sales Archives - Meaning2Work

Ageism: A Sales Career Killer?

Ageism in sales clock — Photo by Erik Witsoe via Unsplash.com

You’re so good you can sell without thinking!

No really, I mean it! Think of musicians, craftsmen, and athletes. They all benefit from muscle memory. As a result, they perform complex feats of skill without much thought and their hands just seem to know what to do. Dan Coyle, author of The Talent Code would say their secret is deliberate practice.

But that’s not a surprise, is it? What might be is that you, as an experienced salesperson, you have an equivalent to muscle memory for your job. Experts call it procedural memory and it enables you to work without getting bogged down by details. It’s like an autopilot that lets you focus on the customer instead of yourself.

Sound cool? It is and YOU have it! However, there is a drawback to allowing your brain’s Tesla to take control every day.

While You Kick Butt, Ageism Creeps Up

Over time, we layer new skills on top of previous ones and easily lose sight of where we started. It’s as if your skills become heirlooms, boxed and placed neatly in your mind’s attic. And if we can forget about them, you better believe your managers, present and future, can as well.

As a result, we rarely take notice when our company hires someone with half our experience to the same job we have. Instead our first clue doesn’t come until the resume we post for an ideally-matched position gets no response. No one pulls us aside to announce ageism’s arrival, it just happens.

Skeptical? According to a recent government report, six out of ten American workers reported experiencing ageism in some form. Now consider that, according to best-selling author Daniel Pink, one in nine people in the US workforce are in sales!. Yep, ageism is out there and it’s already affecting you!

That’s Ok. Who Can Question Results Like Yours?

In response to ageism, we think our experience and our numbers will protect us. Companies are dying to have someone like you – until they’re not. Your performance can make you feel rock-solid but, in the eyes of others, you may be inflexible and unable to change. And, you may make too much money, Oh yeah and, at your age, shouldn’t you be a manager?

But what about that procedural memory thing I just mentioned? Can’t managers see how good you are at all that stuff you do automatically? Some managers are sharp enough to recognize and value these skills, many are not. And be honest, are YOU even aware of all the little things you do to be successful?

Before you complain about unfairness, start appreciating yourself.

According the Harvard Business Review, too many older workers believe ageist assumptions about themselves. Therefore, in addition to the unfair assumptions others make, we often put some on ourselves.

So what’s the answer? You know how before you can sell a product you must first BE SOLD on it yourself? Part of that process, I’m sure you’d agree, is assessing the competition. The same holds true for YOU.

The following questions are meant for YOU to ask YOURSELF as a way to size up who you’re competing with in the job market. You might just be STRONGER than you think!

In the process of doing your sales job…

Do you confuse questions with objections?
When a customer cancels a deal do you give up on them for good?
Are you scared by an angry customer?
Are you unable to put your phone down in customer meetings?
If a sale takes longer to close than expected, do you automatically assume it’s a lost cause?
If a customer changes their timetable or requirements, do you get flustered and give up?
Do you refuse to ask for the help of coworkers or friends?
Do you not have any contacts or friends from whom to ask help?
Does a lackluster sales report make you conclude you NEVER will be successful?
Are you afraid to ask for a firm commitment from your customers?

Like it or not, many of your younger counterparts struggle with these very issues. And yes, you and I are losing jobs to them!

Hopefully by now you see that you bring tremendous value. Perhaps somewhere there’s a 20-something who was born will all the skills of selling. I doubt it. By now, you’ve made hundreds, even thousands, of sales calls. How could you NOT be good?

Unfortunately, there will always be people who don’t appreciate what you offer. One thing’s for sure. You don’t have to be one of them!

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Breaking Bad News: A Wimp’s Survival Guide

You love your customers. They love you, your product, and your company. Life is grand!

Only one thing can happen when life is this perfect: certain disaster!

Your company is about to enact a change, one that may just chase away your rainbows and unicorns. What the the bad news is, for purposes of discussion, is irrelevant. It’s the impact that most important.

Imagine your about to walk into your customer’s office for the first time to explain the situation. What’s going through your mind?

Try these on for size: Man, I hope she doesn’t get upset! What if he asks a question I can’t answer? Will she threaten to go to another vendor? Will he kick me out of his office? What if? What if?? What if???

