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Sales Leaders – Manage Your 50% Minority5

by Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

In the past I have written about the propensity of sales leaders to accept and live with the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule. For example, 20% of your reps deliver 80% of your revenues, I know one team with 9 reps, where 2 sellers are responsible for 71% of the revenue. At one time, in the Shanto Principle I asked the question what if organizations could move the dial to 70/30, what would the impact be?

Companies continue to struggle with this reality, in many instances the 80/20 looks more like this:

20% – Top of the pack, consistently successful, adaptive and responsive to market movements, often spearheading the change in sales that are required to keep and win more business.
55% – Steady players, not always winning, or delivering 100% of plan, but put in a steady (just enough) effort to be in the 70% – 90% of plan zone. Room to improve, but bad enough to fire (although you have to wonder).
25% – Perennial underachievers. Steadily underperforming, while you don’t invest time in them, they are still part of the team. While you know you should fire them, you give in to the voice that says they are better than nothing, while I look for a replacement.

You may think that the above is a variation on the traditional A, B, and C player model, many do, which is a mistake.

I strongly suggest that you look at it more like:

A Players – The top 20%, Group 1

B Players – The top half of the 55%, Group 2

C Players – The bottom half of the 55%, Group 2 X Players – The bottom 25%, Group 3

I have always argued that leaders should focus their time and attention to the A players, show the most love to those you want to lose least. Show no time or attention to the C Players; the lack of attention clearly communicates that they either need to adopt and contribute, make their way up to B status, in order to get attention, or move on to organizations. The B’s need to be put on a path to achieve A status. NOTE: this is once the sales rep has been on-boarded, trained on your systems, and integrated into the process. This could be as little as three months, or as long as a year, but there does come a point where they need to deliver on their own. I still stand by this, but have ratcheted things up a bit, by encouraging you to not waste time, resources or emotion or keep that bottom 25%, the X Players. Rather than pretending that they are C players, suggesting some hope, when in fact they are a toxic waste in your sales organization, meaning you have to dump them ASAP.

Accepting the Status Quo, (yes, we do it too), is riskier than many sales leaders want to pretend, and here is why. Any way you slice it, the majority of the sales team is missing quota. It is true that more sales teams collectively are making quota, even while most individual contributors are not. What is the take away for those on the team who continuously are missing targets? Sales teams are like any other collective of people, there is a perception of majority rule, and if the majority is not making quota, then that soon becomes the norm. Not something sales leaders should encourage or tolerate, but by not acting quickly and strongly to end that, it soon becomes the norm, and worse.

If more than 50% of the team is not making quota, rationalizing becomes easy; “it’s not me, it’s the product”, “it’s the price”, “it’s the whatever”. “After all, look at all the people who are also in the same boat, it can’t be me”. Those few that are making quota, well they become the anomaly, the pack will stick together to comfort their own, and ostracise the others.

One of the top priorities of a sales leader, and their managers, has to be to ensure that at the minimum, more than half of the team exceeds their quota. This needs to be done across the whole organization, and by each front line manager locally with their teams; having a patch quilt of teams that do and don’t is not acceptable. While ultimately we want everyone to make their goal, this is a start; 50% plus of each team, and 50% plus of the whole organization.

How do you do that, a simple upward rotation is a good start. Not only do you heavily reward success, you simultaneously punish failure. Start with the of 10% rule, every year fire the bottom 10% of each team, not just the entire sales organization, but on each team managed by a front line manager; and if they have two teams, fire the bottom 10% from each team. Many are often reluctant to do this, telling me they can’t afford to have a vacant territory, if you ask me, the opposite is true, you can’t afford having territories run by these X Players. You can’t afford having your clients be attended to by these X Players. By the way, you don’t have to wait for the end of the year. If they are not executing the activities required to win, it will not take a year to realize things. One company I know fires those who are in the bottom 10% three months running. They are transactional, and can tell early, you may need to wait the year, or not. You just need to ensure that the period you choose allows for slumps and temporary factors that you can address and correct.

As this pruning takes place, especially as it becomes the declared policy, you’ll find that those in the middle of the pack begin to self-correct and do things that drive them ahead, realizing that as the bottom is lopped off, they either move higher or face being the next to go. This upward rotation pays dividends across the team, the C’s and B’s begin to move up, and the A’s realize they have company, and their personality trait kicks in, and they improve their game to maintain the gap with the B’s. Lifting your results to higher and higher levels. You may even find after a few years of this approach that you do more with less players; alternatively, expand products and markets with a more qualified and talented team.

