Superior Performance…

Ever wonder what goes into attaining a level of superior performance? 

In the Business-2-Business sales profession I coach the “4 As”.  Leveraged these myself as a producer. 

A is for Approach.  As Yogi Berra said: 

If you don’t know where you're going, when you get there, you'll be lost. 

Applied to sales this includes a “Territory Plan” combined with a repeatable selling process.  These comprise the “What” we’re going to do and the “How” we’re going to do it.  Thankfully, if we don’t know have these we can be coached to develop them. 

A is for Activity.  B2B selling is a “contact sport”.  Maintaining a high level of contacts (verb) with our contacts (noun) can overcome all kinds of deficiencies in other areas and lead to superior performance.  Thankfully, an approach to activity can also be coached. 

A is for Ability.  I define ability as a combination of knowledge and skill.  Experience can help, but not required (even “junior” salespeople can and are successful).  Regarding knowledge, I believe our prospects expect us to be experts on our products; experts on current technology; and experts in comparing/contrasting our offering to that of our competitors.  Selling skills is a broader topic and outside of today’s scope.  Fortunately, the primary elements of ability can be coached. 

And finally, A is for Attitude.  Of the 4 As, this one is all on us.  In the sales profession not everyone can do this for a living.  Others have also commented on the futility of trying to change someone’s inherent attitude: 

What Great Managers Know: 

·         People don’t change that much. 

·         Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. 

·         Try to draw out what was left in. 

·         That is hard enough. 

Marcus Buckingham 

OK, I submit for your consideration that 3 of my 4 As can be improved with coaching.  Thus, I suggest the key to superior performance (with attitude duly noted) in sales, or for that matter any other pursuit, is coaching.  Almost every person I can think of that achieved a superior level of performance had another person in their life that made a significant impact.  A parent; teacher; coach; mentor; manager; client; sibling; spouse… coaching comes from an almost limitless number of sources. 

Take one example; professional golfers.  Often looked upon as an “individual sport”, if we dig deeper with any of the superior performers (e.g. Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Scottie Scheffler) we find that every one of them had multiple coaches covering their swing; putting; physical fitness;  competitive mindset; the works. 

The sales profession is no different.  Often confused as an individual job filled by “lone wolves”, attaining a superior level of performance, is best approached by what it is; an individual sport AND a team sport.  Hmmm… maybe I should consider And as a 5^th A? 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Cowboys…

One of my favorite icons.  The National Day of the Cowboy was Saturday, July 26^th. Did you miss it?  Sadly, me too. That article emphasized adjectives such as “respect, loyalty, and a willingness to work hard”.  I might add quiet, confident, polite, and gritty.

Grit is meaningful.  I believe the world is divided between those with great fortune and everyone else.  Like you, I’ve had many experiences just the opposite of… say… Winston Churchill as recorded by the editors of Time Magazine: 

The forces of dictatorship were pessimistic, hateful, sullen; Churchill loved freedom partly because he knew how to enjoy it. As a British lord once noted, 'Mr. Churchill is always prepared to put up with the best of everything.’ 

Aristocratic roots yet never a cowboy, Winston Churchill was certainly gritty proving we don’t all have to be cowboys to be gritty.  Grittiness is an important attribute when pursuing meaningful goals as found in Drive ©: 

… in another study, the West Point grit researchers found that grittiness - rather than IQ or standardized test scores - is the most accurate predictor of college grades. 

Daniel H. Pink 

In my career (and throughout my life) grittiness helped me through “those occasions”, large and small.  You too?  Oh, I was well trained; gained experience (often through trial and error); and achieved significant goals.  But once my wife and younger son brought horses into our life, I found another trait I could apply to my job beyond grittiness: 

Dedicated to those business professionals who know the difference between the smell of horse manure in the barn vs. the “sound” of horse manure in the office. 

Over the centuries, cowboys and horses have been inseparable.  (Horse manure, too.)  Although I’m no cowboy, I’ve grown to appreciate the cowboy persona, the grittiness of the men and women who came before us, and President George W. Bush’s statement: 

We celebrate the Cowboy as a symbol of the grand history of the American West. The Cowboy’s love of the land and love of the country are examples for all Americans. 

So here’s to our cowboys; their grittiness; the examples they set; and the country they helped forge into what we all enjoy today.  May you leverage your grittiness in pursuit of success.  And along the way may you continue to recognize the smell - and the sound - of horse manure. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Dark Ages Computing ® …

I was reminded of technology the other day.  Actually, I’m reminded by technology of technology every day these days.  You are too, I’d bet.  Today’s reminders remind me of what I observed throughout my business-to-business, technology sales career.  Use, or shall I say misuse, of technology has been so prevalent in my lifetime that I trademarked the phrase Dark Ages Computing ® in 2000, the turn of the century.