Ok, let’s think. No one likes an unpleasant surprise but, is that what THIS is? If you were in the customer’s shoes how would YOU feel? Why is the change taking place? How do YOU feel about it?

Consider these six steps to giving bad news:

Accept and understand the change for yourself.

The first step to effective bad news delivery is acceptance. Notice I didn’t say anything about being positive, that comes later. Instead, it’s crucial to first understand the change itself and why it’’s taking place.

There could be, and often is, a rational reason your company made the decision. That reason may involve survival. Your vendors not only rely not only on your product but on your company’s ongoing support. And, of course, you need a paycheck. Therefore, you both need your product to succeed!

Determine the ramifications of the change.

Once you understand what’s really happening, consider carefully the change’s possible effects on your customer. Yes, management may say they’ve done this but you have a deeper understanding of your client.

The point of this step is not to find answers but to mentally prepare yourself. When you’ve thought through the consequences of the change, you’re in a better position to provide valuable insight to your customer. This makes that first conversation more productive (and less dangerous!)

Photo by Kristopher Roller via Unsplash.com

Consider what has not changed.

After a sober review of the ramifications, you may feel more calm about the change. That’s good. Now it’s time to put things in perspective. Is the news you’re about to deliver global in it’s reach? Or, more likely, is only a portion of a customer’s business is affected.

Next, prepare to make the same point to the customer. Otherwise, they may just apply your “bad” news to everything – you, your product, and your company as a whole. People hate to change the way they work. It’s uncomfortable to say the least. The smaller the change, the easier it is to swallow.

Put it together and prepare.

Once you’ve digested the change, thought through possible effects, and put it into perspective, its time to plan what to say. I’m not a fan of robotic memorized speeches. They take me out of the conversation and make me feel like I’m in a middle school play – the kind where I dress up as a girl.

Instead, just write down the pertinent points you want to make based on the above steps. Keep in mind that you might not have or get to say all of them. Your customer may think your news is a non-event. On the other hand, what you have may still not be enough. More on this later.

It’s talk time!

Depending on the situation, you may feel the urge to kneel at your customer’s feet and beg forgiveness. Don’t. Conversely, you may think you need to “sell” them on how your bad news is really the best thing they’ve ever heard. Also, don’t. Just calmly, confidently, and succinctly explain the change itself, why it’s taking place, and it’s scope. Then make sure they’ve understood what you’ve told them.

Realize every thing we say, in addition to facts, also delivers emotion. Therefore, how we feel about the change will inevitably come out in how we present it. That’s why the previous steps are so important. Our emotions are cues for customers emotions. If you FEEL calm and confident when you present, you invite your customer to feel the same way. Conversely, if you lose your cool, you can expect them to do the same.

Lastly, ask for feedback and wait.

There’s no rules for this part. It’s the customer’s turn to process the change and respond. Sadistically, I think it’s the fun part. Whatever the customer says next will not physically harm you in any way. Stick and stones, remember?

It’s like strapping into a roller coaster, we’re scared out of our wits, yet we know it’s going to be ok. This is the attitude you must take. As your customer shares their thoughts (or gives you a piece of their mind) listen closely. Don’t jump to conclusions. Make sure YOU understand exactly what their saying.

Maybe they misunderstood and you can easily correct them. Maybe they bring up issues you’ve never considered. If you have legitimate answers, by all means, give them. If you don’t, just sit and listen. You may not be able to make the customer feel better right then and there. Just don’t forget to ask to for a chance to follow up.

When things go bad.

Let’s be honest. Despite your best efforts, you may walk away from the meeting with your pride bruised. Your delicate preparation shattered, you may be tempted to call it all a waste. Give the situation time. Sometimes, customers need the time and distance to process changes. At your next meeting, you may find them in better spirits. Suddenly what was a catastrophe is now a speed bump, a non-issue.

When issues do linger, don’t shy away from passing your customer’s concerns up the chain of command. A little internal advocating can go a long way. At this point, you’re ready to repeat the process and go back in! Do your best to go back in with something new, even if it’s just a new way of thinking about the change. You never know what’s approach is going to resonate with a customer until it already has.

Now, get out there and give bad news! When we improve our delivery, not only do we feel better, so do our customers!

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Skill vs. Luck: A Useless Debate

Photo by Joel Danielson on Unsplash.com.

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.

