40% Of Salespeople Miss Quota

"You only have to do one thing really well to make it in this world."

- Janis Joplin  

If that is true, and who can doubt Janis Joplin, then why do we ask salespeople to do so many things well?

I saw this headline in a marketing blog by John Sonnhalter and it peaked my interest. I wonder why?

40% of Salespeople Finished 2013 Under Quota

Well here are the results showing the most common reasons:

Here is my take on the solutions to the "pains":

1. 54% say the opportunities end up as "no decisions". Study after study show only 3% of any population is ready to buy "something" (a refrigerator, a massage, whatever) in the next few weeks. 80% of all sales are made between the 5^th and the 12^th contact. Only 10% of salespeople make more than 3 followups. Need we say more? This is a huge disconnect.
   
   Solution: After the salesperson makes the intial call, put the "leads" in your database and send them weekly or monthly TIPS (blogs, news briefs, videos), no selling - just really good information to serve them. When they are ready to buy they will call you, because they know, like and trust you. This is the only way I know to contact them 12 times or more and do it in a positive way, building trust. We cannot expect a salesperson to make 5-12 followups. What are they going to say? "Hi just following up" or "Just checking back"? Pleeeeease!
    
2. 33% state they are "burdened with tasks and spend less time selling". That is not shocking. The national average for outside salespeople is that they make on average 1.5 calls per day. Why? Many reasons but the most common one is "following up, reporting, coordinating, quoting, taking orders, handling customer concerns and questions, etc."
   
   Solution: Less salespeople and a sales coordinator teamed with each salesperson at half the price of a salesperson. My experience, and case study after case study, show you can double your sales at ¾ of the costs. A sales coordinator handles all of the above for the salesperson, freeing them to have sale conversations 6-8 times a day or more. Here is a flow chart I built for a client.

All the best, 

Rick Wallace

America's Happiest Employees

"Hire someone to do a job and they will work for your money, find someone that believes what you believe and they will give you their blood, sweat and tears."

-Simon Sintek

As we discover and rediscover the keys to a great business we keep coming back to the Right People, Doing the Right Things, Right.

I saw this article that studied companies across the US -Career Bliss rated the top 50 Happiest companies.  

It's a quick read, but contains some shared characteristics that seem to work.  First we need to define and write down the core purpose of our business. Only then can we hire people who believe what we believe. Then we need to create and maintain an environment that reinforces our values and core purpose. 

Dan Pink's findings are pretty much in line with this company's findings.

Employees need to feel they have a mastery of their job, autonomy to do it "their way" (to an extent) and --- this is vital---share the company's core purpose, WHY, or as they say in this article "meaning".

This core purpose or "why" that Simon is referring to in the quote above sounds warm and fuzzy to many small business owners, but it is comes up time and again when we talk about More Time, More Money and a Better Team.

All the best, 

Rick Wallace

I Told Them

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

- George Bernard Shaw

The single most important attribute of a leader, a coach, is to communicate well. A leader/coach has to have a vision and goals of where she wants to go, and she needs to align the team and take them there.  

That means "consistently" communicating to your team. I have had clients who finally set goals and wrote down a vision and then got the team together at the first of the quarter and told them what they were. Then they don't look or talk about them until the end of the quarter when I review with them how they performed. Some even tied bonuses to these numbers.

Wow what a waste of money! Either nothing is said, if we don't meet the goals, or worse, we hand out checks for something the team has totally forgotten about.

Communication takes consistency. The process I utilize is The Leadership Matrix and it instills that consistency in communications and ensures execution.

We ensure communication, follow up and execution through developing a rhythm in the business. We have team-based, weekly 20 minute Huddles, reviewing the goals and how we are doing against them, and Dashboards to ensure follow up on major tactical projects. We have weekly Coaching Conversations (10 -15 minutes long), one-on-one with direct reports to discuss how the individual is doing on their contribution to achieving the goals,how we can help them and to focus them on the right things.

Telling them once in a group doesn't work. To really communicate something we need to do it over and over with the team as a group AND one-on-one. In this way we align the team with where we are going, and we can motivate the team with the goals we have set by reviewing our progress weekly throughout the quarter.

Here's to process and consistency. 

All the best, 

Rick Wallace

I Quit!

"When you do the things you need to do when you need to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them."

-- Zig Ziglar, Motivational Speaker

I think the number one instigator of stress in a business is people. Whether it is the employee with the bad attitude (that we never seem to let go because we don't want to have to recruit someone new), or the employee that walks in one day and resigns.

