The Sales Growth Specialists Blog
Get insight on building a high performance sales organization that delivers results, regardless of economic, market, and industry obstacles, from Danita Bye, founder of Sales Growth Specialists.
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Identifying Non-standard, and yet Essential, Sales Skills for Sales Recruiting
I have written many times about Sisu as a trait of top sales talent. It is a good example of an attribute that you will not find on any psychometric or personality assessment. Yet through 25 years of sales recruiting it is a competency I have identified in all my top sales talent. It is also a good example why successful sales recruiters require customized metrics to identify these harder to quantify traits.
In the recently released sales recruiting ebook Measuring Sales DNA, I identify Sisu as one of the key traits of winning Sales DNA. Sisu is a Finnish word that describes one’s ability to remain dedicated and committed to goals even in the face of adversity. It’s what makes us embrace a challenge rather than cower away from it. It is perseverance and optimism.
As I write this blog, Danish Team Saxo Bank has cycled into first place in the Tour de France in the latest round . A while back, we were talking about Lance Armstrong’s motivation. This week it is Team Saxo Bank’s Sisu. Why is the Danish team’s win Sisu and not just another team that has trained hard to take a stage of the famous cycling race? Team Saxo Bank is not in the top standings but, notably, it has taken some of the toughest stages, including the treacherous stage 17, a clear sign of singular perseverance.
Why do salespeople need Sisu? Salespeople live in a world where the word “no” is one of the most common words they hear every day. Theirs is a world of gatekeepers, objections, waffling, and worse. A salesperson with the wrong set of attitudes will quickly retreat from a difficult sale — a no-win tactic. A much higher percentage of sales close after three or more sales approaches. The sales person who perseveres wins. How do you measure and model perseverance?
Does your sales training develop the sales motivation to thrive on adversity?
Sales training should develop the sales motivation to take on challenges
Build adversity management into your sales management process
I’m hooked on Wii Fitness Plus and the balance games. As an entrepreneur, I’m particularly competitive as I attempt to navigate the pool balls, despite numerous obstacles, to their sink hole targets. The result? In addition to improving my balance, I’m also exercising my creativity.
So, how does Wii Fitness Plus relate to our challenging leadership and sales management environments?
As business leaders and sales managers, we are navigating new obstacles every day. As we reach an obstacle our fight-or-flight response kicks in. It is tempting to avoid the challenge and place our energy in another market or product area, one in which results are easier to achieve. According to Brain Creativity, if we stay and fight and think up innovative ways to overcome the obstacles we will become more creative. This, in turn, will sharpen our business skills and make us more effective sales people.
Sales leadership today is full of opportunities to choose fight over flight. A sales culture in which the sales team does not take responsibility will lead to a lower sales ROI. A culture of accountability, in contrast, will lead to a high ROI. With the right sales discipline, sales vision and sales direction, your sales team will choose to stay and fight and overcome obstacles. It is this commitment to overcome adversity that leads to high sales performance.
The Lesson: Capitalize on the energy of adversity. Big problems are the stepping stones to bigger successes.
Question: What is your organizational attitude toward adversity? Do you hide from it as long as you can?
Leaders: To Get a Future Focus, Take a Break From the Present
I’m a huge fan of management guru, Patrick Lencioni, having a number of his books in my bookshelf: The Five Temptations of a CEO, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job. He’s currently getting a lot of exposure from Getting Naked — his new book. In his wisdom to consultants, he advises them to help business leaders “enter the danger.” The 
expression is borrowed from improv actors who are encouraged to accept criticism from their peers. (I’ll learn more about this when I take an Improv class with Stevie Ray this fall!). In business, entering the danger involves addressing those “messy” and most challenging aspects of your business that may be threatening your survival. By confronting the dangers we all too often prefer to avoid, Lencioni says that we can make better future-forward business decisions.
The concept of confronting both strategic business challenges as well as sales opportunities head on is hot. Lencioni’s books are flying off the shelves. So why am I advising you to stop, drop and roll? In the Leadership Shift, I advise clients who are facing difficult business challenges to stop, drop and roll. Let’s look at drop.
