Here I am, putting my weekly post together on Saturday morning, today is April 1st. It wasn’t
hard to come up with the theme for this week, out of sheer frustration, but I
wish it weren’t so. This is not an April Fool’s Joke on me, nope it is a
reality I’m dealing with and it is not fun. I’ve written multiple posts over
the past year or so about managing millennials in sales, becoming the elder in
the group, and most recently having my experience ignored for what has been
referred to as “old school sales”. Unfortunately, the declining sales
performance of a few sales people close to me is not a joke today; it is
certainly no laughing matter. My frustration is peeking and changes are on the
horizon.
As often as I counsel others in the areas
of sales and sales management, I am now being counselled as well. I’ve turned
to Tim, a close friend and confidant, with an extensive background in successful
sales, sales management, training, mentoring, and executive leadership. Tim and
I are the same age, and although we grew up in different parts of the country,
our careers have emulated one another for the past 20 years or so. I am
fortunate to have someone I can turn to for such important advice and guidance,
especially because he will be blunt.
My frustration with a few individuals
today is not new, it has been growing for weeks, if not months. I can swallow
my pride, I can own my faults, but I cannot sit back and watch my efforts and
those of many others be squandered by sales people who refuse to listen.
Listening skills is a requirement for any ‘A’ level sales person. Unfortunately,
these few individuals have not yet honed that skill.
Where this frustration stems from is
simple, but the fix isn’t. And, in talking with Tim, he recently went through a
similar situation. I just hope I can manage in the same way as he did. As if
taken from a bad TV sitcom, I feel as though these sales people view me as an
old man in a retirement home, where they visit, pat me on the head, and ignore
any consideration that I’ve been there done that, and might just have a little
wisdom to impart on them. As Tim put it, they don’t have a clue on what I can bring
to the table, and it will ultimately be their loss.
Why the frustration has come to a
breaking point, again no joke on the first day of April, is sad and simple. These
specific sales reps performance is dismal. They are not having success on the
telephone, in email, during meetings, and their revenue sold is so low that
they cannot come to terms that they are at fault. A genuine lack of effort is
to blame. And, to make matters worse, they are making excuses. Just when I
thought I’ve heard them all, they’re telling me it is the market, the lack of
qualified leads in our database, and we don’t have the proper tools for them to
be successful. Did I mention they’re all still new in their careers of sales (6
months to 3 years). When I shared these excuses with Tim he told me they were
all crazy.
Well, I’m not entirely sure they are the
ones that are crazy, maybe I’m crazy for allowing this behavior to happen and
continue. Let’s start with the market conditions: you cannot use this as an
excuse when other sales reps in your own organization are closing deals, and
you cannot say this when your competition are announcing new client
acquisitions on a consistent basis. We have never, and I mean never, had a lack
of qualified leads in our database. Each sales rep is responsible for their own lead generation, and while some are excelling and keeping their pipeline full,
these certain reps are not taking the necessary steps to grow their leads. And,
tools, what tools do you need other than a telephone. It is not hard to make
30, 60 or 90 phone calls in one day. You do not need a tool to do this other
than your voice.
Tim reminded me that patience is a
virtue. But, his words of wisdom also went beyond this old saying, and his
words did not fall on deaf ears. “Patience
is a virtue that will never be wasted on a person that cares about their
career and the company they represent. The key is determining if the reps that are struggling do, in fact,
care about their careers. And, they must also care about your company too, the
two are not exclusive. Caring about their career only is selfish. Caring for
the company shows a desire to be successful, and to do what is right. If they care
about both, your guidance and wisdom will eventually break through to them, but
if they only care about themselves, then they will pat you on the head and appease
you. They will never follow your advice and guidance, they will not seek your wisdom,
when they only care about themselves. For, you see, they don’t care about the
company and therefore they don’t care about you, and they are smarter than you.
So they think.”
As my frustration has grown, I am now
forced to take Tim’s words to heart, which may be difficult in weeks to come.
The conversations I will be having may not be pleasant. They may be downright disappointing.
I will be challenging these reps to determine why they are in sales, why they
work for our company, and what they plan to do to be better versions of
themselves. I have a feeling I’m not going to like some of the answers, and we
may be a few reps short sooner than later, but it should be in the best
interest of the organization, never the rep. Boy oh boy, I sure wish this was
an April Fools Joke.