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Goal-Orientation in GREAT Salespeople

Goal-Orientation: Personality Trait #1 in High-Activity Salespeople (for sales cycles less than 90 days)

Is your team motivated to achieve timely results or to steadily pass the day?

TARGETS • OBJECTIVES • SALES
When salespeople achieve their numbers, CASH FLOWS .......
and, businesses thrive.  Owners hear the streaming sound of profits reach the bottom of a healthy income statement.  They love that sound!

Driven salespeople (racehorses) who consistently achieve their numbers are naturally goal-oriented.  They find enough prospects in the time required.  They set and hold the right amount or appointments.  They present a high enough number of quotes to reach their sales goals, and then start the cycle again.

Goal-Orientation combined with Social Drive (Trait #2) leads to more prospecting.  A person networks and attends social events for the purpose of lead generation.  They make things happen with networking activity and by attending events for prospecting reasons.  They keep their sales funnel FULL.

What if a salesperson has a low goal-orientation?  What if they do not look at their progress - and just work at a steady pace?  Do you think this would affect sales?  Of course, it would.  It’s common sense.

What if a salesperson does not like to socialize (low social drive) and prefers working alone?  Have you ever noticed that office parking lots do not contain cars belonging to great salespeople? 

Top performers, with short sales cycles, do not sit in offices.  They RACE for the tape.

They get out of the office and into the lives of potential customers. 

Excellent personality profiles show levels of Goal-Orientation, Social Drive, Social Confidence, and a Need to Control.  These four traits, anchored by Goal-Orientation, produce top performers with drive and energy.  Salespeople with high levels of these personality traits NATURALLY produce more.

Imagine this.  You hire a salesperson who keeps track of their progress during the month.  They always know how much they’ve sold and how much they need to sell.  They realize that it takes ‘x’ number of quotes and ‘y’ number of appointments to get enough sales each and EVERY month.  And, they love this kind of activity.  They love it.  They love being in the race.  And, you’re the sales manager.  What would that feel like?

Recruit them and use a personality profile to help you spot them. (see craftprofiles)
We’d love to help you.  Lance

Why Personality Profiles?

TAKES THE GUESSWORK OUT OF RECRUITING ...

Increase your ODDS of finding a great salesperson or sales manager by 10-15 times over traditional methods of interviewing and reference checking.  Use a validated personality profile to decrease hiring mistakes - mistakes that cost $8,000 - $200,000 per poor hire. 

For twenty years, we have used personality profiles to make hiring decisions with greater accuracy.  They have also made selecting a top performer easier.  As a result, our confidence has increased along with sales team production and retention.

We want to help you with our profiling expertise.  And, we want to keep you away from a reliance on a ‘seat-of-the-pants’ interview - statistically worth less than 2% in making a good hiring decision.

Select GREAT Salespeople
Let’s keep it simple.  A great salesperson has the natural ability to do enough of the following activities ...

FIND PROSPECTS
HOLD APPOINTMENTS
CLOSE SALES

Use a personality profile.  Quickly determine if a person naturally possesses the personality to do these skills well.  In other words, does the salesperson have the personality to handle these skill areas?  And, at what ‘power level’ can they do them?

Find Prospects.  Does the candidate have enough social drive and goal-orientation to get out among people and find prospects?  Do they have the social confidence to approach these people and build relationships?  Will they assert themselves.  Will they continually prospect to reach their goals?  A personality profile predicts a candidate’s ability to naturally find prospects and network.

Hold Appointments.  Will the candidate pick up the phone and make appointments?  Do they have enough goal drive and social confidence to do this on an ongoing basis?  Will they set enough appointment each week?  Will they seek to control the sale process or will they allow the prospect to control it?  Do they have the social confidence to present well?

Close Sales. Will they quote enough business?  Will they ask for the business?  Will they fight to get enough business completed to reach their sales goal?  Will they ask about next steps?  Will they follow up in order to win sales?  Will manage time and activities to get results?  Will they want or desire to reach performance objectives?

