My sales career (rose-colored glasses required):
When I’ve crushed sales goals, won awards, and made the big bucks, it was in situations where I had a:
- Realistic sales quota
- Territory with high quality customers
- High quality product
- Reasonably priced offering
In my mind, these factors combined to reveal the talent I already possessed. Finally, I was getting the recognition I deserved!
Sure, I know I’m special – a one of kind salesperson. See how I excelled when given the proper opportunities? Heck, I’ve even done well without having one or two of the above factors on my side!
Conversely, when my numbers were lackluster and the accolades weren’t flowing, my:
- Sales goals were way too high
- Territory had little to no potential
- Product was low quality
- Product was overpriced
I was clearly set up to fail! Luck and circumstances were not on my side!
And I went on thinking this way – for years.
Eventually I saw a pattern. When times were good I always took the credit. When times were bad I took none of the blame. And, in doing so, I wasn’t special. In fact, based on those around me, I was rather ordinary.
Are you ordinary too?
We all have a natural tendency to attribute our accomplishments to skill and those of others to luck. Ironically, when it comes to failure, we do the opposite. Ours is due to bad luck and theirs is due to lack of skill. Check out Thinking In Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke for an interesting read on this topic.
Sadly, all of us, from entry level reps to VPs of sales regularly fall victim to what Ms. Duke calls Resulting. It’s the tendency to judge skill and effort based on results. In doing so, top reps get promoted and bottom reps get fired sometimes for doing the exact same things. Only we don’t see it that way. Surely the top performer MUST be doing something better than the bottom one?
Is motivation the key?
It could be that those who find motivation are destined to win. Unfortunately, we see it as a prerequisite for superior performance without realizing the opposite may be true (I call it the Performance Effect). Seriously, what’s more inspiring than a rosy sales report or more damning than a performance improvement plan?
So, how can someone inspire themselves when their sales numbers scream, “There’s no use! You’re destined to fail!”? Here’s what I did: I stopped caring about things I had no control over and started focusing on things I did. Sales results? They never were totally about skill or luck, just a combination of the two. I control what I put into my job every day, not what comes out.
Skill vs. Luck – A Useless Debate
How much of our job is skill and how much is luck? It’s the million dollar question. Perhaps the answer would assure us a place at the top of our sales rankings indefinitely. Winning the lottery would be nice too! We may never know the answer. It may differ from job to job and rep to rep. For my own sanity, I’ve stopped pretending to have all the answers.
I’ll focus on what I can control.
