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WHAT WINNERS WANT.

To be a winner you have to want to be in the game.

Not sitting on the sidelines. Not cheering from the stands. Playing the game.

But that’s where things get tricky.

Because in the game is when you’re most likely to make a mistake.

It’s where you get fatigued and hurt. It’s where the fight is.

And so when you’re in the game you’re likely to be tired and injured and looking for help.

From the stands you can hear the shouts and jeers of those who tell you what you should be doing.

You can hear the criticism and angry comments.

Apparently you’re an idiot. Apparently you don’t know how to play the game. Apparently you wouldn’t know how to be successful if it hit you in the face.

But you’re in the game. That’s where winners want to be. Fighting for the prize.

It’s safer not to play the game.

If you don’t want to be yelled at or mocked or told that you’re an idiot you probably shouldn’t ask to play.

You should just sit on the sidelines.

But if you want to sweat and bleed and fight and maybe conquer then you need to be the game.

And you need to want to be there.

Because that’s what winners do.

They want to play the game.

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THE HARD TRUTH ABOUT HARD WORK.

There’s no good replacement for hard work. No viable alternative. No efficient substitute.

Hard work is in a league of its own. And trying to find something more effective is probably why your business strategy is failing.

No great idea works if you don’t work. Hard.

It used to be a given that life demanded hard work. Every hour, from sunup to sundown, was utilized in the ongoing quest for personal advancement. If you didn’t work hard you didn’t eat. And you probably didn’t live long.

But then we learned that the way to a more “fulfilled life” was to get an education. To go to college. Instead of sweating in the field we could make more money wearing a white collar and telling other people what to do.

In fact, with an advanced degree from college we could even run an entire division of a company, retiring with a gold watch and a healthy pension .

And the journey got confused with the destination.

We started to think that working less was a sign of success. A badge of honor. That we must be smarter than everyone else around us.

But what we forgot is that the pension our grandparents earned came after 30 years of dedicated performance. The watch and golden retirement came after thousands of hours of unwavering loyalty and focus.

Today, it makes us feel special when we talk about working smarter. It makes us feel like what we do is better then the “ignorant people” who only know how to dig ditches and landscape yards.

We must be better than them.

After all, how smart can those people be, getting sweaty day after day after day when we sit in a corner office. And so, our corporate hallways are filled with executives in white collars and power ties, jaunting from meeting to meeting, preaching the accolades of efficiency and effectiveness — all the while preparing to point a finger at somebody else when things don’t work out right.

And why should it work? Why should we expect something from nothing? Better yet, how logical is it to expect that doing the bare minimum will make us elite performers?

It just doesn’t make much sense at all.

And, NO, the answer isn’t to put your head in the sand and hope that things magically get better on their own. That doesn’t make much sense either.

You should be learning from the performance of others. You should take the lessons you have had to learn the hard way and refocus your energy on ways that you can do more with less.

Just don’t confuse the destination with the journey. Working less isn’t the goal. It’s not a badge of honor.

Getting better results is the goal.

And usually that means rolling up your sleeves and doubling down on the elbow grease you bring to the game.

There is no magic elixir.  The hard truth is that you probably just need to work harder

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EACH DAY IS A SECOND CHANCE.

Do you ever feel like the day won and you lost?  That your busyness got the best of you.  That what you thought you wanted for you you didn’t spend any time working on.

Today passed and you aren’t a better person.  Today came and went and nothing changed for you.

You feel like a loser. Like you failed.

And you aren’t sure if it’s ever going to change.

You aren’t sure if you can grow your sales, if your marketing will ever start connecting, and if you business is going to start leading your industry.

And those are the easy problems.  It’s your personal fears and pain and doubts that make you feel like a loser most days

It’s being physically fit and mentally fit and financially fit that drive you sideways.

Today changes all that.  Tomorrow too.

It’s all new today.  Each moment is an opportunity to win back the day.

You still have baggage from yesterday — unfinished dreams and lasting consequences – but right now is an opportunity to move a little bit closer to where you want to be.

And just knowing that might be enough to fuel a little extra effort and emotion.  It might the difference between you winning the day today and feeling like you did yesterday.

Business strategy is a gritty conquest.  Fixing problems with sales and marketing and engagement isn’t easy or fast.

That’s why each day matters.  Why today matters.

Because it’s a craft of “inches”.  You fix failing by winning.  And that begins with what you do right now.

This moment.  And the ones that follow.

You don’t need to forget about the past.  You just need to do something (and that’s hard).

So take a deep breath and then go be awesome.

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Over the past decade, I’ve worked closely with hundreds of vice presidents of sales, and like all of people, each has a unique personality. Some are gregarious. Some are assertive. Some are action-oriented. But even as I observe their individual differences, I have recognized patterns of behavior, which have allowed me to catalog their styles of sales management.