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Illusion of Control

There I stood, spandex clad and heart pounding, at the start line of a bike race. BAM! The gun went off and I was going. Call it the ultimate test, me vs. the other riders vs. the muddy trail. Despite all my preparation, I got to the start line late and had to start in the back of the pack. To make up ground, I put my head down and focused on passing other riders until I was – in the front?

That NEVER happened before! I was in CONTROL! I no longer heard the other riders, just the rush of the air through my helmet and the pounding of my pulse. That day, I finished a respectable 3rd out of 20 racers. Despite leading most of the way, victory was snatched from me at the last minute.

It didn’t matter, from there on, I was hooked! I spent 2 years training and racing to replicate that result. It never happened. Later, I learned that another big race took place that fateful day and many of the skilled riders attended it. Sadly, my ability to control a race was a mere illusion.

Psychologist Ellen Langer named this fallacy the Illusion of Control. It’s the belief that we control things in our lives that we don’t. Imagine a gambler thinking she’s “on a roll” and can’t lose or a day trader thinking he can make a stock price rise just by buying shares. It’s not hard to see their folly.

However, are we able to spot this illusion in our own jobs? Do we in sales control what our competitors do? Do we set the purchasing budgets of our customers? We know these and other factors heavily influence customer behavior but ignore them after we’ve had a good year. THAT accomplishment came from us alone! At the same time, when our numbers are sub-par, we point to a multitude of factors out of our control. And, leadership often suffers from the same bias, no one wants to tell their team a dose of luck may be essential to achievement.

Therefore, we need to acknowledge that control of anything requires time and effort – two resources we MUST use wisely. When we stop straining for things out of our reach we free ourselves to be accountable for the things we DO control – our thoughts, actions, and skills.

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Mistaking Luck for Skill

Photo by Freestocks.org via Unsplash.com

As I ascended to the stage for my sales award, I glanced over to my sales manager. It was hard not to crack a smile. There I was, six months at the company, with the skill to outperform people who were years my senior.

It went to my head. For the rest of that year, I didn’t hesitate to offer my opinion at sales meetings. I was all too happy to help others improve and, you know, be a bit more like me.

Little did I know, I was a text book example of someone with Illusory Superiority. Otherwise known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, it’s the tendency for unskilled people to overestimate their abilities. In the years to come, I was to learn what I mistook for skill was a merely dose of good luck and timing.

Oddly enough, this illusion of internal assessment can take place in reverse. Skilled people often underestimate their abilities compared to others. Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger demonstrated both sides of the phenomenon and published it in a study. They surmised that experienced people, knowing better their own limits, often take for granted the skills they use every day, ones that others may not possess.

So, how good are you? If your answer is relation to others, it pays to reconsider. You may be exaggerating due to the Dunning Kruger effect. Instead, why not make the unbiased choice to compare yesterday’s you to today’s?

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

The Stoic Salesperson: Want to Feel Invincible? First, Make Peace With Pain

Boxers make peace with pain photo — Photo by Hermès Rivera via Unsplash.com

The closest thing I’ve ever felt to a knockout punch is a well-timed, customer objection. Like an unseen blow to the temple, it only takes one of them to bring a sale down. While I suspect the pain from an uppercut can linger for months or years, I know the regret from an objection can seem unforgettable. Just as the only way a boxer can truly avoid a hit is to never step in the ring, the only way a salesperson can avoid objections is to never attempt a sale.

Sure, we don’t like the discomfort and nervousness objections produce, but don’t we feel the same when we watch a scary movie or our favorite team in the playoffs? Why then do we avoid, or agonize over, the difficult situations that can make us succeed?

There has to be more to it. A boxer walks into the ring knowing she will get hit hundreds of times and probably feel serious pain. “I was surprised how much it hurt to get punched,” said no fighter ever. Obviously, they’ve made piece with the pain well in advance.

What do we really fear?

The key problem to address is not the hit or the objection itself, it’s the pain. Conquer your fear of it and the punch no longer needs to be avoided. Similarly, when we can handle or dismiss the sting of objections, we can stop dancing around them.

I suggest the reason objections can hurt so much is the meaning we give them. Consider the following thoughts:

If I can’t answer an objection I risk losing the sale.
If I lose the sale I may not make my sales goal or lose a contest.
If I don’t make my sales goal (or lose) I’m a bad employee, parent, person, etc.

