The first article of this series (102A: Hiring Wrong) was critical of hiring salespeople based predominantly on their industry experience. It’s easy to criticize. What about solutions? Who are we looking for in sales? What characteristics make a successful salesperson?

• They have the ability to function without constant supervision.
This requires above all self-discipline. The self-discipline to make and honor commitments as well as the ability to manage time.
• They think, act, and communicate strategically.
Calls are planned ahead not only to maximize the effectiveness of each call, but to leverage the call into the bigger picture overall sales and marketing strategy. Constantly keeping their team informed of progress, they engage the right assets at the right time to win and keep business. They are strategically two steps ahead of the competition, and when they are caught off-guard they adapt strategy quickly to re-gain control.
• Through experience they become instinctive, knowing when to push, when to back-off, and when to alter their approach to move negotiations from one point to the next.
• Failures are not hidden or excused- they are lessons learned in their constant desire to get better. Great salespeople never believe they know it all. Always challenging themselves to get better, they never coast.

Nothing here talks about industry knowledge. Nothing about product knowledge. In fact, it could be argued that nothing here says anything about someone who is working exclusively inside the sales department. Sales is a profession that is more than merely convincing someone to buy something. It is convincing someone to change- and that has far wider and deeper implications in the talent hunt. When someone convinces someone they are the right person to hire, the hirer has been influenced to change. A new idea to improve productivity gets sold to a manager when the manager is convinced to take action. Managing change in an organization succeeds when it is sold to the participants and they believe it is in their interest to change. Whether convincing a prospective buyer to buy something or anyone to change the way things get done, selling skills are required. The talent for selling skills is not exclusively tied to the industry nor is it residing exclusively in the sales department.
While we have found in our programs that seven out of ten people who were terminated due to poor sales performance were hired for their industry knowledge, we also found that seven out of ten of the top salespeople in those same organizations had a previous sales position in another industry or another company department. This statistic comes from twelve different sales organizations that have 30 to 300 salespeople, totaling over 1,500 salespeople. These companies were in various industry segments, including electrical wholesale, media advertising, industrial automation and controls, healthcare, and consumer retail products.

Recruiting and Hiring Salespeople
Let’s address sales recruitment for what it should be: an ongoing strategy, not a momentary task. When businesses hire salespeople as a strategy instead of a task, the hiring process is where it should be- top of the mind. Considering sales is the only department in any organization chartered to produce measured profitable growth, sales recruitment should matter- and it should matter greatly.
If a company is having problems recruiting “good” people, or is suddenly in need of someone because they have an open field sales position, it’s probably because they treat the sales recruitment process as a task. They will never find a good salesperson by the end of the month to make the monthly numbers. They will not be able to hire a good salesperson at 10:00 am next Thursday. Recruiting good salespeople for hire is a continuous process, and includes the active recruitment of quality salespeople when they are not needed.
Good salespeople think strategically. Their decision to change companies or departments is no different- it’s a strategic one. More often than not, these types of decisions take time and good timing to make. Consequently, the executive who wants good salespeople must always be subconsciously recruiting salespeople. What we are trying to shed some light in this series of articles is for executives to re-think two major sales recruitment philosophies:

1. Throw out the old way of recruiting from the industry. This, by the way does not mean to eliminate the industry from the recruitment process- it just means to not limit the search to the industry.
2. Recruit the right sales behavior, which can come from any industry or any department in an organization.

Article 102C provides an outline for the sales recruitment and hiring process.

Wrong Selection Criteria

Why do we have salespeople that can’t hack it? Who are we looking for in sales? Where do we find good, qualified salespeople? The last question is probably the most pertinent, because there are very few college programs which offer a degree in sales. Back in the 70’s and 80’s when companies such as IBM and Xerox had bona fide intensive sales training programs (for college graduates, no less), there was a significant pool of trained sales professionals in the marketplace. Not any more. Which brings us back to the first question: Why do we have salespeople that can’t hack it?

