Understanding Your Top Sellers: Observation 2...They need to control

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UNDERSTANDING TOP SELLERS

OBSERVATION TWO:  Need to control

A Chicago company that processed residential mortgages routinely hired new college graduates for their training program. Once trained, these young people would be assigned to field offices to sell their services to residential brokers. Part of their sales pitch was a commitment to processing loans quickly to enable the realtor to get a closing date quickly.

The training program was in the home office, and all trainees were immediately assigned to processors who handled the paper sent from the field. It would only take about three days to know who was going to be a top seller. By the third day, at least one new hire would realize that his/her future success depended on these office people. If the process was to be controlled after the papers were sent to the office, the processing team needed to be responsive to the person submitting the papers. Future top sellers saw this immediately, and they began bringing donuts and coffee or taking the processors to lunch on a regular basis throughout the training program. 

Top sellers fear they will fail. To manage that fear, they develop a strong drive to control. They believe that if they control enough factors in the sales process, they decrease their risk of failing. They are able to tell themselves that they are preventing the problems that will hurt them.

Anyone who has worked with a top seller has seen this need to control. As soon as an order is submitted, the top seller will be calling to see the progress on the order. He/she will be checking with production or the warehouse to ensure that the product will be available as promised. Although sales managers want their sellers in the field talking with customers, top sellers often spend much of their time trying to control the internal sales ordering process. It is not unusual for a sales manager to suddenly see a top seller wandering the halls of the office or filling emails with questions and follow-up requests for status reports.

When you ask a top seller what he/she wants in sales manager, you will often hear this control issue.  As a recent candidate told me, “I want a manager who can be a resource to work with finance or production to be sure that things get done.”  

When interviewing a sales candidate, one of the first things to look for is how effectively the candidate tries to control the interview. Top sellers are able to stay “on message” in spite of attempts to distract the candidate. They are polite but focused. They may refer back to an earlier question by saying, “You were asking earlier about…”, for instance. 

The top seller candidate also may not be eager to engage in small talk. The stereotype of the sales candidate who references the fish on the wall or the photo of the family skiing is misleading. The top sales candidate will stay focused and want to talk about his/her sales successes in the past as well as why he/she would be a great fit for the company doing the hiring.

A recent sales model referred to as The Challenger Model describes a seller as someone who wants to debate and push the customer. While this is not wholly inaccurate, it seems to miss the real point of the behavior. The top seller will push and advise only when he/she sees a need to step in and control. As long as a top seller feels in control, he/she will not push. There is no need, and the risk of being seen as pushy is too great. Knowledge that can be shared and the ability to lead the customer to trust the seller’s judgment result in the control a top seller needs. He/she does not have to be entertaining, assertive, or pushy.

Top sellers know it is not the customer who needs to be controlled. The top seller learns how to control the sales process, which includes influencing the decision to make the purchase by knowing what to talk about and how to make themselves valuable. Top sellers do not worry about “closing techniques.” They see ways to control the process long before the traditional close.

Understanding Your Top Sellers: Observation One...They fear failure

INTRODUCTION

Are you trying to hire top sellers? Do you understand what makes them tick?

An interesting challenge in any industry: how do you identify who would be a top seller?

Test manufacturers would have you believe that you can “profile” top sellers as a guide to hiring practices. They take the top producers, give them a test, and then use the combined averages as a guide to whom you should select and whom you should ignore.  

Unfortunately, such a practice does not work. It only sells tests.

It does not work, because no test can sample how a seller thinks. It is the thinking process that differentiates top sellers from the rest of the pack.

Try this: Take your top sales producers and put them in a room. Do they look alike? Do they dress in a similar way? Do they sound alike? Do they have similar interests? Are they all extroverts? Are they all verbal?

Probably not!

Any group of top sellers is more likely to include more individual differences then similarities on the surface. It is only beneath the surface that you can begin to understand and see that a top seller thinks in a unique way when compared with an average producer. 

In my 35 years of interviewing and watching the development of sales professionals, I have identified what really differentiates the elite sales force. I hope my observations are helpful.

OBSERVATION ONE:  Top sellers are driven by fear and anxiety

When working with Dean Witter many years ago, I was once told the story of a senior manager who took his top two producers to breakfast one day. He said, “You both make well over a million dollars a year. Yet you are both the first ones in each morning and the last to leave at night. Why? I want you to write as simple an answer as you can on the back of this piece of paper.” He gave them a moment and then took the papers from them. Both had written the same word: FEAR

Top sellers act confident. They can even appear arrogant and superior at times. But beneath the surface, their driving force is fear. They are anxious that their string of successes will run out. As a result, they must work harder each day to prevent such failure.