Do they sound familiar? Of course, these worries may not be at the top of our mind, but peel back the layers and they’re usually there.

How can we handle the pain?

Stoic’s, like Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, believed all we control is our own choices, actions, and beliefs. Customers make buying decisions; we do not. Managers make the only official judgements of sales performance. Again, we do not. However, feeling ashamed as a result of our job performance, that’s our choice. Therein lies a true opportunity to change ourselves for the better.

How can we change? We can choose no longer to feel anger or shame over events out of our control, like the choices customers and bosses make. In 25 years of selling, I’ve been layed-off three times. None of them were pleasant. Fortunately, I’ve learned to no longer live in fear of failure. I begin every sales call knowing, despite my best efforts, the customer may choose against my product.

No, I don’t win every sale these days but I win much more now that I don’t fear losing. I can take the punches, fall down, and get back up. No one has ever died from an objection. You can be imperfect and still be unwavering or almost invincible. First, you must make peace with the pain.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Ps. I’ve taken sales questions from over a hundred people. Check out my responses on my profile page on Quora.com!

Sales Incentives: Love The Game, Not The Trophy

Many parents, including yours truly, have made the same mistake. Let’s call it the Ice Cream Effect. “Score a goal junior, and we buy you an ice cream cone!”, we might say. Score two and you get a hot-fudges sundae! Sooner or later, we find our child needs an ever-increasing supply of ice cream (or trophies, or other incentives) just to play the sport.

Why does this happen? Isn’t generous pay for a hard day’s work, an effective tradition? In the short term, yes. When our sales numbers are good and we’re getting praised, we love sales. Can we blame our leaders for dangling trips, bonuses, and other rewards in front of us?

But, hurry and enjoy your sales incentives quick, before they melt away! Soon, a new fiscal year arrives and we’re back to square one. Impossible objections, indecisive customers, and service issues, they’re all part of life in sales. All of a sudden, we not in love anymore. Instead, we’re the kid who hates baseball until he hits a home run. Here’s the problem: to our employers, our job is to sell. To our customers (you know, the people who pay for everything), it’s to solve problems. They don’t care how many rewards we rack up.

And, it’s solving problems that gets us the sales we want. We need to take the leap of faith required to focus on the job itself, not sales incentives, or even job security. Soldiers, who risk much more than a pink slip, want to see live battle. ER doctors, who can easily handle patients with sinus infections, want to treat traumatic injuries. These people want to do the hardest parts of their job.

Perhaps we in sales can learn from them.

Sincerely,
Meaning2work.com

Big Rewards: Why They Make Us Less Happy

Bigger salaries? Better commissions? Bring ‘em on! Whoever coined the phrase “less is more”, was clearly not in sales where rewards reign supreme.

A few years ago, I interviewed for a sales job with a prominent IT company. The realistic pay expectations offered were multiples higher than my current salary.

You can imagine my elation after both learning this AND being put into the company interview process. What would this new lifestyle mean? A better house, car, or schooling for my kids? “Be realistic! The job’s not yours yet!” I would tell myself. However, a couple of interviews later, I had myself fooled. The job was mine to lose.

Weeks went by with no answer. Then, BAM! Hearing the regretful words from the elusive hiring manager felt like a botched skydive. And, on came the guilt. How could I have gambled away such a bright future? It was past 9pm with a cold, pouring rain outside. I went for a run.

On a smaller scale, big sales rewards can have the same debilitating effect. Managers often want 100% of the sales force to believe they can win a prize given to only the top 5%. And, who can blame them? Inevitably, some us take the bait and chase the dream.

Salespeople need to remember that luck is, and may always be, part of our results. It’s nice to have the opportunity to win big. We just need to remember the money isn’t ours until the check has cleared.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Outsiders Change Companies, the Rest of Us do What We’re Told

“When I’m in charge, things will be different.”

We’ve all thought it at some point. Either we forget or ignore the truth: it takes a hefty dose of conformity to obtain power within most sales organizations. This diminishes anyone’s ability to enact change, unless they get to the top of the pyramid. By then, few understand the challenges of the front line. In your last sales meeting, did the sales managers question policy or promote it? Yes, there are people paid to offer innovative ideas. They’re called consultants.

Even the noblest among us, when setting out to cure a company’s ills, can become infected. The status quo is the conscious choice of your current leadership. Chances are, they’re not inviting you to question it.