I have found that seven management styles are most prevalent: mentor, expressive, sergeant, Teflon, micromanager, overconfident and amateur. Most likely, a sales leader will use several different management styles and move from one style to another depending on the situation.

To better understand these sales management styles, I asked more than 60 top vice presidents of sales from leading high technology and business services companies to estimate what percentage of their time they used a particular management style, and then to rank the applicability of the style to the success in their role on a scale of 1 (least important) to 5 (most important). Below, you will find a description of each style and the average results for the study group.

Mentors

Mentors are charismatic leaders and sales experts who measure their success using three criteria: exceeding revenue goals, creating an environment where the entire team can succeed, and helping all team members realize their individual potential. Mentors are confident in their own abilities and possess the business insight to know what needs to be done and how to do it. On average, study participants reported they used the mentor management style 26 percent of the time. In terms of importance as a driver of success, they gave mentor management style the highest ranking of all the styles at 4.3.

Expressives

Expressive managers are people-oriented with a flair for sharing their emotions and amplifying the emotions of those around them. They have a natural ability to put people at ease but are also quite comfortable extolling or admonishing the team. Expressive managers create an environment where a considerable amount of energy is focused on how their organization is thought of and perceived within the company. Study participants indicated they used the expressive management style 30 percent of the time on average and ranked the style’s importance at 4.

Sergeants

The sergeant is named after the field sergeant in a military organization. Sergeants develop an intense loyalty to their team, perhaps even greater than their personal loyalty to their company. They are hard workers who are constantly worrying about their “troops.” They will even sacrifice their own best interests and tolerate personal hardships if they feel it will benefit their team. The sergeant management style is used 18 percent of the time on average and its importance was ranked at 3.2.

Teflons

Teflon managers are pleasant, agreeable, and polite people. However, unlike sergeants, they tend not to have deep personal relationships with their sales team members. Another characteristic of Teflon managers is their ability to stay above the daily fray of politics. Regardless of the situation, Teflon managers are even keeled and rarely frazzled. The Teflon management style is used 10 percent of the time on average and its importance was ranked at 2.

Micromanagers

Micromanagers are the most organized and methodical of all the management types. They have a strong sense of responsibility to their company and they pride themselves on achieving their revenue goals. They tend to be all-or-nothing thinkers who want things done their way. The micromanager style is used 7 percent of the time on average and its importance was ranked 3.3.

Overconfidents

Overconfident managers tend to be more self-centered. They are charming and gregarious in public, excellent on sales calls. They tend not to be open to feedback and will get the job done their way and succeed at any cost. The overconfident management style is used 6 percent of the time on average and its importance was ranked at 1.8.

Amateurs

The amateur management style should not necessarily be equated to someone who is new to sales management. Rather, the style reflects that the person is outside of their comfort zone in a new management role, working with an unfamiliar product at a new company, or in a new industry. As a result, their management style may suffer an identity crisis until they are able to build back their practical sales experience. Study participants indicated they experienced the amateur management style 3 percent of the time on average and ranked the style’s importance at 1.

The structure and effectiveness of the sales department will mirror the sales management style of its leaders. This is because sales leaders naturally imprint themselves on their organization. Therefore, it can be argued that the vice president of sales is the most important person within a company because this person is in charge of an organization’s most critical assets: customers and the revenue they generate.

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Don’t Be Overconfident

You know that you are better than your competitor; you’re confident in your ability to create more value for your dream client. You know that your ideas are better.

You also know that your offering is better than your competitor’s. You’ve proven it time and time again by competitively displacing them. You know you have the right solution and that it will produce results.

Your competitor feels the very same way.

To win, you need to be confident. But you don’t want to be arrogant. Arrogance is dangerous; you don’t want to underestimate your competitor.

You know your relationships are strong. But don’t believe that you are the only one with strong relationships. Believe and behave as if your competitor has strong relationships of their own.

You have political backing of some key stakeholders. Believe and behave as if your competitor has the political backing of some key stakeholders too.

You have built consensus with some of the buying committee members. Maybe you have the one stakeholder that gives you of the majority you need. Expect that your competitor has the rest of the buying committee, and expect that they have the ability to flip a vote their direction.

Your pricing is higher than your competitor’s, and you believe that you have justified a higher price by proving beyond any reasonable doubt that your solutions produces the greatest return. Anticipate that your competitor has the ability to price their offering at a level that some stakeholders find compelling and that they are willing to reduce it in order to win the business.

You’ve done your homework. You’ve studied and you are prepared. Believe and behave as if your competitor is hungrier than you, that they want it more than you do, and that they’re working harder than you are. Don’t be overconfident.