Dropping is not about avoiding the dangerous territory but operating more effectively in the danger zone by removing the threats that can cloud your judgment. It’s about dropping bad habits that sabotage your effectiveness and taking a clear, focused look at your challenges and opportunities in order to be able to make forward-focused decisions.
You still need to face the danger but your analysis and decision-making power will be sharper and clearer if you drop to a smoke-free region, a safer planning zone. Here, you have alternatives. You can play “what if.” After all, there’s more than one route to the door, and without all that smoke in your eyes, you can evaluate and pick the best one.
Lesson: The smoke of the present shouldn’t blind you to the possibilities of the future.
Question: Are you focused on what ought to be true about your current situation or what really is true about it? How does this affect your view of the future?
Should Your Sales Teams Take the Next Detour?
As the Tour de France kicked off on the July 1st weekend all eyes were watching the world’s greatest cycling champion prepare to make his final laps in professional cycling. Lance Armstrong retired in 2005 due to a “ton of stress.” The seven time Tour de France winner knew when to stop, reevaluate his situation and gain perspective.
Had Lance kept going around and around lap after lap, he knew that he would burn out.
In sales, we often get caught in the same loop, clocking lap after lap. We keep focusing on the green jersey in front of us but our sight starts to become blurred. Our defenses against our competitors surrounding us weaken. Then, our judgment wavers as we lose our focus. All of a sudden, we find we are crashing more and our sales wins are going to the competitors.
At this point, as I advise in the Leadership Shift, it is time to put on the breaks. A good sales leader knows when to stop and reassess the situation. Entering the 2010 race Lance Armstrong is not only physically and mentally strong but he has a renewed focus: he has reentered one of the world’s most grueling races to raise awareness for cancer and his charity LIVESTRONG. When he returned in 2009 he placed an impressive third. Now he is cycling for his eighth Tour de France, or maybe not. His only goal may be to raise awareness for cancer.
Whether competing in a sales cycle or a cycling race, the reality is if you are not thinking clearly because the competitive threats are getting bigger and the stress is intensifying, you need to call a time out before you crash. Rethink your thinking and strategy and come back with a renewed focus.
Lesson: When the facts of past and current reality become overwhelming declare a moratorium on those facts for a short time. Give yourself permission to worry all you want about those things later, but not now.
Question: When was the last time you stopped to rethink and refuel?
Forward-focused Sales Teams Are Rolling Into the Future
In the Leadership Shift, I encourage presidents, CEOs, owners and VP of Sales to ask forward-focused questions. For example, “If you were your own competition, how would the future look to you?” I encourage asking even questions. i.e. “What is the worst case scenario for your business?” and “What actions will lead you there?” Better still, I challenge us to consider what actions will not take you there but to a brighter future?
Companies that have excelled in the market downturn are not afraid to ask these tough questions. ReconRobotics — maker of the first throwable, mobile robot — is an example of a forward-focused company. No doubt, the company has been riding high looking towards a robotics market that is forecasted to grow into the billions.
This is a company on a roll. It wasted no time moving out of stealth mode and building a large sales team before it had any significant revenue streams. With a sales force in 35 countries, it is steadily growing revenues as government spending picks up. Its robots are in action in military and civilian operations, including firefighting and police forces.
Forward thinkers like ReconRobotics are laying the foundation for the future today. In all fairness, they have a natural advantage in the reconnaissance business. Their robots tell military, police and fire professionals what is ahead and behind the next corner. We can all apply this forward-focused intelligence to our business planning. ReconRobotics is not waiting for the economy to pick up. They have surveyed the market ahead and are rolling forward with an expanding sales team and new products and markets.
Lesson: Future-focused doesn’t mean you have no regard for past and current problems but you do have the luxury of perspective.
Question: What if your current conditions were the perfect foundation for the future you envision for your company? How can you bring that future about, starting from the real, imperfect conditions that affect you right now?
Creating a Servant Leadership Sales Team
“Good People Make Good Companies.”