Once you get to where more than 50% of the organization is making goal, the dynamic switches. Rather than people rationalizing why they are not making quota, after all those who are not are now in the minority, people look for ways to make and exceed quota, and begin to share their best practices. Majority rule! If you do find yourself in an enviable position where all you reps are making or exceeding goals, may still be a viable way of ensuring continuous improvement and growth.

This may seem a harsh route, but as leaders, that’s why we get the big bucks, for big decisions and big differences. Any way you look at it, it will never be as harsh as having to explain the alternative to the executive committee.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

You Do It Now – They Can Talk Later – Sales eXchange 2010

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Last Wednesday May 15th, I had the opportunity to be on the Charles Adler show. We look at the potential fallacies in long term predictions, this on the heels of a piece I did for the Globe and Mail Report on Small Business, regarding the need for execution in sales, not long term predications, and the fact that in BC, the elections did produce a majority government, but not by the party everyone was “predicting” would form the government.

Have a short listen, then let us know how you’ve found action and results to be of more value than predictions.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

It Is Personal0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

One questionable piece of advice sellers are given is not to take “things personally”. While I understand the sentiment behind it, encouraging sellers to not go down a dark hole, there is something wrong with telling professional sales people, in fact professionals of any type, not to take it personally. The reality is that part of successful selling is conviction, not just in your ability to add value to the buyer, but and in how you sell. It is hard to have that and not be passionate about selling, and as soon as passion is involved, it also becomes personal.

Certainly there are parts of the sales cycle that you can remove yourself somewhat from the emotions of the sale, usually during the prospecting stage, especially if you are a proactive rather than a passive prospector. When you first reach out to a potential buyer they don’t know you from Adam, and the goal is to get them engaged. Initial rejections are more situational than directed; meaning that they are not rejecting you as an individual, but what you represent, an interruption. But as you get engaged and are working through the sale, you get more emotionally involved, things do become a lot more personal.

It is that emotional involvement that often allows you to go deep with a buyer. Passion and enthusiasm are contagious, and it’s something you want your buyers to catch. After all, we are constantly reminded that people buy on emotion, then rationalize their decision, so it only helps if you are going to connect with the buyer on that level as well.

A more workable and realistic goal is to understand that you do need to get involved on a number of levels, that it does get personal, and that you need to be able to deal with and manage the outcomes whether they go your way or not. The ability to step back, assess the circumstance, and move on to the next sale. No different than the expectation and practice in professional sport.

By assessing the outcome you achieve a number of positives that help with the personal aspect. First you can evaluate how well you did execute you plan and process and understand why perhaps you lost the deal. I say perhaps, because there isn’t always a clear answer all nicely wrapped, if the result of the assessment is ambiguous, you will still have to deal with the outcome and move on.

But if the analysis of the deal and outcome are not ambiguous, then you are in a great position to learn, both what you want to repeat and to accentuate moving forward, and what to avoid and improve. While this may not take away the sting of a lost deal, it does help you benefit in some way, cope, and have a reason to give it another go with your new insight.

It is very much the emotion we bring at sellers that helps us win deals where most all other things are equal. It is precisely then that you need to go deep, and leave yourself open to disappointment, and yes it does become personal precisely because of that; and given the opportunity I would advise you to get emotionally involved and deal with the outcome win or lose. After all, they only give you the advice about it not being personal when you lose, it seems they are OK with it being personal when you win.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Time To Grow Up – Sales eXchange 1980

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

When my kids were young and they would wish for something not real, or as a way to avoid a task, like “I wish I didn’t have to clean my room”, “I wish I could grow up to be a princess”, their grandmother always responded by saying “If wishes were horses then beggars would ride”. It’s interesting how that expression has great significance and application to many sales people and sales advisors, all now grown-ups.

I am speaking specially of advice doled out by some sales pundits that serves more to placate and patronize readers than help them improve their selling skills and success, delivering clichés and politically correct feel good myth, instead of proven and practical road tested advice based on experience. While we all want to make our audience feel good, I think it is more important to provide pragmatic advice that yields measurable results, even when it requires effort on the part of the reader and will often force them from their comfort zones. I for one do not see a problem in challenging readers and sellers, and do not apologize for creating some discomfort in helping them succeed. Much better than some of the sugar coated buzzword riddled schmaltz others seem to be peddling in an effort to make sellers feel good and allow them to rationalize their lack of effort, inventiveness and results. But as we all know sugar highs don’t last.

