Why Some Sales People Succeed While Others Fail

A while ago, I was writing about how some hiring mistakes will lead to sales teams performing well. In fact, I quoted from HR Chally that:

o Less than 15% of superstar/ top salespeople succeed in managing others

o Only 19% of effective new business developers are effective at maintaining long-term customers

o Less than 15% of key account managers are comfortable developing new businesses

o Nearly 65% of salespeople who fail could have succeeded in the right type of sales position for their skills

o 60% of sales position failures are related to individuals with the wrong skills for the position

However, there has been a lot of inquiries lately that raise this question, "what if the same type of sales people are hired? Will they ALL be winners, or will some lose as well? At the very least, will some be performing better than others?" And if so, why?.

This really got me reflecting on my core business, which was to train sales staff perform better. Part of our training also inculcates sales people to change one key bad habit, which is to complain too much and work too little. This is especially so when the list of complaints (or bitching, depending how you phrase it) include:

o "The managers gave the best leads to the best sales people. That's why they did better than me!"

o "The best sales people happen to enter an untapped market very early. I came in late, and that's why I'm not performing as well."

o "I'm given a lousy territory. I would be lucky if I can make any sale out of this desert!"

While some of these complaints or feedback may have some truth in them, there will STILL be sales staff who perform better than others when most things are equal. The good news is that we have found some things that successful sales people do differently from the less successful ones.

The Winning Ways of Winning Sales Performers

If you made a search on Google, you can actually find a number of research as to what do winning sales performers do:

o Huthwaite spent over 12 years examining more than 35,000 sales calls in 23 countries conducted by the world's leading sales organizations, found that excellent sales performers ask questions regarding their customers problems, implications and "what will happen if those problems are solved". The average sales person doesn't do that.

o HR Chally's innovative research with 80,000 customers conducted over 14 years concluded that the one thing that matters in today's competitive marketplace is the sales person (NOT price, NOT quality, and NOT even innovation). Customers expect sales people to be personally accountable for customers' results and understand their businesses. The high performing ones do just that, and are always within easy reach by their customers.

o Miller Heiman's 2009 Sales Best Practice Report states that "Reaching ALL people who have influence over the outcome of your sale is a key activity that should be practiced with discipline in difficult times". Winning sales performers also understand their customers' issues BEFORE proposing solutions.

o Sales Excellence's research shows that the probability of a prospective client deciding to buy (or not) is determined by conditions that exist within their organisation, NOT by the steps the sales person takes. Hence, the successful sales person focus on the steps the client has already taken - as well as the steps still remaining - in their buying process.

o Ari Galper advocates that a sales person will have a lot less rejections if they call prospects without expectations of any sale, but start the conversation centered around the prospects' world, so as to build a relationship with no agendas.

o Finally, the "Professor of Professional Selling" Neil Rackham recommends that winning sales people are value creators. Rather than being mere "talking brochures", winning sales performers deliver as much value as the product by providing creative ways to solve customers' problems

In a nutshell, what all the above winning ways result in is: Trust! The more customers trust you, the more successful you will be. And there are only 2 aspects of building trust:

1. Customers trust you because they know you have great integrity in recommending what's best for them;

2. Customers trust you because they know you have the skills and abilities to provide what's best for them

Sounds simple? Well, applying these ideas may be a little less simple as it seems, due to the following customer challenges:

o Customers sometimes don't know what they want or their key challenges, let alone understanding the implications if their challenges are not overcome;

o Some customers simply refuse to refer the sales person to get in touch with their other colleagues in their organisation;

o Those customers who claim to be decision makers tend NOT to be the real final decision makers, and those real and final decision makers tend NOT to say that they are the decision makers.

Overcoming such obstacles and then build trust is exactly what some winning sales performers have done. Here are some real examples:

o My ex-colleague in Ringier Trade Publishing, Jessey, was our top sales person in Mainland China. What she did differenty from everyone else is to advise customers how to synergise their advertisements with their other marketing activities such as trade shows and conventions for optimum effect. Jessey built trust with her professional knowledge and delivering value to customers;

o The best sales people in the building materials industry, regardless if they hail from Philips Lighting, Häfele or Aldes Ventilation, know that if they involve the architects and designers early in the designing stage, they can exert greater amounts of influence later in the sale with the key decision makers;

o Successful sales prformers also know how to provide great service, AFTER the sale. Some of the best ones in Sofitel China actively solicit feedback from their guests after their first-night's stay, and followed up with the booker after the guests have left. In addition, they know how to make recommendations on how to enhance their guests' experience whether they come to the hotel for meetings, rooms or wedding packages.