This is a rather interesting question, because after coaching over 2,000 salespeople, we have wondered the same thing. More importantly, we have wondered, “How did some of these people get hired?” because quite frankly they aren’t salespeople. How do people who don’t belong in sales wind up running a multi-million dollar territory for a company? We have discovered the most prevalent hiring mistake is the poor performers were hired for their industry knowledge. Conversely, we have found that the majority of the top tier salespeople in most organizations have experience in at least one other industry or another company department. They are real salespeople- whether selling a product or a new way to be more productive in their department. What they sell is just a detail. Sales ability trumps industry knowledge more often than not in sales performance. Much more often than not.

Why do businesses hire people with industry knowledge? The theory is that industry knowledge- which includes knowing the industry language, players, and trends- can be transformed into instant sales without any appreciable training because they already “know” the business. Webster’s defines sell: “to persuade someone of the value of something”. Webster’s states further that “persuade implies an influencing of a person to an action, belief, etc by an overt appeal to his reason or emotions.” Nothing about industry knowledge here.

Why isn’t industry knowledge important? One false assumption is the newly hired salesperson with industry knowledge doesn’t need much training other than on new products. Consequently there is no training on customers (assumption: industry knowledge covers that), markets (industry knowledge again), or sales skills - and this last point is the scariest, because once again, it is assumed that by attaining industry knowledge the salesperson has developed sales skills. With few companies spending any appreciable time or money on sales skills training, guess what is lacking most for people with industry knowledge?

Another mistaken assumption hiring someone with industry knowledge is the “account conversion” theory. If a salesperson does their job right, they have developed a trusting business relationship between their company and the customer. This trust also implies value in the relationship. If the salesperson switches companies and now brings in Brand X as a better value, trust just flew out the window. The customer now feels they were sold a bag of goods before, so what are they getting this time?

Furthermore, changing sources never happens overnight. The salesperson has to influence the customer to change, rather than the customer requesting the change. That’s a big difference, and influencing a customer to change takes considerable time versus a customer-driven change. The problem here is the assumption that accounts will convert instantaneously. Mentally during the interview process, both the new company and the salesperson think the conversion will happen much quicker than it actually happens.

Suppose the salesperson is able to convert the accounts- and does it quickly. That can actually be more disastrous. Why? The quick conversions typically lead to “top sales” honors for the new salesperson. After the sudden rush of conversions, sales for this person fall flat. The company ignores it because the onrush of quick new orders creates a great first impression, and first impressions tend to override longer-term reality. Furthermore, the manager hiring the salesperson primarily hired the person to bring over the accounts, not to dig up new-new business for both the salesperson and the company.

Over time, however, the flat to declining sales performance starts to get noticed. Flat to declining sales performance leads to someone taking action. Ironically, it is usually the salesperson who takes action before the company management catches on. Why? Because the salesperson’s check is getting a bit smaller (assuming commission or bonus pay). They look at the flat numbers as a lack of leads by the company (after all, they are a “top” salesperson). With the check getting smaller they then update their resume and are on the hunt again for new employment with another competitor that wants this top salesperson to convert accounts. The company is a bit slow on this because they are in love with the salesperson’s initial performance and are blind to the reality of the current poor or mediocre performance. After a few iterations of this, the salesperson can claim to be a “top salesperson” with every company they have been to in the industry.