If you are wondering why I am on about this, it’s because once again I have someone taking a shot at my often debated, never disproven voice mail technique, not because it doesn’t work, it does, but because it does not appeal to their “sensibilities”, a sensibility that leads to no returned calls. As usual the technique is misrepresented, making it easier to cast in a questionable light, they then schmear a load of subjectivity mixed with value judgment, and raising but not speaking to the specifics of words like “trust” or “ethics”.

The reality is that there are no absolutes in sales, nothing works all the time, every time, most things don’t work most the time, so when you have a technique that proves to be 30% – 50% effective, you have something worth adopting. What’s more, while the technique may seem counter intuitive at first, those who try it, report back a consistent success rate. Recently there was a debate in a LinkedIn group, there were many who questioned the technique, who once they tried it, liked it, mostly because it got them call backs and appointments.

Most recently, the technique was again misrepresented, and labeled asinine. I bet I can find some internal memos at most record companies dating back to 10 years ago that called iTunes an asinine way to sell and consume music. I bet there were some Blockbuster folks who called Netflix asinine. Interestingly few are willing to challenge it head on. One challenger was invited to debate the technique on “This Week In Sales” webcast, but declined, I wonder why; not the worst thing, I had the whole show to myself.

As an industry, “sales enablers”, we keep highlighting the fact that only 50% of B2B reps make quota, well what is our role in that? If we do not push them to better themselves by trying, new, alternative, and yes at times outlandish but effective methods. We should challenge our audience, not just dust off the edges of tired techniques that play to the emotion of the reader even while ignoring the fact that what is being peddled are just retreads with new labels.

In the end it is down to the reader, our consumer, they choose how they want to make or not make quota. In the end the readers are like we the pundits, some know what is Shinola, and what’s not.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

What if you could defeat the Status Quo0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

All this week I have posted clips from a recent interview with Ago Cluytens, for his Coaching Masters Series. We dealt with a number of issues around selling to buyers who are traditionally referred to as being Status Quo. Being the weekend, I thought it a good time to post the whole interview for your weekend lounging pleasure.

Always interested in what you think, and whether you are more prepared to go forth and sell where many sellers and pundits fear to go. Take a look, and let me know.

If you enjoy this there are more on Ago’s site.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Apr 27th, 2013 Ability, Accountability, Action, Attitude, Business Acumen, Buying Process, Change Management, Client Life Cycle, Communication Strategy, Don't Wait, EDGE Sales Process, Emotion, Emotional Intelligence(EQ), Events, execution, Gap Selling, Interactive Selling, Interview, Leadership, Listening, Next Steps, Planning, Play to Win, Proactive Triggers, Sales Interview, Sales Leadership, Sales Process, Sell Better, Selling to Executives, Status Quo, Trigger Events, Triggers, Video

Accountability, Attitude, Change Management, Client Life Cycle, Commitment, Communication, Don't Wait, EDGE Sales Process, execution, how to sell better, Interview, Listening, Planning, Play to Win, Proactivity, Renbor Sales Solutions Inc., Sales Process, Sales Success, sell better, Selling to Executives, Trigger Event Selling, Trigger Events, Triggers, Video

To Err is Human – and When It Sells It’s Divine!0

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Too many sales people spend way too much time and effort trying to be or look perfect. Whether it is refining that radio voice for telephone selling, or the right look for the call, using the fashionable buzzwords, or a host of other things sellers do. An awful amount of energy and resources go into image and looking good, to the point where the polish detracts and distracts from the purpose at hand.

The reality is that people are not perfect, at least not in the real world, and the perfection some seek could be at odds with the expectations of the buyer. Take the popular notion and adhered to buzz-phrase, popular among sales types is that “people buy from people”, implicit in that is that people by from people like them. Being too polished to the point where we resemble the cover of GQ more than we do the people the buyer is used to dealing with on a daily basis, may lead to the opposite outcome to the one desired.

Being human, including the frailties and blemishes may put a seller in a better stead than trying to be the Madison Avenue or Hollywood version of a sales professional. In fact imperfections can often work in your favour by making us look and feel human rather than something artificial. Trying to be something most of us are not, that is perfect, can distance a buyer.

A common attribute of good sales people is being genuine, and one buyers appreciate and look for in a seller, if they sense a seller is not themselves or disingenuous they begin to question the seller’s intent. Intent counts for a lot, and many will tell you that intent trumps skill, product knowledge, and certainly outranks polish, image or smoothness.