The top seller from the food distributor John Sexton & Co. had come within $50 of breaking the all-time record sales for a fiscal year.  I stopped by his desk to congratulate him. I mentioned how close he had come to breaking the record. He just laughed and opened his bottom desk drawer. In the drawer, he had thrown a stack of papers. I indicated that I did not understand. He said, “Those are orders I did not turn in this month.  I was afraid I was just getting a lot of end-of-year orders, and I would have no sales at all in January. So I tossed the orders in here until after January 1.” In his drawer were at least $500 worth of sales orders.

Most top sellers will not admit to fear. But listen to their words. They often talk about being “lucky.” When asked to explain what they do that is different from others, they will grasp at concepts that only sound good but reflect little of what they do. “Lucky” means they believe it could all end tomorrow. They rarely can tell you why they are successful.

“Lucky” also means “I’m not sure I can do it again.” As a result, it is often the top sellers who yell loudest about having their quotas increased. A larger target for the next year, based on their performance for this year, only increases their fear. They typically sandbag their forecasts, not just to ensure that they will get their bonuses, but as a way of dealing with their fear about their future.

I once heard a sales manager complaining about the lack of urgency in a seller. She had been a top seller before being promoted. Her complaint: “This may be the only time we have such a window of opportunity with this customer.” Logically, this is not likely to be true. However, she is a top seller by nature, and her fear is that such an opportunity could disappear.  It is not “We have an opportunity and let’s move on it.” Instead, it is “We have an opportunity and may lose it.”

Top sellers could be classified in psychological terms as “Away-from” personalities rather than “Toward.” They want to prevent or avoid failure. That is why, as Daniel Pink has observed in a recent book, incentives do not really work with top performers. Top sellers are motivated to prevent failure, and a quota with bonus is nice but not a driver. Their drive is internal and comes from their need to avoid that which they fear the most—failure. If they do not get their bonus, they are disappointed and even angry, but the real reason is that missing their target suggests that failure may be lurking ahead. If they achieve their bonus, it is enjoyed, but it does not motivate them to do anything different the next year.  It is also why some top sellers, when they get in a slump, have more difficulty than most crawling out of it. A slump may be seen as temporary by average sellers. Top sellers assume it is their worst nightmare coming true.

The fear I see in top sellers is what I call a “healthy neurosis.” It is the reason they answer the phone quickly, yell about orders being slow to get through the office, or complain that customer service is not being responsive to a customer need. When a neurosis becomes so bad that a person is afraid to act, then it is no longer a motivator but a liability. But a healthy neurosis is seen as an excellent source of motivation. It drives the top seller to work hard the next day rather than relax after a big sale. After all, today may have been the result of luck, and tomorrow may begin a long drought of no-sales. Therefore, they get up early and tackle the job that needs to be done.

Why is "sales" a dirty word?

In looking at a recent article in a psychology journal, I found a study on "faking" psychological tests. In the study, the authors said, "...there may be some jobs where it is useful to adapt to situational demands to the point of distorting the truth (e.g., sales)..." (Italics are mine.)

Since when does sales equate with distortion of the truth? This is the same unfortunate view of sales that leads so many young men and women to avoid considering sales as a worthy profession. Why do so many competent people say, "I don't want to be a salesperson" or "I can't sell"? (Incidentally, these two phrases usually mean the same thing: I don't want to sell.)

Many companies try to get around this perception by playing  name games. They call their sales people "Territory Managers" or "Account Representatives." Why not call someone a "Sales Professional"?

Selling is teaching. Selling is guiding and helping. A good teacher makes you want to learn. A good seller makes you want to buy. This requires trust, not distortion.

A good sales call is one in which the prospect or buyer learns something. Rather than distort truth, the seller is trying to help people confront reality and see where something might be improved. Today's seller is faced with helping people overcome denial and talk about where real pain or opportunity exist. Selling is as much a helping profession as social work or psychology when done well.

We professionals need to help the public realize that sales is not the Hollywood version of used car dealers or aluminum siding hawkers. In fact, anyone who makes a living in sales will tell you that a sales person who tries to distort the truth will quickly fail.