In order to get away from industry experience hiring bias, you have to approach the hiring process different than your industry as a culture does. You have to look for real sales talent. You have to look for people who know how to sell before they walk in your door. With no standards or formal development programs for salespeople, you have to think differently about finding real sales talent. A stellar book written about effective hiring practice was not written specifically for that purpose, but nonetheless, Michael Lewis’ Moneyball (2003 by WW Norton) is a gem when it comes to thinking about who to hire. Moneyball shows how Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics do a better job drafting quality players than most other teams in baseball- and they do it with one of the lowest payroll budgets in baseball. They make the playoffs more often than teams with much, much larger payrolls. And the point here is NOT to reduce pay to get good salespeople. It’s how to define, evaluate, select, and develop real talent versus perceived potential talent. The basis of the Athletics’ success is the non-traditional player selection philosophy of their General Manager, Billy Beane. Following are some excerpts from the book with narrative comments:

First, Billy tears down the conventional industry-skills thinking of the traditional-thinking baseball scouts.
…On the white board closest to Billy, the Big Board, there is space for 60 players. One by one he takes the names of the players the old scouts have fallen in love with (the ones with the “tools”) and picks apart their flaws. The first time he does this an old scout protests. “The guy’s an athlete, Billy,” the old scout says. “There’s a lot of upside there.”
“He can’t hit,” says Billy.
“He’s not that bad a hitter,” says the old scout.
“Yeah, what happens when he doesn’t know a fastball is coming?” asks Billy.
“He’s a tools guy,” says the old scout, defensively. The old scouts aren’t built to argue; they’re built to agree. They’re a part of the tightly woven class of former baseball players (industry people).

In every industry we hear the same things from all the old scouts who have been in the business for a long time. It doesn’t matter what industry- banking, healthcare, electrical distribution, systems integration, industrial automation, print advertising, or food service- the “old scouts” of each industry think the same. Take, for example, industrial automation. Working with sales managers in industrial automation, we’ll ask, “What are your hiring criteria for salespeople?”
They respond, “First, they must be technically competent- they must be engineers.” (The guy’s an athlete, Billy.)
Then we ask, “What’s your biggest challenge with your sales team?”
“They don’t know how to close.” (They can’t hit.)
Then we ask, “Are you going to train your salespeople this year?”
They respond, “Yes. We’re going to give them product training (make them a better athlete). ”
Us: “Are you going to do any sales skills training?”
Response: “No, we don’t have time or the budget for that.”
So, at the end of the year, the salespeople will be even more knowledgeable about the products they already know (better athletically), but still haven’t learned how to dig up, engage, and close a deal (hit). It’s so ironic, because they aren’t paid to engineer, they’re paid to hit (get orders).

…..”My only question,” says Billy, “is, if he’s that good a hitter, why doesn’t he hit better?”
“The swing my need some work. You have to reinvent him. But he can hit.”
“Pro baseball’s not real good at reinventing guys,” says Billy…..

By the time a corporation hires a salesperson, that person has gone through the most influential era of their life already and their habits are formed- good and bad. They either have a passion for sales already or they don’t. If they have a passion for sales, they get up and get out every day without adult supervision, they dig up new opportunities, find ways around obstacles, work on self-improvement, and pull themselves back up off the deck after getting flattened. These people are hitters- they don’t get mad when they strike out- they wonder how it happened and fix it the next time. As far as hiring the Industry Specialists (the guys with “the tools”) is concerned, consider this: maybe they’ve been in the industry so long because they actually couldn’t sell in any other industry. In other words, they aren’t salespeople. Now that we’ve told you what to avoid, Part II (article 102B) will go over what to look for to look for when hiring salespeople.

]]> http://www.thepeasegroup.com/102a-hiring-right-part-i/feed/ http://www.thepeasegroup.com/brain-can-not-multi-task/ http://www.thepeasegroup.com/brain-can-not-multi-task/#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:23:02 +0000 admin http://www.thepeasegroup.com/?p=45 The Brain Can NOT Multi-task

The Los Angeles-area September 2008 head on collision of a passenger train with a freight train that killed 25 people was a horrific event. The first thing that comes to many people’s mind must be, “How can two trains have a head-on collision in this day and age of technology?” Technology apparently was- and wasn’t- the culprit. The train system technology was working quite well. It unfortunately was competing for mind-share with personal technology- cell phone usage. Accident investigators are honing in on the theory that the engineer of the passenger train was text messaging his friends and may have missed a red signal as a result. Whether or not this proves to be factual, the following is food for thought.