No matter how experienced or good you are as a sales person, it is better to focus and demonstrate that in the quality of your selling, your ability to gather the right information about the right issues, than relying on strictly polish. To this day I do not have or use a radio voice when cold calling, I stumble and stutter at times in the same way I did 20 years ago, but he content of my talk track, the underlying intent helps me content with buyers and set appointments.

We have all been in meetings where you may dropped something, or something goes wrong with technology you are relying on, but instead of the meeting going south, that awkward moment removes a layer of the barrier between buyer and seller. I remember a meeting where the buyer was cold, tough, hardly engaged, and while reaching for something the sales person spilt a bottle of water on the conference room table and on her pants. The buyer sprang into action, genuinely concerned for and her dilemma, and remained very engaged for the rest of the meeting, and ultimately bought. The spill changed the dynamics and I would say the outcome of the interaction and the meeting.

Time and time again, common unintended errors, lead to an instant human connection that facilitates the connection between buyer and seller. While I am not suggesting you go out and look to err on purpose, I am saying that the energy and time we spend trying to be perfect or avoid looking or being human, can be better invested in understanding the buyer, their objective and how you can help them. If we do that in a genuinely human way, warts and all, rather than a superhuman way, we’ll see a much more genuine response from prospects, and achieve better results faster.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

What Are You Listening To? (Part II)2

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

In Part I of this series, I looked at the importance of asking powerful impactful questions if you are looking to have something powerful to listen to, and impactful engagements. The other attribute of good listening mentioned in the piece was patience. Seems straight forward, but we have all jumped in to soon, unintentionally interrupting the buyer in mid-sentence or mid-thought. By developing the discipline of patience, we can enhance the buy/sell experience for both parties.

In a world where most leading products/solutions look very much the same, how you sell, or more specifically, the buyer’s experience during your sale, could be the best way to differentiate yourself and product from the pack. Sellers have been pitched to death, they unfortunately expect Muzak like questions, and have fallen in to the habit of giving Muzak like answers; in effect they have become conditioned by previous sellers, who have trained buyers to give shallow and brief answers. Every time they start answering a question in meaningful and detailed way, and they are cut off by a seller, they are conditioned to answer with shorter and less detailed and useful answers. The interruption may be rooted in excitement about the fit, unfortunately the message the buyer gets, is “this guy is not interested in the full answer, just what serves his needs”. Each time they are unable to fully express themselves, they “learn” that the seller may not be really interested in the answer, so they provide the bare minimum.

If you decide to take on the suggestions in Part I, and move towards asking very direct and provocative questions, you need to prepare, and more importantly allow for longer and more detailed answers, which requires a patient listening style that encourages the buyer to speak in detail, and create a meaningful dialogue. It is up to you to recondition and reshape the buyer’s expectations and experience.

The reality is that there are a lot of things going on in a sales meeting, sellers have to keep track of and balance various inputs and cues, at the same time analysing and formulating how to piece the information together in a usable way, while at the same time finding ways to move the sale forward. It takes effort and practice not to jump in when presented with an opening. But with a little practice and effort, you can change the experience and the outcome.

In light of the fact that we think and speak faster than people talk or we listen, we need to work hard at slowing down, and being patient enough to succeed, it does take effort not to add to the buyer’s negative conditioning. As a young seller I was taught a simple two step technique that encourages the buyer to speak more and in greater detail, while allowing me to differentiate from other sellers. As you ask provocative and open ended questions, divide your note page in half, on the left side take notes as you normally would. On the left side write down two things, first, all the things the buyer says that you want to jump in and comment on, and save them for later. The other are questions you can ask based on what the buyer is saying. This forces you to listen more intently, not race ahead or make assumptions, but patiently and tactically listening with purpose. Once the buyer has finished (on their) own, you can ask the questions you wrote down, demonstrating that you did indeed listen. You can also go back and review and build on the points you wrote down rather than interrupting, again encouraging the buyer to expand and elaborate further, and see you as a listener, and someone worth talking to.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

Dude, You’re Gonna Need More Than 15 Minutes3

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

Sales people are constantly working at communicating value to their buyers, especially in the early stages of the cycle, lead gen to prospecting and engaging the buyer to where they could complete an effective Discovery process. After sellers have done all the work involved in getting to the point where they can engage with a buyer, I am always surprised at how easily they are willing to undermine it, and risk their opportunity by saying something completely unnecessary, and serves only to sooth their nerves.