In short, a successful seller today must create trust and not distort truth.  A good seller must be the guide who can help someone else make the right decision. Let's help the next generation of professionals see that sales is not a dirty word. Be proud when you say, "I'm a sales professional."

Using a professional interviewer

Too few companies acknowledge that it would be helpful to hire a "professional interviewer". Even though most executives do not really like interviewing candidates and usually hope the next candidate is a good one, they also rarely admit to being weak interviewers. Often these same companies look for "tests" to make the selection process more effective.

By themselves, test scores can be quite problematic and can often result in rejecting good candidates. No test can tell you who can do the job. Psychometric tests can be very helpful, however, to the professional interviewer who can combine the test information, probe the history and distill trends, habits, and the thinking process one uses to make decisions. Only a disciplined behavioral interview combined with an understanding of how to interpret psychometric tests can help identify if there are risks to "fit" or growth potential.

Notice my emphasis: "risk". A good candidate can look really good but some fatal traits can keep those good traits from appearing in the workplace. I tell my clients that my role is to find the flaws and fatal traits that are likely to be such risks. As an old saying goes, "Beauty is only skin deep but ugly goes all the way to the bone." Some traits or behaviors block the good ones from surfacing. Those are the traits I look for in the testing and in the interview. Unlike most hiring managers in an interview, I look for reasons to NOT hire someone. Even the best of us can miss a few of these, but if you are able to eliminate one or two bad hires yearly, it easily provides a good return on the cost of a "professional interviewer." I know, because I've been doing this for 35 years.

Is the interview over?

When your last manager candidate ended the interview and walked out of the room, did you have your questions answered? Did you have questions TO be answered? Only by preparing for an interview can you know when the interview is over.

Well-formed outcome to help ensure fit

A group facilitator for a worldwide organization of CEO's recently told us how he uses "well-formed outcome" statements with prospects for his fee-based development/coaching program. He uses a full VAK mix and asks each person, "How do you see yourself benefiting from a group of peers who can give you feedback and insights on your leadership and your organization?" (We have suggested that he add, "...who will tell you what you may or may not want to hear and help you see yourself through the eyes of others who are your CEO peers." He then listens for a response that indicates self-awareness and an openness to learn from feedback and support from peers. He reports excellent success in enrolling new members who fit the program well. They join knowing what to expect and ready to participate. In spite of the economy which has hit small to medium-sized businesses hard, he maintains full groups and his turnover is low.

Example of the power of the unconscious

I recently was reminded of the power of the unconscious thinking process to make us blind to facts.

I was told about a sales rep who is consistently near or at the top of sales results every year for his company. His style of selling is consistent with The Unfair Advantage in that he sells himself and then becomes an "adviser" to his prospect*. He tells the prospect that he wants to help him/her find a way to make an order that will "satisfy the guys at corporate" or something to that effect. He advises on pricing and order mix to "help" the prospect become a customer. With prospects, he figuratively sits on their side of the table and seemingly puts together an order from their perspective. Only by effectively selling himself and controlling the selling process does this work. And a quick look at his results suggest he is quite a master at it.

Unfortunately, his corporate sales leaders say they do not like his style and, therefore, fail to promote his approach as a "best practice" for future training purposes. Instead they label his approach as being "us vs. them" and inconsistent with the culture of the organization. By labeling his selling approach in such a negative manner, it makes logical sense to them to avoid encouraging other sales reps to adapt such an disloyal or anti-company style of selling.

Perhaps, if they could change the label---use different words to describe what he does---they might see things in a different light. Labels are powerful influencers of the unconscious mind and vice-versa.

The unconscious mind influences about 95% of all decisions. As a seller, this can be a huge advantage if you know how to sell to that unconscious. As a manager, care must be taken to avoid letting our own unconscious mind create attitudes that get in the way of our success or the success of others. Looking at facts and trying to avoid letting our unconscious attitudes color those facts is a difficult but worthwhile undertaking from time to time. Sometimes we need to hear things with a different voice. Sometimes we need to step outside of our own skin or sit in a different chair to see more clearly what is happening around us.


*This is a style very similar to a colleague of mine who is a hugely successful commercial real estate seller. In his case, he becomes the adviser to help his client find a property that will fit the client's need and also helps the customer put together a proposal that will be accepted by the seller. Again, the "sale" is the art of selling himself and becoming the adviser.