We want you to lower the ramp up time to acceptable production.  We want you to increase the selection and retention of great salespeople.  We want to help you use a personality profile as a recruiting tool - one of several steps to make better hiring decisions.  We want to make you a conscious competent with a great recruiting tool - a personality profile.  (see craftprofiles)

And, we want your coaching confidence to heighten with a better understanding of one new recruit vs. another.

Select GREAT Sales Managers
Great salespeople do not always make great sales managers.  Do you have someone that has the right makeup for this change in position?  A personality profile can help you with this crucial sales team move or outside hiring decision.

A great sales manager must possess the natural instincts to ...
Prospect for great salespeople
Plan sales team goal achievement
Know people as individuals
Manage sales processes - confronting and coaching performance of sales activities and face-to-face skills
Build teams and recognize achievement

Use a profile to determine a person’s strengths and weaknesses in these areas.  Will they prospect and network for great salespeople?  Will they focus on enough detail to plan goal achievement, sales meetings, etc.?  Will they care about their people?  Will they learn about their unique characteristics.  Will they confront poor behavior?  Or, will they give away praise and recognition?  Will they build teams?

Great salespeople oftentimes do not naturally posses the traits of great sales managers.  Goal achievement WILL NOT be pegged at the top of the scale in a great manager.  Sales managers must value step-by-step processes at some level.  Their personality will also require enough patience to plan and to analyze.  And, yet, this level of detail must not be so high that they are not active with their people and driven to get results.  Sales managers must not become paralyzed by analysis.

And, a great sales manager will give away praise and recognition.  They will not possess too great a need for praise themselves. 

Personality profiles are great at predicting if a person possesses the traits of a great salesperson or manager ... so let’s get started making better, easier, and more confident hiring selections NOW.  Please read through this post several times.  There’s much to be absorbed here.  Thanks, Lance.

The Makeup of Great Sales Trainers

“What makes a GREAT sales trainer? Ah ... the makeup ... personality? character? talent? skills? knowledge? attitudes and beliefs!!!!

Attitudes and beliefs make up the most important part of a great sales trainer’s makeup. They frame what a sales trainer decides to learn, how the trainer applies knowledge, and what results the trainer strives to accomplish. 


I’m going to put these attitudes and beliefs in yes or no question form to simulate a picture of a great sales trainer. And, I’m going to put the questions in order of importance. 



Does the trainer: 

1. ”Care about the needs of those being trained?” 
[If so, they will be discovered and acted upon prior to, during, and after training.] 



2. “Believe that people can get better?"(that the participants have what it takes.) 
[If so, that belief will be transferred during and after training. People will be inspired.] 



3. “Believe that people motivate themselves?” 
[Trainers put together an environment in which people want to get better.] 



4. “Believe that failure is an ingredient in giving your best as people strive to grow?” 
[If so, the trainer will present with humility and people will pursue getting better with less fear.] 



5. “Believe that teams are more important than individuals?” 
[Great trainers will get people working together on sales issues and team goal achievement. They will model respect for the individual and respect for the team. They will teach salespeople to learn from each other and to help each other - especially in the training room.] 



6. “Believe that processes lead to goal achievement?” 
[If so, the great sales trainer will cover the three most important process areas for great salespeople ... (1) Goal Achievement Planning; (2) Activity Management; (3) Face-to-Face Skills. The tools and skills of these process areas will be customized to the company.] 



7. “Believe in following up training for the purpose of goal achievement and skill building. 

[The great trainer designs reinforcement sessions and on-the-field coaching by sales managers to make sure new habits form which lead to sales goal achievement.] 



Note: Bad trainers care about themselves before others - how they look and how they sound. They don’t care if people get better. They just want to get paid for the training. They seek to manipulate the emotions of people for their own gain. And, they do not care about teamwork. Followup is nonexistent and that’s what they are after the training.  Nonexistent.  Lance.