The quote is from Ken Jennings, author of The Serving Leader: Five Powerful Actions that Will Transform Your Team, Your Business and Your Community, and a consultant who has helped to bring servant leadership to electronics firm Entegris, and many other companies. The natural next question is, how do we make good people? How can being good become a 
transformational leadership tool in your sales organization?
In a more competitive environment, misguided sales organizations have driven their sales teams harder and harder in an effort to meet sales performance goals, ultimately leading to burnt out and demotivated salespeople. These disengaged employees often lead to disengaged clients. If you are guilty of taking a bottom-line approach, servant leadership can help realign your moral compass and put you back on the path to higher sales performance.
The proven path to servanthood is easy to follow. Start by putting serving first. Turn your salesforce into “passionate advocates” of supporting, advancing and meeting your goals. For the real transformation to take place you must practice servant leadership, setting an example for others to follow.
One of heros is Zig Ziglar; primarily because he’s the first professional speaker I heard (1982 in Bismarck, ND! Ask me about the story of my first interaction with him.) He succinctly captures this servant leader philosophy: “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”
Adopt this mantra throughout your sales organization and soon enough helping people get what they want will become a reward in its own right. Doing good will put your sales team back into alignment and focused on the greater good. Loyalty to a service-oriented culture will lead to higher sales performance.
The Lesson: Relationships always come before results.
Question: Do you set an example and inspiration in servitude for your sales team?
Starbucks, Sales and Servant Leadership
The success of companies that are led by servant leaders should be enough to entice most sales leaders to take a closer look. AT&T—where Robert Greenleaf coined the term—Mead and Ford, to name a few. In fact, servant leadership aligns with the key model I’m working with on my M.A. in Transformational Leadership at Bethel, the 4R Model of Leadership. This model 
emphasizes that our Relationships with people—co-workers, managers, clients and peers–are a first step in delivering sales Results.
Howard Behar, former President of Starbucks North America said it best It’s Not About the Coffee, which, fittingly, is the name of his new book. Starbucks was a medium-sized business realizing healthy growth when its leaders started to practice servant leadership, and the rest, as they say, is history. Howard helped build Starbucks into the world’s largest coffee chain on a culture of customer service and a dedication to servant leadership. By serving customers, Starbucks makes a deeper connections and more sales.
Starbucks shares another important lesson about servant leadership: teach your followers how to lead themselves. Here Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has the last word: “Surround yourself with great people and get out of the way.” Servant leaders set an example for their followers—one guided by core values—and then empower followers to lead themselves and others.
In addition, Seven Pillars of Servant Leadership: Practicing the Wisdom of Leading By Serving, is a great resource in learning how to operationalize servant leadership.
The Lesson: Help your sales staff see that servicing others lies at the center of their personal and professional goals. See eBook Energize Your Dreams.
The Question: Do your followers know how to lead themselves and serve others?
http://www.theleadershipjournal.com/?tag=leadership-lessons-from-starbucks-president
Launching a Sales Lead Generation to Improve Sales Performance
Sales Growth recently created a short educational video to launch its Sales Lead Generation and Nurturing Service. So, you can either view here... or, if you’d rather read, here’s the script for the first couple of frames:
Slide 1: Thanks to a drastically changed economic and competitive landscape, traditional ways of B2B lead generation, such as cold calling, don’t work as well as they used to. For that matter, 
few salespeople are the skilled sales prospectors they should be. And sales pipelines that used to be full are drying up fast.
Slide 2:
What’s the answer? Give up cold calling and other tried-and-true sales strategies? No – those are still valid ways to generate sales leads. When the markets as crowded as it is, relying on traditional B2B lead generation strategies alone leads to frustrated salespeople and fewer sales. Fortunately, the Web, which is the starting place for 70% of purchasing decisions, provides new and more cost-effective ways of reaching out to potential customers. Yet despite the fact that almost three out of four customers are making the Web an integral part of their buying behavior, only one in five companies have a solid sales strategy for using it to generate leads.