Throughout my career I had a front row seat to witness how companies would expect technology to fix their internal business problems.  The way they repeated avoidable mistakes led to my sales philosophy: 

Just because something is technically feasible doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. 

The problem was (and still is) there are problems with problem-solving expectations of technology.  First, there’s the matter of applying technology to begin with.  Such as the reminders I’m referring to.  The simple act of scheduling a doctor’s appointment these days unleashes AI driven technology to remind us… and remind us… and remind us. My wife received two texts reminding her of her appointment, ON HER WAY TO HER APPOINTMENT! 

I’ve stopped counting the number of emails, texts, and computer-generated phone calls I receive reminding me of each doctor’s appointment.  Some programmer somewhere decided to build a limitless reminder sequence into the scheduling software medical providers purchase.  And because the feature is there, medical providers seem compelled to use it; over, and over, and over again!  Oh, and don’t get me started in trying to deal with medical billing questions or corrections.  They’ve set up an army of machines to block us from talking with someone who can decipher the issue and provide a resolution, true? 

If that’s not bad enough, I purchased a new car recently.  Holy cow!  Every time I start it up, a message comes on the display (aka computer screen) reminding me to “enroll” in Toyota’s services application.  Hey, it’s free (for the first x months at least).  Then, as we used to say in the sales game, it’s merely a “nominal fee” to continue the subscription. 

Even though I’m not interested in subscribing to Toyota’s service application, that message is programmed to appear every single time I start the car.  Yes, I can switch to another option on the display to move beyond their reminder, but I can’t just get rid of it.  Some programmer (or machine) somewhere decided to lock it in place regardless of whether car buyers want it or not. 

Then there’s smart watches.  I read an article recently imploring people to take their smart watches off at night.  Such wearable technology claims it can monitor the quality of our sleep.  Turns out, research has found that such monitoring is actually ruining our natural sleep pattern: 

Technology has solved old economic problems by giving us new psychological problems. 

Mark Manson 

Which brings me back to the “Dark Ages” often associated with a period in history where mankind was faced with “economic, intellectual, and cultural decline” following the fall of the Roman Empire.  Do the machines think we’re in an “intellectual decline” again?  Do you? 

Gotta go now.  Office Depot just pinged my printer to remind it to remind me to buy ink.  Where are those Romans when we need them? 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.

Process…

In reading Working Backwards © we get a glimpse behind the scenes of how things are done at Amazon.  No surprise – there’s a big emphasis on process.  Process in the business world is scalable as Amazon’s huge success attests to. 

I’m an advocate for the power of process.  I’ve often coached my sales process improvement clients that process is powerful and long-lasting.  Salespeople, on the other hand, (and even though I am a career salesman) are temporary.  In the B2B sales world, 36 months is the benchmark I use for “time in role” purposes. 

Including the time to hire, train, and ramp-up a salesperson, within 36 months the odds are high that the sales rep will “move”.  Move up (e.g. promoted); move over (e.g. transfer to a different role, location, business unit, etc.); or move on (e.g. leave, voluntarily or otherwise), that’s what I mean when I say salespeople are temporary. 

IMHO, success in the B2B sales field comes down to the power of your processes.  If you believe as I do that our processes for hiring; training; ramping-up; promoting; transferring; terminating, will all repeat themselves with some degree of regularity, the only question then is how well we’re prepared for them.  Because process is not stagnant, we must also address our processes for continuous process-improvement. 

Process extends beyond sales and even beyond the business world.  Here’s one example of process attributed to that fictional character we are all familiar with, true? 

In the story Silver Blaze, Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the Wessex Cup favorite just a few days before the big race.  Evidently someone has crept into the stables and abducted the horse.  But who?  And how did he elude the dog guarding the stables? 

Inspector Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” 

Sherlock Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” 

Inspector Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” 

Sherlock Holmes: “That was the curious incident." 

Unknown Sage

Sherlock Holmes’ fame was grounded on the way he perfected his process of deductive reasoning coupled with incredible attention to detail.  Details we often missed at the beginning of a case that he revealed at the “surprise” ending.  

Of course, process in and of itself is not a panacea: 

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.  The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency. 

Bill Gates 

I’m detecting a pattern here.  Behemoths of modern industry (e.g. Microsoft, Amazon, and others) leverage the power of process to reap vast treasures.  We may want to “hero worship” their leaders, but as I’ve suggested and they proved as they scaled up beyond the ability of a single person’s operational control - people are temporary; process is powerful. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.