The Impact of a Product Knowledge Focus

Can product knowledge get in the way?  YES! 



A friend and past mentor, Ron Willingham, once told me that all salespeople sell with some type of focus.  That focus can be one of these ...

- Product focus
- Quota focus 

- Ego focus 

- Value focus 



A “product focus” causes a salesperson to wax on eloquently about product features and perhaps benefits that have no bearing on the needs of the person being sold. Oftentimes, sales training is really product training.  The trainer teaches product information and does not teach salespeople how to identify needs, problems, or wants filled for new customers.  As a result, sales trainees do not develop good questions to use during a face-to-face meeting that bring these out. 



A “quota focus” causes a salesperson to see the prospect as no. 4, or no. 8, or no. etc… or as some amount of sales dollars. This focus keeps the salesperson from understanding needs or even knowing the prospect’s name. It also causes the veins to bulge out in his neck as he attempts to close the sale under a quota pressure. 



An “ego focus” causes the salesperson to be preoccupied with looks, or pride, or what others think. As a result, this focus hinders a salesperson from caring about the prospect - their satisfaction or their needs.



Finally, the best focus is a “value focus,” through which the salesperson wants to exchange value in the transaction. The salesperson seeks to understand a prospect’s situation, needs, and problems relative to the prospect’s product or service purchase. The salesperson wants a fair exchange of value and wants the new customer to be delighted with a solved problem, filled need, or satisfied want. 



Let’s coach salespeople to sell with a value focus and not a product, quota, ego, or PRICE focus.  Lance.

A Talent Fit for Your Organization

Most companies do not know how to do find a “talent fit.” And, here are reasons why:

1. They do not know the top six traits in order of priority necessary for a good “fit.”
2. They do not look for the important character AND personality traits of a top performer.
3. They have not been trained to use a best practice recruiting system: funnel process, skills, and tools.
4. They do not think about how fast people need to ramp up - and the aptitude necessary for success.

How do we find the traits we require for a high-activity salesperson (as opposed to a major accounts sales team)?
1st ... Identify the top character traits: - Honesty - Personal Responsibility - Hard Work Ethic Next, know the top personality traits that align with prospecting, closing, presentation, and high activity.  They are: Goal-Orientation, Social Confidence, Social Drive

[For free, here’s a brainstorming process for determining the character and personality traits required for your sales position 1. Ask current managers, “What are the major changes in the last 1-2 years affecting sales (flip chart)?” 2.  “What are the challenges of the job position as a result of these changes (flip chart)?” 3.  “What actions need to be done to meet the challenges (flip chart)?” 4. “What will be the traits of high performance salespeople who can meet today’s challenges? in this position?] ”

2nd ... Sourcing Methods ... Find best sources for candidates most likely to fit the character and personality traits targeted.
3rd ... Recruiting Funnel Process Stage One: Screening (resumes, by phone: 5-12 minutes, by email, references) Stage Two: Personality Profiling (with EEO validated CraftProfile see http://www.craftprofiles.com) Also, Oxford Learning Inventory for learning style (also see http://www.craftprofiles.com) Stage Three: Structured Interviewing (a interviewer-scored 100 point questionnaire structured to look for the character and personality traits)
4th ... Recruiting Process Tools and Skills (all of which should work toward identifying the necessary character and recruiting skills)
- Phone screening scripts
- Resume screening skills
- Profile analysis
- Interviewing skills
- Matching sheets showing +’s and -’s with regards to character and personality traits desired

... Recently, we installed this type of recruiting system in a company whose industry is showing a 22% drop year-to-date in sales.  This company is presently 18% up year-to-date in sales, primarily due to recruiting more effectively right “talent fits” for their company. So, work at using the ideas you find helpful in the post.  And ... Do GREAT.  Lance.