We’ve heard this many times from people when we are talking to them while they are sitting at a computer screen. They tell us they can do “two things at once- they can multi-task”. While this is true in one sense, it is not true for that situation (reading and listening).

You can drive a stick-shift which requires the use of two feet to operate three pedals while one hand shifts gears, the other hand is on the steering wheel, and all of this is in reaction the visual stimulus from your eyes telling your pre-programmed motor functions what “program” they are to run. Remember the first time driving a stick shift wasn’t so smooth. And it took many times to get the feel just right so you didn’t have to “think” about it. But there is a huge difference between muscle memory developed by repetition in reaction to a SINGLE visual OR SINGLE auditory input stimulus and the brain processing TWO NEW pieces of incoming data.

With the stick-shift example, let’s throw in a new piece of information- like a cell phone conversation or glancing over at a passenger while having a conversation. The automatic process of driving the stick shift based on visual input stimulus (looking at the road and thinking about driving) starts to compete with new information. Information that is not directly connected to the task of driving the car.

What happens when the visual cortex and the auditory cortex are simultaneously stimulated? The stick-shifting isn’t quite as smooth- gears grind a little, the car jerks as the clutch comes out a bit fast, or the shift is missed altogether. A text message comes in and the car drifts toward the yellow line or the shoulder as it is being read. Or maybe a signal is missed- as alleged with the train engineer. Have you ever seen people just completely blow a clearly visible stop sign or red light- not only speeding through it, but blow through it as though it wasn’t there?

I was in a car accident two years ago. My car was “t-boned” by someone running a red light on a Wednesday night at 7:00 pm with normal traffic conditions in good weather. I was in the right lane of two left turn lanes- my view to my left was blocked by a utility van in the left of the two left-turn lanes. The light gave us a green arrow for a protected left turn. We pulled out- the van to my left suddenly stopped, but I wasn’t quite as quick to react, pulling out clear of the van. My car was then t-boned on my driver’s side at full speed (35- 40 mph) by a utility van that never hit the brakes. The problem was everyone else in his direction was stopped, there were SIX red lights facing his direction (it was a big intersection) and the distance he traveled from where he should have stopped to impact my car was 95 feet (it was a big intersection). He was on his cell phone.

Now the doubting Thomases will want more evidence than this- they will want scientific evidence. Glad you asked, and here you go. BUT, before you start reading this, put the phone down, stop faking like you are listening to your spouse, and comprehend what you are about to read. If you don’t get this message because you are “multi-tasking”, then it proves the point of the article. All I did was Google search “the brain multi-task” and found one choice piece of “about 294,000″ matches. Here are some quotes from the
Neurophilosophy.com, blog titled, “How the Brain Limits Our Ability to Multi-task”

“Recent neuroimaging studies in which participants switch between one task and another have implicated several regions of the frontal cortex as bottlenecks to the processing of information. It is emerging that multitasking places excessive demands on executive control centres in the frontal lobe. Hence, multitasking is counterproductive - not only does completion of all the tasks take longer than if they were performed one at a time, but performance on all tasks is also impaired.

The participants were then asked to perform the two tasks simultaneously or in quick succession. When the two tasks were presented within 300 milliseconds of each other, there was long delay in the time taken to respond during the second task. But when the two tasks were separated by periods of 1-2 seconds, there was only a marginal difference in the reaction times. The responses to the second task were also less accurate when a short interval separated the stimuli than when the interval was longer. This occurs because the presentation of two cognitive tasks in quick succession produces what is called a psychological refractory period. This is an increase in the time taken by the brain to process information when one task follows another in quick succession, leading to the delayed response to one of the tasks.”

