Starbucks into the world’s largest coffee chain on a culture of customer service and a dedication to servant leadership. By serving customers, Starbucks makes a deeper connections and more sales.
Starbucks shares another important lesson about servant leadership: teach your followers how to lead themselves. Here Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has the last word: “Surround yourself with great people and get out of the way.” Servant leaders set an example for their followers—one guided by core values—and then empower followers to lead themselves and others.
In addition, Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading By Serving, is a great resource in learning how to operationalize servant leadership.
The Sales Lesson: Help your sales staff see that servicing others lies at the center of their personal and professional goals. See eBook Energize Your Dreams.
The Sales Question: Do your followers know how to lead themselves and serve others?
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