The expression that does this most is “I just need 15 minutes of your time” or “A quick 15 minutes”. Both are stupid and useless, the second is one I never did get, how is a “quick 15 minutes” different than 15 minutes, don’t all minutes have 60 seconds, it is just the quality of the content that seems to make some minutes last a lifetime.

I know why it is used, generally comes down to two things, both can be dealt with more intelligently and effectively. First is the popular notion that if you can get 15 minutes, and do well, they’ll give you an encore and you can stretch it out; I guess we all think we can do a good job. On the other hand I used to work for a VP of Sales who managed his calendar down to the minute, busy guy. He would ask you how long you needed, and would book you in for that time, if you said 15 minutes, he would end the meeting right at 15 minutes. He wasn’t rude, he had to get to his next scheduled meeting, if you couldn’t live up to the expectation I set, it was your issue, not his, you had to deal with it, not him.

Which brings us to the first contradiction, most decision makers have more than what to do in a day, how realistic is that they don’t have other meetings behind your, or other things that require their time and attention. Yes, no doubt we have all had instances where we were able to extend 15 minutes in to 45 or even 60 minutes, but an occasional anomaly does not make for a sound strategy.

The other issue with this approach is that you are in fact misleading the prospect before you have even met them. Think about it, do you really want to start things off by lying to the prospective buyer? Any way you rationalize it, that is exactly what you are doing, not a good foundation for a trust based relationship.

The second reason sales people do this is linked to the first, and just as weak. Specifically they are trying to minimize the apparent impact on the buyer, trying to make it “easy” on them, “Your time will not be wasted”, is the implication. But unless you are selling a coffee service or window cleaning, how much real or tangible value can you effectively communicate. More so, when you are selling what you would call a “solution”, where information has to be exchanged, 15 minutes is not going to get you there, you can pretend all you want, you are going to pitch, worse, you are going to ‘speed pitch’.

Some will tell me, “I can at least get things started”, sure then comeback and continue, with a bit of recapping, you are costing you and the buyer more time. By asking for 15 minutes you are undermining your so called “value proposition”. What the prospect hears is that this is so basic and unimportant, what they are asking themselves is as follows: “we’re going to make real progress in 15, can’t be that important or unique, maybe it can wait, or I can delegate it to someone who deals with unimportant things.”

Think about it, assuming things get started, small talk, while you assume they checked out your web site, you have to validate; if they did, you still need to create context, if they didn’t you have to do a bit more than that. From here, you need to at least go through the motions of gather information or executing a Discovery of facts and objective. Ah, look at that time is up! I remember someone trying to sell me an ad in local board of trade directory, they said they just need 15 minutes, I pointed out to him that he will need to ask me some questions, I will certainly have some for him, so let’s get real, how much time will we really need, he was honest enough to come across with a real time frame.

What’s worse, it is usually the seller who brings time in to the equation, not the prospect, again communicating a lack of confidence in their offering, or their ability to sell, or both. Just stop this juvenile practice, and sell.

Now I know that there times when you will be asked by a prospect how much time you need; in my case I gear my first meetings to about an hour, I am the one that gets antsy after 50 minutes. But rather than saying “one hour”, I pause, and ask, “how long can you give me?” They usually come back and say “is an hour enough?” Touch down!

But assuming they ask again, I just say “I usually need about 30 minutes for Discovery, I assume you’ll have some questions, so 40 minutes is safe.” If I feel they have a sense of humor, I add “any longer than that I take as interest on your part.”

I do have people who say “I can give you 30 minutes.” Great I can work with that; if they offer 15 minutes, I say no, I know what is going to happen, it is not a good use of my time, my most important resource. Either we can find a mutually better time, or on to the next one. If you have lots of prospects, this is not an issue, if you only have one or two, you may have to settle for the scraps that a quick 15 minutes represent.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

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The Customer is Not Always Right2

By Tibor Shanto – tibor.shanto@sellbetter.ca

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” ~ Steve Jobs, Business Week, May 12, 1998 (thanks to Karri Flatla)

Some myths in sales need to be retired, at or near the top of the list is the commonly accepted notion that the customer is always right. If they were, we as sales professionals would have no value beyond that of an order taker. I know there are a lot of order takers out there pretending to be sales people, but that does not make it right. I am not joking, about the order takers, or the fact all to often, customers are not right, especially when it comes to specific solutions or means to achieving their objectives; and the only thing that is worse is the fact that some sales professionals do not push back against this myth.

