Top sales performers and discretionary energy
Spending time recently with a group of high sales performers made me realise, yet again, that no matter what the human endeavour, there are always people who outshine others. And one of the simple reasons for that is their use of discretionary energy.
Everyone has everyday energy thats used to satisfy all the tasks associated with the call of duty. It allows you to do all the stuff in your job description and satisfy the bosss list of expectations. These sales leaders have the desire and willingness to tap into something a little extra. This discretionary energy enables them to go above and beyond the call of duty. And, yes, willingness and desire are connected to their talents, attitudes and beliefs. They are engaged.
It makes sense then that most managers will want to motivate the average to superior and typically the primary tool they use is the territory or brick sales data. So you get the data and your in-field observations together to present to your representative. Your intention is plain; you really want them to do, and be, better. Your reasoning simple; they cant dispute this factual information. Youre using it to launch an improvement program, not damning them and their efforts. It should provide some kind of motivation. Right?
Unfortunately those plans often come unstuck. In this situation Ive seen 3 typical approaches: sales coaches push (using their positional power as the boss), place (using the power of their relationship) or pitch (using their selling skills) sales performance data to representatives in the hope that they will be fired up enough to want to make an improvement. What the coaches often report is that this data does not provide enough motivation to get a decision to improve performance. In fact research tells us that this information is useful only when the representative has already decided to actively seek better performance. It helps them rationalise that they are doing the right thing. Data is useless as a means to convince someone to do something they werent going to do, dont believe in or dont understand.
Therefore, representatives who are most receptive to your coaching have already convinced themselves that they can do better. Why cant the whole team be like this? Realistically though, Ill bet you have a few resistant representatives; people who are more likely to defend their current practices than see the need for improvement. How can you, as a sales coach, get the resistant representative to open their minds to new possibilities?
Heres a method. Realise that their thinking creates their feelings. And its their feelings that affect their behaviour. Want to change behaviour? Start by trying to understand how their thinking status quo has been created; what they value, what rules they have and who else figures in their life (personal & business) that affects their thinking. You need to understand their thinking before you try to alter their behaviour. In fact Ill bet that with these people the territory datas validity becomes the topic of discussion, not performance improvement. To understand their thinking youll need to ask some great questions, listen to the answers and get involved in a conversation. And not vague open ended or leading questions. Rather ones that get the representative thinking out loud. And listen; really listen to whats being said. Here are some great questions to start that conversation. What is your strategy in this brick or with this doctor? This confirms if they actually consciously have one. What have you seen that tells you that this strategy is working? This gives you an insight into their thinking; they will talk about and maybe justify what they have been doing. How will you know when its time to adopt a different sales strategy? The first part, How will you know gets them to think about what happens when something new is being considered, or how its happened in the past. It raises consciousness. Makes them more alert. when its time gets the representative to think about consequences and appropriate timing. Both of these parts focus on what drives you? to adopt gets them thinking about it vs. doing something about it. What has to be in place/ agreed to in order to act. a different sales strategy that gives you the altered results in tune with their values, rules and others. In this way, youre asking your representative to make new decisions based on new thinking, not on new information. Decisions that lead to changes in behaviour.
Finally, it may take several conversations to understand the thinking of your representative. But once you do its a simple process to ignite it with their discretionary energy. Then youll see a huge difference not only in what they do, but in who they are.