In other words, in order for the brain to process two pieces of input from different sources, it must have a delay of at least 1-2 seconds to effectively process it. Take that a step further- if someone is talking to you while you are on the computer, you must either entirely botch both tasks (listening and reading the computer data) or force gaps in the data input from one source then the other. So, while you take a break from concentrating on who you were sending that precious email to while taking in a few words of the conversation, you addressed it to somebody that you definitely didn’t want to receive that email (and never knew it because you were focusing on the conversation) and then when you reverted back to the computer to hit “send”, you missed the important words of what the person was saying to you, like “you’re fired”. The article continues-

“The brain imaging revealed that this information processing bottleneck does not occur at the perceptual stages of information processing, but at a central stage of processing. …… Thus, even though the two tasks involve processing information of different sensory modalities - one visual, the other auditory - they are apparently processed in series (one after the other) within the same brain region, rather than in parallel within the same or different regions.

A more recent study, published in PLoS One this week, examined interference between auditory and visual tasks. In the study, led by Notger G. Müller of the Cognitive Neurology Unit at Frankfurt’s Brain Imaging Center……… it was also found that, when there was a small interval between the two stimuli, activity in the prefrontal and middle temporal cortices correlated to the visual stimulus was suppressed. Sensory modality-specific activity in the visual cortex was also reduced, and there was a corresponding impairment in awareness of the visual stimulus.“

That is the scary part- a corresponding impairment of the awareness of the visual stimulus. You can be driving straight at a wall while talking about dinner plans and never see the wall. That explains why the lady on the cell phone was driving on my side of a residential street at 30 mph in broad daylight- and didn’t move until I blasted my horn, flashed my lights, and then made a hand gesture. Even that wasn’t multi-tasking. Here’s the conclusion to the piece:

“One thing seems quite clear, however: to be more productive and efficient, do one thing at a time.”

As a footnote, after I circulated this article, someone emailed me a link to Amazon about a new book titled: The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing It All” Gets Nothing Done (Hardcover)by Dave Crenshaw
Although I never had any intention of using his title (it is a coincidence), it is interesting to note that others have written about the subject matter.

One program (starting Tuesday Nov 11 and ending at NOON Wednesday Nov 12) is geared toward those who are building their independent sales representative network from scratch or for those that are chartered to add new representatives to their sales channel. More information

Registration:

The second program (starting Thursday Nov 13 and ending NOON Friday Nov 14) is for those companies that have an existing independent sales representative network and are seeking ways to improve sales productivity through their rep channel.

More information

Registration

LOCATION: Sheraton-Gateway Hotel O’Hare - 6501 N. Mannheim Rd., Rosemont, IL 60018

Registration & Fee - MANA members - $625 * Sister association members - $655
Non-members - $705

The sales executive plays a unique and critical role in any organization. The uniqueness stems from three areas. One is directing salespeople, who are independent by nature. Second, sales executives typically don’t have a title with a “C” in front of it- thus keeping them at arm’s length from the executive committee. Finally, there is no pre-requisite educational degree or certification process for someone to earn the sales executive title.
This poses a challenge to the executive whose department is the only department that is chartered to grow via profitable revenues: sales. While all other departments have fixed costs and budgets for the year, the sales department is the only department whose performance directly affects how much more- or less- money is available to all other departments on a annual basis. It is up to sales to deliver the goods that make or break a business going forward.
Bench-marking some of the best practices of the 1,500 plus sales executives we have worked with in the past ten years (not to mention the ones we worked for prior to that), some patterns developed when observing the executives that stood out as excellent in terms of their performance, not only with their consistent year-to-year numbers, but with their low turnover rates, clear vision, deeply principled management style, and inherent strategic thinking. These best practices have been summarized in the Ten Laws listed below. Ten sounds like a lot , but realistically, it is not considering most organizations are struggling with business growth.
The First Law: Hire Right
While many sales execs inherit their charges, hiring right is without question the core with which to build a successful sales organization. Great sales managers know what to look for in a salesperson and know how to vet that during the hiring process. While there is a more detailed article regarding this topic (Hire Right), the right behaviors in a salesperson are: integrity, ambition, accountability, adaptability, and self-discipline.
Many managers fail to get this critical law right, and it’s no coincidence this is the first law. Without getting this one right, everything else fails. The problem many sales execs have with the hiring process is they think about filling the position instead of getting the right fit. The former approach treats hiring like a task, while the latter uses hiring as a part of their strategy. Hiring right requires active patience on the part of the executive- actively pursuing the right fit, but being patient until they find the right fit.
Effective sales managers hire right to inject desired behavioral elements into an inherited organization to start to create the right cultural shift within the department.