Questions

How are confidence and arrogance different?

Why does confidence help and arrogance hurt your results?

How do you know you’re working harder and smarter than your competitor?

Why is important not to underestimate your competitor, especially in sales opportunities?

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What Stories Are Your Numbers Telling You?

Your sales numbers tell a story. Your numbers paint a picture of what you believe, as well as the actions you take based on those beliefs.

If your pipeline is empty, your pipeline metrics tell the story of a salesperson (or sales organization) that isn’t prospecting. Or maybe it tells the story of someone struggling to effectively prospect in a day and age when business acumen, situational knowledge, and value creation are the price of admission.

If your pipeline is full of deals that are smaller than your target deal size, the story your average deal size tells might be about a salesperson that is calling too low because he doesn’t feel like he is producing results when he is working on the long sales cycle deals. Or maybe it’s the story of a salesperson that doesn’t call on large clients because he believes they already have partners in place, because they’re too difficult to win.

If the time your deals spend in a certain stage of your sales process is longer than it should be, your numbers tell the story of a salesperson that isn’t in control of the sales process. Your time in stage metric might tell the story of a salesperson that isn’t asking for or gaining the commitments she needs. Or it might tell the story of a salesperson that isn’t following a sales process at all.

In business-to-business sales, your numbers at the end of the quarter don’t often tell you anything about that quarter. The story your number tells at the end of the quarter is the story of what you did during the prior couple of quarters—maybe even the prior year. It might be the story of a salesperson that worked to make their number, taking action long before it was necessary. Or it might tell the story of someone who took a quarter off waiting for deals to come to them.

You are the hero in your story your numbers tell. The story your numbers tell provides you with a picture of your beliefs and your actions. Your numbers tell the story of where you are challenged, and where you are succeeding. They also tell you what you need to do more of and what you need to change. But this is only true if you let the numbers tell you your story.

Questions

What stories do your numbers tell?

What is the underlying belief that leads to your numbers?

What actions result in your numbers telling these particular stories?

Why is the story that you tell about your numbers a different story than someone else might tell about your numbers?

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Neither your dream clients nor your existing clients ever say, “You know, that Joe is really consultative. He’s never too salesy. I never think of him as a salesperson.”

It makes me cringe to hear salespeople say that they don’t want to come across as a salesperson. They say they don’t want to be perceived as being too “salesy.” Instead, they want to be perceived as consultative, mostly underestimating what that means of what it takes to get there. Almost none of the people you sell to have any idea what consultative selling is (in fact, most salespeople really don’t know what consultative selling is either). Your client’s don’t share the vocabulary we in sales use to describe that set of behaviors.

Salespeople who suggest that they want to be consultative especially talk about the idea of not being “too salesy” when it comes to commitment gaining. This is especially true around the opening commitment, the commitment for time to explore working together. They say the same thing when discussing the commitments that would allow them to gain information, as well as the commitment to access the buying committee. Without these commitments, you can’t produce the results you need.

But guess what?

Your Clients Already Know

Surprise! Your clients and dream clients already know that you’re a salesperson. They knew that from the first time you called them to request an appointment. And even though the signature line in your email says that you are in business development, your dream clients know that you intend to sell them something. In fact, if they let you through, they’re counting on it.

Here’s the fact. You aren’t being judged by your intention to sell your dream clients whatever it is that you sell. You’re being judged by something else, something far more important than that.

Your Dream Clients Are Judging Your Ability to Create Value

The test as to what kind of salesperson your clients perceive you to be is whether or not you create value at every stage of their buying process. Your clients and your dream clients expect you to ask them for commitments along the way. The more directly you can do so, and the greater your sales call value proposition, the easier you make it for your clients to agree to those commitments. You create value, and you get the commitment. You don’t create value and, well . . .

As a point of reference, consultants ask for access to far more information than most salespeople do. They also ask for far more access to the organization.

Which brings us to the real fear behind the resistance to asking for commitments. Your fear isn’t that you will reveal yourself to be a salesperson. Your real fear is that you haven’t created enough value to earn the commitment you’re asking for. Consultative salespeople don’t share that fear; they know that they can create value, and that is why they’re comfortable asking for whatever they need to do so.

Trust me, your dream client knows you are a salesperson. They’re fine with that. What they’re not fine with is you not knowing how to create value and your not having the confidence to ask for what you need.

Questions

What does it mean to be “too salesy?”

What makes someone too much of a salesperson and not consultative enough?

Do your clients have any confusion at all about why you are calling them? If so, why are they confused?

What’s the real test as to whether or not you are consultative? What does commitment gaining mean about your ability to create value?

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