Instead, try changing what’s in your power to change: yourself. Want your boss to be less critical? Be less critical of yourself. Want to have more money? Spend less of it. Want to help others?

You get the idea.

Sincerely,
Meaning2work.com

Want to Enjoy Sales? Think Creativity Before Closing

Seth Godin (referring to human nature):

“If it’s work, they try to figure out how to do less, and if it’s Art they try to figure out how to do more.” – from his TED Youth Conference talk, “Stop Stealing Dreams”

So, by Seth’s definition, what is sales, merely a job or an art? For most of my career, it’s been the latter. Obviously, our quotas and deadlines don’t allow for such silliness. Only recently did I learn that I approached sales non-creatively by choice. Following Mr. Godin’s logic, throughout my career, I naturally did the least amount of selling required. Fortunately, this was not always true. There were times, albeit few, when I liked the job itself, not just the reward.

Surely salespeople can’t be artists? Consider for a moment, that artists, essentially use creativity and skill to express unique ideas. Contrast this with sales, where we find solutions for now and seek to repeat them for other customers. This process works – until it doesn’t.

When a sales solution stops working, tradition is to wait for management to acknowledge the problem and tell us how to revise our approach. As we grow, we learn to use our creativity and communication skills to overcome challenges ourselves. Creativity and skill. Sound familiar? This approach, when effective, can be more enjoyable than copying someone else. Not to mention, it also results in more business and resume-building experience.

Still, it’s easier to grab someone else’s answer to an objection than to formulate one. If being “artistic” in our sales approach is so great, wouldn’t everyone do it all the time? Unfortunately, the following barriers block us from doing so:

Ambitious Insecurity*

Salespeople are often capable of delivering tremendous value, provided they don’t act like box-checking robots. Without knowing it, we can fall victim to the assembly-line mindset. Yes, many of us sell tangible products, but what we work ON, is people. We can’t simply repeat what we say or do expecting the same result from them. Still, we insist on explaining lost sales in terms of adherence to set procedures. As a result, salespeople win promotions based on their deference to current processes instead of their ability to improve them. Even worse, this mentality pervades up the chain of command making creativity a privilege of a high-ranking, ill-informed few.

Learned Greed

The culture of sales overtly uses tangible wealth as a measure of success. The more we sell, the more we make, and the better we are. Therefore, we learn that the act of selling has no value, unless accompanied by money. Again, it’s just a job. To make things worse, American culture pressures parents to have high incomes. We acknowledge the need for family time and communication, and answer it with expensive youth sports and vacations. Ironically, these require us to work more and be away from our families. If we simply raise our tolerance for mediocrity, we may find we’re Ok with not having the best of everything. We may even gain more freedom in the process.

Self-Centeredness

Years spent focusing on survival can change us, if we allow it. Quid pro quo is at the heart of the traditional sales mentality. And, more and more of what we do in sales is measured. It’s no wonder salespeople become calculating in their customer, work, and personal relationships! Ironically, this incessant need for fairness robs us of finding it. It’s a problem of mental real estate. The less time we spend measuring ourselves and others, the more time we have to be creative in our jobs.

Outcome Hyper-focus and Irrational Fear

Are you like most others in believing that earning a lot of money automatically makes you a good parent, spouse, or person? In contrast, some of the most popular historical figures (ie. Gandhi, MLK, Rosa Parks), are known for their bravery in doing something new, for the betterment of others, and not for wealth. If you lost your job today, would you instantly become a loser? If you don’t believe you’re worth more than the wealth you generate, why should anyone else? When we’re free from fear, we’re free to create. It’s that simple.

For better or worse, the purpose of salespeople will continue to be revenue generation. We can’t change how others will measure us. Still, it’s impossible to lose a game we refuse to play. We can let others judge us while we continue to work creatively. Jobs, like salespeople, are replaceable. Artists are unique. Therefore, we can ask more of our current employers and the ones we chose to join. This may mean seeking flexibility and freedom over money.

In order to change the current, perform or die culture of sales we must first loosen its grip on our minds. Let’s release ourselves from factory work and embrace creativity. Sales will be nothing more than a job until we do.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

*This an adaptation of the term “Insecure Overachievers” used by author, Laura Empson in her Harvard Business Review article entitled “If You’re So Successful, Why Are You Working 70 Hours a Week?”.