The Second Law: Train Well
While training seems to be an after- thought in some organizations, it should be part of every sales culture. The challenge with most training initiatives is they are often delivered with the belief that “telling is training” in a Power Point format, which has no long-term affect. Furthermore, if training is done, it is more often on product or market knowledge, not critical sales skills.
We have found that while training is part of the culture of good sales organizations, the best sales organizations make sure they devote at least half of their training to sales skills best practices sharing and sales skills development. Sales skills training is lacking in most organizations. This leaves sales skills to development by rote, which is ineffective, unproductive, and creates an unwieldy management challenge.

The Third Law: Stay Strategically Three Steps Ahead of the Sales Force
Salespeople by nature are in the reactive world of the prospects and customers. Market shifts, customer objections, and competition can trap salespeople in the tyranny of the momentary crisis. The best sales management teams can triage the current crisis and re-focus the sales team on the forward objectives.
Effective sales managers can do this because they know the next set of objectives and don’t lose sight of them. This does not mean they ignore the current situation at hand. It means they don’t let the current situation at hand pull their attention away from the bigger picture. Once the current crisis is resolved, triaged, or mitigated, they re-focus the sales team (or individual) forward to the next strategic objective.

The Fourth Law: Communicate Effectively
Strategy communicated by osmosis isn’t good leadership- but it is an unfortunate operational style for many businesses. Without exception, the better sales executives know how to tie together their written and verbal messages to both individuals and the sales team into a cohesive, consistent strategic message.
The best sales executives take that one step further: they have an acute awareness of new information by comprehending what they read, understanding what they hear (listening), and seeing what is really going on (observing). They take this new information, tie it back to their strategy, make any necessary adjustments, and then feed it back to their people.
The last piece- feedback- is what clearly separates excellent sales executives from the rest. The excellent sales executives don’t manage passive- aggressively. They don’t hide behind email and voicemail. They respond with a commitment on their part or by providing guidance to their people.

The Fifth Law: Get Engaged- Mutual Action Planning
Mutual Action Planning as a means to grow a market is a great sales executive tool. As the name implies, there is mutual skin in the game from the field salesperson and the home office to make commitments on behalf of territory growth and then to be held accountable in achieving those commitments. This is a departure from management-by-directive through coerced plans (forecasts or “budgets”) that become whipping posts for the next quarter or year.
We’ve noticed that great sales executives tailor Mutual Action Planning to the specific market and salesperson serving that market, and that Mutual Action Planning is not an annual event, or management-by-directive. It is a pre-thought strategy to achieved agreed-upon goals that require commitments by both the salesperson and management to take actions to achieve the objectives. It is a teamwork proposition to achieve a common goal: growth.

The Sixth Law: The Numbers DO Lie- Read Between the Lines
“Numbers don’t lie.” “It’s a numbers game”. Both of these comments are false regarding effective sales management.