How do you eliminate these two big stressors? Always be recruiting and build a Virtual Bench.  

A Virtual Bench is a list of great people who are working for someone else but have been vetted and acknowledge they would like to work for you in the future. Always be recruiting means keeping your eyes and ears open all the time to people you encounter with great attitudes and talents.

But you don't like recruiting. How do we overcome anything we dread doing? By simply doing it and making it a habit over time. The more we practice it, the easier and more fun it can be.

Plus, if you don't have a job opening hanging over you, the pressure of filling the slot is absent and the whole process can be more enjoyable.

So if we are always looking for talent, talking, meeting and vetting your Virtual Bench at least two stress inducing events no longer will stress you out.    

All the best, 

Rick Wallace

Just One Note

"It comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important."

-- Steve Jobs, Apple Co-founder

From Seth Godin: 

Starting at the age of nine, I played the clarinet for eight years.

Actually, that's not true. I took clarinet lessons for eight years when I was a kid, but I'm not sure I ever actually played it.

Eventually, I heard a symphony orchestra member play a clarinet solo. It began with a sustained middle C, and I am 100% certain that never once did I play a note that sounded even close to the way his sounded.

And yet...

And yet the lessons I was given were all about fingerings and songs and techniques. They were about playing higher or lower or longer notes, or playing more complex rhythms. At no point did someone sit me down and say, "wait, none of this matters if you can't play a single note that actually sounds good."

Instead, the restaurant makes the menu longer instead of figuring out how to make even one dish worth traveling across town for. We add many slides to our presentation before figuring out how to utter a single sentence that will give the people in the room chills or make them think. We confuse variety and range with quality.

Practice is not the answer here. Practice, the 10,000 hours thing, practice alone doesn't produce work that matters. No, that only comes from caring. From caring enough to leap, to bleed for the art, to go out on the ledge, where it's dangerous. When we care enough, we raise the bar, not just for ourselves, but for our customer, our audience and our partners.

It's obvious, then, why I don't play the clarinet any more. I don't care enough, can't work hard enough, don't have the guts to put that work into the world. This is the best reason to stop playing, and it opens the door to go find an art you care enough to make matter instead. Find and make your own music.

The cop-out would be to play the clarinet just a little, to add one more thing to my list of mediocre.

As Jony Ive said, "We did it because we cared, because when you realize how well you can make something, falling short, whether seen or not, feels like failure."

It's much easier to add some features, increase your network, get some itemized tasks done. Who wants to feel failure?

We opt for more instead of better.

Better is better than more.

Send Me A Person Who Dreams During the Day

"Send me a person who dreams during the day, not during the night.  That's the person who's going to change the world."

- Lawrence of Arabia, T. E. Lawrence

"Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer."

- William S. Burroughs

From Steve Chandler:  

    Sometimes a coaching client of mine will claim to not know the answer to something or "not know how to" decide something.

     Often my clients have a lot of opportunity in life but their real problem is choosing.  They think they don't know how to decide what to do, and so they live a totally paralyzed life.

      So, I will tell them to take a long walk by the water, go to the beach and take a long, long walk, just by yourself and don't have any distractions, don't have your earphones on or anything like that. Just walk and listen to the water and live inside the inquiry of what would be the boldest, bravest thing for me to do?

    And they almost always, when they do the assignment, come back with some amazing insight they receive. A strong, new choice that they have made and it's really got a lot of heart in it!

      When you walk, you activate the right brain because you cannot move your left leg without the right brain kicking in and activating. So the left, right, left, right of your walking actually guarantees that you're now in whole brain thinking while you're walking. 

     That's why so many great philosophers from Plato to Emerson to Brenda Ueland, walked and walked and walked.  Colin Wilson, walking... walking along the cliffs of Cornwall with his dogs every day. 

     And because it activates whole brain thinking, it allows the right brain to serve you and help you.  If we're seated and balled up with the  body clenched in the seated position all day in front of a computer screen, the left brain is processing all day but the right brain will just check out.  (Ever seen those rubber band balls? Ever spend your day as a human version of that?) What happens in the the night after that is you have the wildest dreams in the world. Because the right brain is finally being allowed to express itself, but it's in dreams, not in waking hours. 

        Now that occurs when someone is willing to go for a long walk, all alone, by herself, to just see what comes up.  It's a very brave thing to do because there's huge resistance to it.  People don't want to do it.  They'd rather live inside the illusion of busy-ness - frantic false activity all day! - than be brave and go to solitude and silence and walk.  That's why I've always talked about the ultimate seminar being one in which no one speaks.