Slide 3: Contrary to popular belief, effective B2B lead generation is not about scattering your sales message as widely as you can and then sorting out the resulting sales leads. You simply don’t have the time or other resources to take a shoot first, qualify later approach to B2B lead generation. Instead, today’s market demands that you have a Targeted Sales Focus on highly defined target markets and customers – customers who are already qualified and ready to buy custom-fit sales solutions, not just commoditized products.
For the rest of the sales Lead Generation and client Nurturing Video, click here.
Motivate Your Sales Team With High Emotional IQ
Since I spent almost 10 years in sales with Xerox Corporation, I’m always interested to hear of their progress in the news. My interest was piqued when Ursula Burns took over leadership of Xerox from Anne Mulcachy in the spring of 2009. It was clear that the new CEO understands sales leadership. Her first order of business was to assemble sales representatives from around the company and renew the team’s sense of “family.” Her colleagues of 30 years were met with warm greetings and 
hugs.
Clearly, there is friendship. But is there trust and respect? Xerox executives clearly thought so. When Burns tried to leave to pursue new opportunities during the economic downturn, Xerox feared it would be viewed as a trusted leader jumping off of a sinking ship. Burns was convinced to stay.
Is Burns’ Emotional IQ enough for Xerox to take back its sales market lead? Some view the new CEO’s relationship with employees as too warm and fuzzy. Even Burns coached the sales teams to be more “frank” and less “nice” with one another.
The tougher love worked. Revenues are up and earnings are moving positive. Xerox credits innovation with enabling it to develop into the leader in business process and document management. It is hard to deny that this special corporate culture that Xerox has cultivated and communicated to the world has had an effect on its sales performance.
In May, newly promoted to chairman of Xerox, Burns announced her formula for sales growth: To keep investing in technology and expanding the sales channel while controlling costs.
The Lesson: Leadership success springs from high levels of trust, integrity, authenticity, honesty, creativity, presence, and resilience.
The Question: Have you created an emotional climate that fosters innovation and functional synergy?
The Quote from Leadership Shift: “93 percent of leadership success springs from high levels of trust, integrity, authenticity, honesty, creativity, presence, and resilience. Leaders who score well on these traits create emotional climates that foster creative innovation and functional synergy.”
Listen to Future Sales Leaders….before Hiring
I recently sponsored a Sales & Operations Planning event by Manufacturer’s Alliance. Leaders from Toro, ReconRobotics as well as Goodrich shared their expertize. I was impressed with all of them, including Goodrich’s winning of the Raytheon Supplier Excellence Award for its contribution to the Patriot missile program. However, I’m intrigued most by their approach to both community and leadership.
Listen to this! Five hundred members from the student engineering community belong to the Goodrich Leadership Program 
on Facebook. The network is also connected through leadership conferences, workshops and presentations at schools. The network is not about public relations; it’s about knowledge sharing and gaining early wisdom and insight from its future leaders.
On Facebook, Goodrich listens to its future leaders’ questions and answers them. It’s a drastically different model from 
when resumes sent by mail were responded to with a curt form letter. One potential recruit with the wrong engineering degree was able to post follow-up questions and, importantly, find out why he would not be accepted to the program. Others learned from the exchange. Even at this early stage, through social media, Facebook is cultivating its future leaders.
Facebook leadership friends are also invited to join the Goodrich Supply Chain Club. This is an impressive sign of Goodrich’s trust and respect in the knowledge and contributions of the students. The message is clear: We are not just kicking the tires of potential engineering recruits; we value your input today and would like to share knowledge.
Lesson: The strongest leaders, the ones who stand the test of time, depend most on the wisdom, insight, and inspiration of those around them. In turn, they share their own resources with those they lead.
Question: Do you draw your strength from the environment?
Quote from Leadership Shift:
“Then there is the more humble kind of leader, the ones who remind you that if they’re seeing farther than others, it’s only because they’re standing on the shoulders of giants.
But the humble leaders, the ones who recognize that much of their strength comes from their environment, are more effective That’s why this type quietly dominates the business world.
The strongest leaders, the ones who stand the test of time, depend most on the wisdom, insight, and inspiration of those around them. In turn, they share their own resources with those they lead.”
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