Taking them one at a time: “Numbers don’t lie.” Numbers lie and they lie quite often when someone wants to use numbers to hold sway in an argument, fudge the data to be better or worse than it actually is, or pump up the books to look better for the boss. Finally- numbers only indicate a momentary accumulation of data, they don’t indicate a trend and seldom paint the real picture of what is going on.
Great sales executives compare numbers to what they subjectively observe is going on in the field. This gives them a “read” on whether or not the numbers are in line with what they observe. If there is a difference, then the executive can investigate whether the numbers are hiding the behavior or the behavior is hiding the numbers. When an effective sales executive sees the numbers come in, there are no surprises. If there are surprises, then they really have a cause to investigate further to see what is really going on. But these situations- data surprising the excellent sales exec- are anomalies.
“It’s a numbers game”: If an exec makes decisions entirely by numbers it probably means they are afraid to get engaged with their people. Anybody can pump numbers up to look good or beat the people up and point to the numbers. Computer programs can be written to do that. The best sales executives do more with less and know that the best salespeople are not the ones with the best numbers, but the ones that pull more out of territory than anybody else could do so under the same conditions.

The Seventh Law: Discover Each Salesperson’s Talent and Strategically Turn It Loose
What is each person’s talent? Great sales executives have very acute vision when it comes to understanding the talent their people possess. They look for the hidden talent and make sure this talent is exploited to the maximum effectiveness strategically both for the company and the individual.
What does the salesperson do well? Dig up leads? Develop local brand name recognition through effective marketing and networking? Do they rise to the occasion when objections are thrown their way, or competitive challenges, or when the opportunity is seemingly lost? Are they tenacious, persistent, or actively patient with follow-up and follow-through? Do they move laterally in an organization once they are inside the door?
Engaged sales executives are constantly looking for the talent each person has to maximize sales productivity. Then, they work with each salesperson to develop one weakness into a strength.

The Eighth Law: Firm but Fair: Enforce Accountability- Reward Excellence.
What applies to the bottom applies to the top. Top sales executives have the nerve to fire the top performer when the top performer crosses the line of insubordination, ethics, or integrity. No sales manager can be effective if they turn the other way when a top performer crosses the line whereas anyone else would be reprimanded or terminated.
Rewarding excellence means understanding what excellence is- and it isn’t just the numbers. Improved performance, growth, new market development- all are aspects of good business development.

The Ninth Law: Cherish Complaints
This is an interesting subject, because most managers hate the constant complaints they get from the usual suspects in field sales. The better managers know that there are complainers in every sales force and accept that as a fact of managing sales. The best sales managers not only don’t let the complaining bother them, they are able to ignore the tone (emotion) of the complaint to understand the core message of what is really being said.
For example, if a salesperson leaves eight panic voicemails with eight different people to help solve a customer service problem, the typical sales manager will look at the issue and think, “What is this idiot salesperson doing wasting eight people’s time?!”
The excellent sales executive will think, “I have to find out if the problem is that we don’t have a trusted, established go-to person for the field salesperson, if the field salesperson isn’t aware of how to handle this with the go-to person, or a combination of the two. Then, we have to get it fixed either by process or training.” The excellent executive looks at the problem, not the person.
As one excellent sales manager commented to us, “When your chronic complainer stops complaining, they’ve quit. You not only have lost a salesperson, you have lost a field information resource.”

The Tenth Law: Get Out of the Way
Some sales executives think they have to always be posturing for power to “control” their sales force. Whether it be taking over a sales call, taking over every meeting, or taking over the dinner conversation.
The narrow minded, manage-by-directive control freak executive will want to constantly take charge and impose their small view of the way the sales world should be. Excellent sales executives look at each engagement with their team as a learning experience for the executive, not the salesperson.

What is the payoff of an effective sales executive/ manager? What do they contribute to the “bottom line”? The best measure we have for this is when a bad manager is removed. We have observed five companies who had managers that were tyrants, managed by directive, or were passive aggressive- all bad traits for sales management. When the bad manager was finally removed, overall sales jumped 20-30 % in each case. The conclusion is that if a bad manager affects the numbers negatively this way, then a good manager should be able to produce numbers equally in a positive fashion. The numbers people will then conclude that a good exec has a net affect of 40-60% over a bad sales exec.