The Challenge of Door to Door

What a great training ground for a sales professional ... Door-to-door sales will stretch your sensitivity to rapport building in many ways, and it will require you to learn to make compelling presentations, while captivating your audience in a variety of situations less than ideal.

I remember those days in the home - a few years of them.  As you drive up to the home, you look for the personality of the homeowners in the property’s appearance (you may find conversation openers there as well) ... is it messy, is it extremely neat, are their flowers, color, special features (swimming pool, deck) etc?  Also, when you knock on the door, you stand back away from it and turn your side to it - looking away, until they open the door. This lessens the fear they have of you, a stranger, standing very close to the door, facing it, and looking at them.

Rapport building will begin from the time the door opens until you leave the property. Door-to-door sales will help you learn to speed up for dynamos, slow down for thinkers, and to chat and talk with socialites. And, when it’s a couple, you learn to develop rapport with two people at the same time. 

You also learn to center your presentation on their needs, while learning to ask great questions prior to the presentation. Also, you learn to control the presentation setting - perhaps at the dining room table or in an area most conducive to your product demonstration or the advice you give.

I remember the Southwest Bible salespeople - young college kids selling door-to-door during the summer ... learning to ask for referrals to other neighborhood doors.  Through the door-to-door experience they became good.  Many went on to great careers as salespeople.  The challenge of door-to-door sales makes a terrific proving ground.  It builds heart and mind muscle for those who learn from it.  Always respect those who go door-to-door.  Lance [Note: An absolutely great movie to watch is William H. Macy’s performance in Door to Door (2002) ... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274468/ or, ]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274468/]

Stimulating Competition or Pursuing Greatness?

The following may be a little controversial. However I do not intend to be divisive… just a little weird or unusual about the subject of competition. Alfie Kohn wrote a book several years ago. I believe it was called, “No Contest: the Case Against Competition.” His heavily researched work concluded that competition was unhealthy no matter how many sales managers decry the thought. (By the way, I love to WIN with the best of them. L.)

In my studies of all coaches with three (3) national championships or more ... very few focused on creating a healthy competitive climate within the team ... so few in fact, at present, I cannot remember one who did. Instead they worked to form incredibly strong bonds between the players in the struggle to give their best, on the field or on the floor, for the benefit of others ... while striving to get better each day.

In the last twenty (20) plus years, I discovered that I can inspire others and I cannot motivate them. I can create a ‘climate’ in which people release their own achievement drive for the benefit of others.

I’ve also discovered that competition lies naturally in the hearts of salespeople, but teamwork doesn’t. And, I’ve learned that teamwork focused on excellence is in the long-term more productive than competition flamed within the ranks. So, I’ve been able to lead sales teams in breaking records with a mature focus on personal goals and team goals. I’ve done this by building emotional meaning into those goals for themselves, their families, and their companies. And, if I’ve recruited well, each of the teams I’ve led have formed strong bonds very much like that of a family. I’ve also learned to teach salespeople to cheer for other salespeople, to encourage them, and share celebrations at team meetings.

Eleven companies, out of 1400, made the cut in “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. In each, a disciplined and relationship-centered company of people focused on striving for excellence - without finger pointing or dancing in the end zone. These companies quietly and incrementally improved for years without flaming out or having mass exits and without depending upon charismatic leaders or lesser motivational forces.

I believe a competitive nature exists. It exists as a spiritual energy - to be harnessed for men and women to fight TOGETHER against the forces of mediocrity and those issues that impede personal and team goal achievement.

Some Sales Planning Basics

Some Basics ... Sales blocking and tackling stuff (use anything that will help you or your people) ...

The following information contains questions and comments that will help your salespeople develop new business.  They will also help create a value-focused attitude and sales tools for what you provide ... 


Ask these questions ...

1st - “Do you believe in your ability to deliver value to customers or clients?” Yes or No. 
(If you get past this one, continue. If not, do something else.) 