Live well and prosper,
Steve
  
All the best, 
Rick Wallace

Your Problem is Not Motivation

"Most people (and your own thoughts) are fast to stop you before you get started,  but hesitate to get in the way if you're moving."

- Tim Ferriss

 

"Action is the foundational key to all success."

- Pablo Picasso

Your Problem Isn't Motivation

By Peter Bregman 
CEO Advisor
Published January 11, 2013
FOXBusiness 

Watch What Peter Has to Say About Motivation

"Peter," my friend Byron emailed me a few days ago. "I haven't been diligent about working out over the past five years and I'm trying to get back in the gym and get myself into a healthier state. I've found that on my quest for a Mind, Body, Spirit balance, my body has been neglected. I need to fix it, and it's VERY hard for me to get motivated. Any insight?"

It's the kind of question that's on many of our minds in the midst of New Year's resolution season.

Something you should know about Byron: He recently started a business and he's constantly developing his skills through training programs he pays for with his own money. So it's not that Byron is unmotivated in general. It's just that he thinks he's unmotivated to work out.

But Byron is wrong. "I need to fix it," he wrote. He is motivated to work out; otherwise he wouldn't have emailed me. He clearly cares about getting fit and when you care about something, you're motivated.

No, Byron's challenge isn't motivation. It's follow-through.

Which is important to realize because as long as Byron thinks he's solving for a motivation problem, he'll be looking for the wrong solution. He'll try to get himself excited. He'll remind himself that being in shape is really important. Maybe he'll visualize the partners he'll attract if he looks better or the years he'll add to his life if he gets in better shape.

Each attempt to "motivate" himself will only increase his stress and guilt as it widens the gap between his motivation and his follow-through, between how badly he wants to work out and his failure to do so. We have a misconception that if we only cared enough about something, we would do something about it. But that's not true.

Motivation is in the mind; follow-through is in the practice. Motivation is conceptual; follow-through is practical. In fact, the solution to a motivation problem is the exact opposite of the solution to a follow through problem. The mind is essential to motivation. But with follow through, it's the mind that gets in the way.

We've all experienced our mind sabotaging our aspirations. We decide to go to the gym after work but then, when it comes time to go, we think, It's late, I'm tired, maybe I'll skip it today. We decide we need to be more supportive of our employees, but then, when someone makes a mistake, we think, If I don't make a big deal about this, he's going to do it again. We decide we need to speak more in meetings but then, when we're sitting in the meeting, we think, I'm not sure what I'm going to say really adds value.

Here's the key: if you want to follow through on something, stop thinking.

Shut down the conversation that goes on in your head before it starts. Don't take the bait. Stop arguing with yourself.

Make a very specific decision about something you want to do and don't question it. By very specific, I mean things like: I will work out tomorrow at 6 AM or I will only point out the things my employee does right or I will say at least one thing in the next meeting.

Then, when your mind starts to argue with you - and I guarantee it will - ignore it.  

You're smarter than your mind. You can see right through it.

As for Byron, I have a few tricks that can help him shut down his mind and improve his follow-through - some things I've written about in the past:

• Create an environment that supports your workout goals. Have your gym clothes sitting by your bed and put them on first thing when you wake up. In fact, work out first thing, before your mind realizes what you're doing. 
• Use a trainer or commit to work out with a friend. It's harder to argue against your accountability to another person. 
• Decide when and where you're going to work out - literally write it in your calendar - and the likelihood of follow-through will increase dramatically. 
• Commit to a concrete plan that is simple to quantify: 45 minutes of movement a day, cut out sugar, go to the gym six days a week.
• Realize that the follow-through challenge will only last a few seconds. As soon as you put your sneakers on and start heading to the gym, your mind will give up arguing with you.
• Discipline will be useful for the first week as you get back into working out. But after that, momentum will take over and the pleasure of feeling more fit will quiet the internal chatter.
• Finally, think of all the above as a multifaceted campaign. A checklist that you should go through each day to make sure you are stacking the deck in your favor.

I once took a golf lesson with a pro who taught me a certain way to swing the club. After the lesson, he issued a warning. "When you play with others, some people will want to give you advice. Just listen to them politely, thank them for their advice, and then completely ignore it and do exactly what I've just told you to do."

That, Byron, is precisely how you should respond to your mind.

Peter Bregman is a strategic advisor to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done.

All the best, 

Rick Wallace