Regardless of how we play with the numbers, fundamentally, a great sales executive is like a really good referees: they are doing a great job when they have total control of the game and nobody notices.

What Makes a Great Leader?

Every great leader has an objective and a plan to reach to that objective. What separates the great leaders from the imitators is one simple fact: they lead beyond their lifetime. They don’t measure their success in how much they earned during their tenure. Great leaders don’t build monuments to themselves. Rather, monuments are erected in their name by those they lead.

Anybody can look like a success in good times. It’s the tough times that separate the real leaders from the also-rans. Real leaders know that challenges are a part of the journey to success, and meeting those challenges is what makes a leader worthy. They view it as their job to deal with problems and issues head-on, not duck for cover.

We’re always trying to grasp for the new leadership trends, methods, and philosophies. Let’s mimic Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, Jack Welch, or the Marines. We try to imitate what they do in order to be more effective. But doing things exactly the way they have done them is wrong. Everything that Phil Jackson, Pat Riley, and Jack Welch have done didn’t turn out right, and they’ll be the first to tell you. But how easy it is for many to conveniently throw out that subtle fact- that leadership isn’t all cut and dried. That there is some experimentation required, some of it succeeding, some of it failing. Many people try to just focus on everything these great leaders did right, and assume that doing these things will work in their own circumstance. But Phil Jackson never won an NBA championship in Chicago without Michael Jordan; and Michael Jordan never won one without Phil Jackson. They needed each other, along with a willing host of support characters, no injuries, and a dosage of luck to succeed.

Each great model we look up to had their own set of circumstances and sequence of events, but without certain other very important (emphasis on very important) sets of circumstances, we would have never heard of these people in the circles we now discuss them. We love to look at Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and marvel at the great wealth generated by the new wave of technology. But when we think about Nathan B. Stubblefield, who patented the cell phone, do we think of success and wealth? Absolutely not. Nathan B. Stubblefield patented the cell phone in 1906 and died penniless.

Successful leadership isn’t purely circumstantial, either. Given the same set of circumstances, many would have failed where Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, and Jack Welch succeeded. What is common among all successful leaders is that their legacy lives beyond their moments in the sun. In fact, many great leaders are not realized as being such until they are past their tenure. In 1960, John Kennedy announced that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the 60’s. He set in motion the program to make that dream a reality, and nearly six years after John Kennedy died, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

Look at the founding of the United States of America. An incredible cast of leaders. Hamilton, Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Payne, Hancock, - the list goes on and on. All different in their styles, their roles, and their effectiveness, but all united to a great cause that not only freed themselves, but set a nation’s government on the right path for the next 230 years plus. That’s visionary leadership.
Let’s not get caught up in the measurement game when we scale the effectiveness of a leader. True leadership isn’t based on what is taken; it is based on what is given. It is based on creating a lasting legacy, not a fleeting monument.

One thing is for certain: you will never be able to duplicate any great legendary leader’s path. You must find your own. You can, however, master a few fundamental principals that all great leaders have in common. They have a vision for the future and a plan to reach the vision. Through effective communication, they forge teams to execute the plan. They adapt, learn, and always strive to get better, realizing that their vision isn’t always right, but they’re not afraid of the dark. Stumbling doesn’t bother them, for it is through the darkness that true leaders light the path for others to follow.

What is a good market fit for The Pease Group? The Pease Group does not serve a particular market- we cater to a particular business philosophy. Business philosophy is not market specific- it is business-culture specific. Therefore, we prefer to say we serve business cultures that believe their competitive edge comes from who they hire, how they develop their people, and are committed to the long-term development of their people.

Strategic thinking, teamwork, effective communications- all at the core of The Pease Group’s training and organizational development programs- are universal concepts across many business markets and institutional organizations. If you believe in the long-term commitment required to make real cultural change- including change in the executive suite- then we are probably a good match. That’s the market we serve.

We believe in Aristotle’s quote: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”