Salespeople, Sales Management and Learning from the Best

Rob Andrew was one of the England Rugby Team’s finest goal-kickers. His metronomic consistency could ensure an England victory even when the team as a whole hadn’t played particularly well. As a follower of Ireland, I always hoped he would have the occasional off-day, at least when he played against us. It never seemed to happen.

Andrew learned to break the task into achievable chunks. Instead of focusing on the tiny gap between the posts way, way in the distance, he discovered he could tell whether a kick was going to be successful, almost from the moment the ball left his foot. Then he discovered there was a sweet spot when the ball had travelled just a short distance. If the ball was in that spot, it would likely be a score. By learning to hit that spot, rather than focusing on the posts, he could concentrate on his task, shutting out the crowd and all the other attendant pressures.

There is a lesson in this for salespeople, particularly today. Most salespeople focus on revenue because that’s what their managers focus them on. Revenue is important, but it can be elusive. It’s the equivalent of the tiny gap between the posts. The problem is that the salesperson’s need for revenue frequently gets in the way of the customer’s need to make the right decision. The salesperson wants the result too quickly, so they appear pushy and self-interested, even aggressive. Their attendant pressures have got in the way.

The best salespeople , and equally important, the best sales managers, break the tasks down into chunks. And they follow a simple mantra: “Chase the revenue and the revenue gets further away, chase the service and the revenue will follow”.  They know that building relationships is the same as identifying the sweet spot ahead of the ball. If they focus on that, rather than revenue, then they’ll be successful with their ultimate goal.

That’s why top salespeople move at the customer’s speed. They exhibit natural curiosity and they find useful, meaningful reasons to be in contact. They also know many more people in an account. They seek out referrals, get in touch with other divisions, enquire about and get introduced to other stakeholders. The customer sees a salesperson who is prepared to invest and add value, and the salesperson is far better informed, can recommend a more appropriate solution and is less vulnerable to people leaving. For that reason a salesperson who focuses on building and refreshing their contact base, will always be more successful, than a salesperson who focuses on revenue alone.

Of course the key words in all this are “they find useful, meaningful reasons to be in contact”. They aren’t there to eat the customers biscuits, or talk about last night’s game. But that’s a topic for another day.

As many Sales Managers will know, it can be difficult, if not impossible to reform the inveterate revenue-chaser. But if it was easy, we wouldn’t need sales managers, or for that matter, training!

Mike Hawthorne,  Managing Director