Why Some Sales People Fail

Unlike what most sales managers would like to think, here are some behaviours that do NOT guarantee sales success:

o Hardwork. Not that successful sales performers are not hardworking. They are indeed very hardworking to respond to their customers' needs. However, average or under-performing sales people are just as hardworking. It's just that the latter work hard on the wrong areas;

o Aggressiveness, especially when it comes to price negotiations or closing the sale. Successful sales performers spend more time winning customers' trust so as to serve their needs, rather than "Always Be Closing" to try to close sales prematurely;

o Experience. In fact one of the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) parts of a sales job is that your past success (or failure) does not extend to the future. While you can have the right connections and relationships (or Guanxi)

While observing many sales people in action in Asia, and also having huge amounts of interaction with sales managers, we found the following mistakes that sales people make that cause them to fail:

o Selling on price. The historical baggage for China and other parts of Asia has been to produce cheap products and sell at low prices. Those who sell on prices will find that there will ALWAYS be a cheaper product somewhere, and competing on pricing is a bottomless pit;

o Leveraging on a single internal contact to make the sale. Increasingly, most buying decisions are made by a group of people rather than by a single individual. While it is getting lesser that any one single influencer can make the buying decision alone, any one influencer can make an objection and kill the sale. Hence, you will have to cover all influencers in case one of them may kill the deal;

o Leveraging on relationships or Guanxi ALL the time. While building relationships with customers and having a wide network of customer contacts is important, those who over-emphasise the relationship and under-emphasise the technical and business details will have difficulties creating value for their customers. Such sales people also have difficulties developing new businesses beyond their guanxi networks, and will face huge challenges when there are changes in the decision making structures of their customers

o Selling products and not providing solutions to problems. Customers buy conference facilities from hotels because they want a successful event. Customers buy media spaces because they want more people to buy their products. Customers buy computers because they want to boost productivity. Customers don't want the product, they want the results you can deliver instead.

o Putting their sales targets in the first place, instead of customers' interest. Many sales people are so focused on getting the money out of customers pocket to make the sale, and they forgot about customers' interests and needs. Not good in trust-building, to say the least.

Ironically, some of the sales training providers who advocate selling value and reaching all people who influence the outcome of the sale, simply contact only the training manager (and no one else) AND are "talking brochures" for their products without showing how they can help their customers achieve better results. I guess it is one thing to know these principles, and another thing altogether to apply them.

Why Not Build a High-Performing Sales Team Instead?

Does that mean that if you make the same mistakes as some poor performing sales people, that's "the end" for you? If you are a sales manager, does that mean you have to fire ALL sales people who made the above mistakes, and hire new ones?

Fortunately, not!

Not all sales people with good track records are sales people who can add value and win trust with their customers. Some of them may have just gotten lucky with the best leads, the best markets and easy-to-sell products. That means finding good sales people who can perform well even if the market is down, or if customers are tough and demanding, will be like finding a needle in a haystack.

On the other hand, most if not all of the winning ways of winning sales people can be learnt and applied, even by new sales people without prior experience. Whether you are a sales manager or a sales person, you can:

o Compare the best performing sales person(s) with the rest (the middle and worst performing) in your company;

o Find out what are the qualities or behaviours that are ONLY present in the best people, which the rest are not doing;

o Learn and emulate such qualities and behaviours!

c.j. is the trusted sales advisor who have helped international companies achieve quantum improvements in sales profits in China and beyond. He is also the 1st-ever sales trainer and consultant to speak at the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) International Convention. So far, c.j. has helped:

* A leading international hotel to produce the equivalent of an additional 5,000 room nights in China in the lull summer months of 2007
* A global leading architectural hardware company to increase the sales revenue of a key account in Shanghai by 10 times within 3 weeks
* The world leader in PC sales to transform their sales force to be more collaborative and solution-focused, and helping them to regain worldwide pole position from their nearest competitor.

Prior to this, c.j. was Asia Marketing Manager for a Fortune 500 logistics company, as well as Corporate Training Manager for Ringier AG, Switzerland's largest media group, in China, where he was responsible for sales team development, and helped increase the percentage of new hires to close their first sales within 2 months by 30%, as well as increase overall sales targets by more than 50%. Visit http://www.psycheselling.com/page4.html for more details.

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