Bee-haviors of Successful Sales Professionals

What do you think about sales people who always appear to be doing great regardless of how things are going? When things don’t go their way, they seem to have the ability to just shake it off and move forward. When things do go their way, they almost always act as if they expected it to turn out that way all along.

If you look at the way those people handle their sales careers, you might notice that they handle their accounts with that same kind of attitude and consistency too. They dress their best for every meeting and exude the confidence that goes along with it. They take their client’s calls, and take action to resolve issues, treating each situation they encounter as an opportunity rather than a problem.

They put their time and energy into their accounts just like other sales professionals do, they just do it with enthusiasm rather than complaints. The funny part is that they seem to look forward to handling whatever comes their way—both the good and the bad.

Back when you were starting your sales career, one of your goals was to make a good impression with every account. Chances are good that you went the extra mile when you could too. Granted, the accounts you’re handling now are probably bigger. You might even describe your current list of accounts as “comfortable.” But don’t let complacency and a poor attitude become an excuse for letting things slide with any of your key accounts.

As a sales professional, your livelihood will be heavily influenced by the quality of both your attitude and your process, and that means following the same protocols with each of your key accounts.

Making the commitment to being a great sales person is what sets the stage for long-term growth in sales revenue, and it’s a great disservice to your clients to assume that they can’t tell the difference between the sales rep who’s committed to doing what’s best for the them and the rep who’s just putting in enough face time to keep the account alive. They can. So, if you want your revenues to keep growing (because maintaining without growth isn’t an option these days) put aside some time to revisit your sales process, and your attitude.

What are you doing that works? What are you doing that hasn’t been working lately? How consistent are you with your sales process and protocols? Are there times when your assumptions (rather than your research) directly interfere with your process and/or attitude to your detriment?

I could go through the long list of things there are to look at, but you should be able to look at your process, and your attitude, and figure it out. If you’re having trouble deciphering or remembering what your personal sales process is, or you’re realizing that you’ve gotten off track and aren’t sure of how to get back on, or you’re struggling to reclaim your positive attitude, it’s time to schedule a consultation with me so we can figure it out, because:

There’s never a better time than the present to reignite the fire in your gut!

Alan Luoma: I am a Sales Coach with extensive experience in industrial sales, sales management, new

product development, sales and product training. I work with a great national sustainable packaging company and their exceptional distributors to increase sales. My success has been and is in utilizing the Pareto 80/20 principal in business and life. I have become an expert in seeking out and eliminating behaviors that prevent business people from being successful. I am a member of The National Speakers Association and New England Speakers Association. You can view my profile on LinkedIn, or contact me at Luoma@snet.net 

The End of Average Part 2

Fredrick Taylor’s book, The Principles of Scientific Management, was a huge success as it swept across all the world’s capitalistic industries and countries. In some cases, such as in the communist regimes in Russia and Asia, standardization was taking to even higher levels in Stalin’s 5 Year Plans and Toyota’s system of “Just in Time”. Today, Taylor’s scientific management philosophy remains the most dominant business philosophy in every industrialized country in the world.

According to Todd Rose’s book, The End of Average, back in 1900, U.S. factories needed semi-skilled workers. However, only 6% of the American population had graduated from high school at that time. And more and more immigrants were washing up on our shores every day. At that time in our history a real crisis of not enough skilled laborers was developing. Thus, Taylor work place practices of standardization came to save the day by trickling down to our American educational system to supply our factories with the workers they needed. A standard education eventually won out over a holistic one, and students were educated all the same exact way, regardless of their backgrounds, abilities or interest. Like their parents in the factories, they had been automated in the schools, graduation rates soared, and it seemed like once again, averagarianism and standardization had been successful.

In the Age of Average the next Quetelet disciple to come along was Edward Thorndike. In his book Rose states that Thorndike was one of the most influential psychologist of all time. He helped invent educational psychology and educational psychometrics. He established the mission of schools and colleges. His mentor at Harvard, William James, called him a freak of nature for his workaholic productivity. Thorndike embraced Galton’s ideas of separating and ranking students, as well as Taylor’s standardization. Thorndike believe the purpose of schools wasn’t to educate all students to the same level, but to sort them according to their innate level of talent and proper stations in life.

Thus, due to the influence of Quetelet, Galton, Taylor, Thorndike and others, today all of our social institutions ignore people’s own unique individuality and assess people in terms of their relationship to the average or how closely they approximate the average and how far they are able to exceed it.

Now, to be perfectly clear, Rose believes that the Age of Average wasn’t a complete disaster. Rose admits that it made us productive enough in our schools and factories to become a world leader. However, it did cost us something too. Now society compels us to conform to certain narrow expectations in order to succeed in school, work and life. We all strive to be like everyone else, but only better. Sadly, our uniqueness has become an obstacle.

Fortunately, along comes another averagarianism scientist named Peter Molenaar who would eventually shake up the Age of Average. Molenaar came to realize that the bible of testing, Statistical Theories of Mental Test Scores, concealed the thread that would unravel averagarianism. Molenaar recognized the fatal flaw of averagarianism was in its paradoxical assumption that you could only understand individuals by ignoring their individuality. He named this error “The Ergodic Switch”.

According to ergodic theory, one can only use group averages if every member of the group is identical and will remain the same in the future. It should be pretty obvious to all us by now that complex human beings are not ergodic.

The funny thing is that no one disputed Molenaar’s math. What they did respond with however, was, “What you are proposing is anarchy!” They also responded with, “If we can’t use averages to evaluate, model, and select individuals, well then… what do we use?”

So, what do you use? And how do you feel about our social institutions ignoring people’s own unique individuality and only assessing people in terms of their relationship to the average or how closely they approximate the average and how far they are able to exceed it? Can we do better? Can you do better?  

Dan Blanchard is an award-winning author, speaker and educator. To learn more about Dan please visit his website at: www.DanBlanchard.net. Thanks.