2nd - “Do you believe that people exist who need what you have?” 
(If you get past this one, continue. If not, do something else.) 


3rd - “What typical situations do these people face?” 

4th - “What needs and problems do they have as they face their situation?” 

5th - “What do needs/problems cost people in terms of $$ or emotional impact?” 

6th - “What typical solutions do you provide?” 

7th - “What will $$ or emotional impact will your solution bring?” 

Now, answer all of these questions on a piece of paper. 


Then, have your people do these exercises:

Help them develop three (3) tools from these questions. 

- Tool #1 ... a 30 sec. statement about what you do, who you do it for, and what typical benefits you provide. 

- Tool #2 ... an approach letter that they can mail out that asks for an appointment and explains what’s in Tool #1. 

- Tool #3 ... a set of open-ended questions that start with: who, what, where, when, why, how, describe, tell, or explain ... that when asked of prospects gets them talking about the typical situation, needs, and problems you listed in #4 above. You will use these questions when in front of prospects and you may use one or two of them when at networking events. 



Next, decide what people, vertical markets, or companies you will put on a prospecting list. List all the companies on a sheet of paper and get any information you can about who makes decisions about what you sell.  Or, when you call, simply ask the question, “Who makes decisions about ‘x.’”


Suggestions:

Now ... 

1. Join a Business Networking International group to exchange leads for prospecting. 

2. Join the Chamber of Commerce and get to know people who can give you leads to prospect. You will also meet small business owners there. 

3. Mail out ten (10) approach letters (tool #2 above) each week and call these people each week for an appointment. Read Bill Goods, “Prospecting Your Way to Sales Success” to learn what to say when you call - use a script as a basic building block to work from. 

4. Also, mail out the approach letter to referrals you receive when networking (mentioning the name of the person who gave you the referral).
5. Cold call (telephone: see Bill Good’s book above) or cross residential or company thresholds cold if you have to in the early part of your career.  

6. When you go on appointments, ask permission to ask your questions (tool #3 above).  Tell the prospect that you want to understand their present situation to see if there are need and problems you can help. Ask your questions, take notes, paraphrase your understanding and, if they have needs and problems you can help, ask to set a 2nd appointment to get back to them with a customized proposal.  If the solution is complex, and other buying influencers are present, then set appointments with them and ask them questions as well.

7. Set an appointment to present your solution and its investment. 

8. Count on doing 3 presentations to get one sale when thinking about your income. 



These basic exercises and suggestions will remove salespeople from the role of “snake-oil salesperson.” They help people work with high integrity and on the needs and problems of others. They’re just basic.  (Also read: Ron Willingham’s “Integrity Selling.” It’s one of those ‘basically“ good sales books.) Any of the above can be expanded and made better.  Do it.  Great selling. Lance.

Courage in Sales

Please tell me about a personal example in sales when you had to have courage to ‘keep on keepin’ on.

Here’s mine.  More than twenty years ago, I was faced with the following. I was two or more payments behind on my house and I had received the proverbial registered letter.  It basically said that I was going to lose the farm unless I sold something. And, at the same time, I was face-to-face with the real culprit, me. Yes me. My work ethic was bad. My courage was low. And, I was about to fail my lovely bride and children.

I had quit my job and I was trying to sell for the first time in my life without knowing anyone in business or without even knowing what a cold call looked like.  My office was in my bathroom and sometimes others needed it for more than my typewriter and I had to leave.  During the day, I would make cold calls out of the City Directory to sales managers (while sitting in a Holiday Inn using thei guest telephone).  I still remember the first appointment leading to a sale.

I was afraid, in danger of losing my home, uncertain, and intimidated by people who knew a lot more about business than I did.  But, by the grace of God, I survived and appeared on the other side as a new person.  Kept the farm.  Kept the family.  Built a business.  I will never forget.  Hope this helps someone.  Now, go and make things better.  This is about as personal as I can get.  Lance