Yes it is true that it is their decision, and they can buy what they like, but in the end most buyers do want to buy the right thing for their company, at times they just don’t know any better. I have always maintained that one of the core values a good (great) sales person bring to a deal is their vast knowledge of a specific areas of practice. We are if nothing else, conduits to the best practices out there. I regularly meet sales leaders in companies both big and small, from Fortune 100 companies to the most innovative start ups. I see more things that work, and more that don’t than any single one of my customers. That is not a value judgment, but the reality of what I do, a key component of my value. Just as you see all kinds of companies using your service or product, some using it in the most brilliant ways, ways you never conceived, getting more out of it than you may have imagined before; while others use with less spark than it take to light a match.

As a sales professional it is your job to point out where the buyer’s thinking is wrong, and will likely lead to a bad or inefficient outcome. Sometimes this easy, buyers genuinely open to suggestions, but just as often they may not appear to be at first, especially when the buyer has done minimal research and comes with preconceptions. This is potential trap for sellers have in a “be found” environment, where sellers are told that the buyer is some 60% through the cycle, and are informed, before they engage with a seller. Well who is to say that the information they gathered is accurate, complete or really applicable. A successful sales professional has first hand knowledge of what works, what doesn’t and more importantly why. It is still true, even in our peer sourcing social selling age that information is not knowledge.

Now how you counter the buyer’s view is key, there is no need to be heavy handed, pompous or impatient; you can have, and should, demonstrate conviction, especially when you do bring real knowledge to play. Some talk a lot and worry about trust and relationship, I would argue challenging the buyer’s view for legitimate reasons you can back with experience, and will deliver better results based on their objectives, will in fact build trust and enhance a relationship when the client comes out ahead as a result of your challenge and input.

Executed with skill, the buyer will feel and be right with the proper purchase, even if they were wrong at the outset.

What’s in Your Pipeline
Tibor Shanto

Sports have trade deadlines, sales organizations have trade season, usually at the start of the year, just after bonuses are paid. What I never understand is why companies, and sales leaders participate in this silly ritual.

You see this in almost every industry, employees, specifically sales people, move from one market player to another. Doesn’t matter if I am working with software companies, wireless, service providers, you name it, it is much the same. I ask people to tell me about their sales background, and inevitably, they’ll tell they have been in the business 12 years, four with one company, five with another, and three at their current place of employment. I once had someone who was on their third tour with the company I was training and had done stints with three other.

Why?

Unlike sports, there is no free agency where top players can go to the highest bidder. In fact I would argue the opposite exists, the journeymen sellers are almost always B or C players. The rock star sellers, the real proven A player are not very inclined to move, and companies who thrive on cultivating and keeping A players go out of their way to do everything they can to keep them happy and rocking.

Companies hiring the journeymen rarely understand the error of their ways, and as in sports when things go wrong they go after the coach, in the case of sales the front line manager. The poor soul who is supposed to deliver results with other companies’ discards. I am not saying that the managers don’t share in the blame, they do, but senior leadership should know better. They pressure the manager to perform, fair demand, and the manager succumbs and hires an available body; not just any body, but an “experienced” body with a “book” of clients. Right!

These sellers rarely become big hitters, some become “80 per centers”, but most continue to be lack luster performers, doing no better than they did at the last company that discarded them. At time they manage to get out of Dodge before they are booted, but their ineffectiveness does not, it is something they carry from place to place.

Just go on LnkedIn and you can see it clear as day. One seller I trained at two different companies in the same vertical has had five sales positions with four different companies in the same industry. Never fired, always managing to jump before their employer’s suspicions were confirmed. The only reason they got a second stint with their current employer was because a buddy was promoted to hiring status.

What I have also found is that rarely are these journeymen counter offered by their current employers, sure there is feigned regrets, “sad to see you go” as they hold the door open. Whereas with the rock stars, everything is done to avoid the situation at all.

In the end I think it comes down to a lack of conviction on the part of sales leadership. While they always talk about quality over quantity, when it comes to hiring, they seem to favour quantity over quality, preferring to have a body in a territory vs. the patience to wait for the right body. As for the argument that at least having a performing body is better than an empty territory, I am not sure. The journeymen will underperform, as will the territory, but a bigger cost is opportunity cost. Who will the journeymen turn off during their stint, how much money will they leave on the table or discount in deals they do get, and how many deals will they miss just because who they are. Their book never follows, but their bad habits that got them their do, and now instead of forging forward, you are left to deal with their mediocrity.

What’s in Your Pipeline?
Tibor Shanto

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