Sales Motivation Archives

Competitiveness: Why It’s Better to Want (Not Need) to Win

Competitiveness ping pong — Photo by Marcus Clark via Unsplash.com

How does he do it? You know, that friend that won’t stop playing until he’s beaten you handily? Doesn’t he realize it’s just ping pong? Damn! His serve is so fast, one miss and that little ball is blistering your cheek!

Don’t we all know someone like this? What seems like a birth defect, ie. Mr. Win-At-ALL-Costs tossing bean bags, oblivious to his kid’s birthday party, can come off as genetic superiority at work. After all, don’t many of our leaders profess to have or freely flaunt an ultra-competitive attitude?

Why can’t we all be more like that?

In reality, we can, and that’s what’s scary. Think about what it really means to be that competitive. Is it realistic? Is it productive? Here are four reasons why competitiveness, left unchecked, can be a losing strategy:

Competitiveness better than you pageant — Photo by Vonecia Carswell via Unsplash.com

There will always be someone better than you.

I’m sure you’ve won something before. Felt good, didn’t it? Scoreboards and sales reports are nice ways to tell everyone (including yourself) how great you are. From that point onward, did you always win? Probably not.

Unfortunately, winning can feel so good we don’t want to wake up from it. However, the moment you become the best kid in the neighborhood, there’s someone from the other side of town who’s willing to test you. When I was a kid I thought the phrase, “Pride cometh before the fall.”, had something to do with the seasons of the year. Get this, it means that someone will always be better than you.

Therefore, needing to be the “best” is largely a waste of time.

Competitiveness craftsman — Photo by Clark Young via Unsplash.com

You will miss out on the enjoyment of your craft.

No one is more deceiving than pro athletes and musicians. That three pointer that Lebron easily makes while jumping backwards is anything but easy. Heck, try picking up a guitar and doing that finger-tapping-on-the-strings thing like Eddie Van Halen. I did, and it sounded like a bag of staplers. Virtuosos make the impossible look easy.

Little do we realize, the part of the job we see only makes up a small percentage of the actual work these entertainers do. Hours of meticulous practice, travel, and promotion build the backbone of their stardom.

Hero worship aside, few of us envy the countless setbacks and hours of practice that come with such a high level of success. THAT, my friend is the real work, and if you love it as much as the applause, you’ll go far. If a career was a meal, our wins would be only the dessert or the wine.

Competitiveness relationships — Photo by Pricilla Du Perez via Unsplash.com

You will miss out on relationships, both professional and personal.

Many of us make this mistake, especially in competitive environments like sales. Do you really want to see you coworker trip as she steps up to the stage for her award? If you knew how much the two of you have in common, you might actually be happy for her.

Yeah, I know. Many of us get compared and ranked against each other at work. Rarely, however, do the perks of competitiveness outweigh the benefits of sharing. Most co-workers face similar day-to-day challenges. Your willingness to lose to a rival may just get you the vital information you need to be more marketable, within your company and beyond.

If we share our struggles at work, we can form strong bonds, even friendships. And, in case you needed a reminder, friends help us with all aspects of life, not just with things like how to update our laptop OS. Even the best, most successful work teams split up. Good friendships can continue on.

Competitiveness growth — Photo by Ravi Roshan via Unsplash.com

You’ll stunt your own growth.

At its best, our competitiveness helps us focus. Never will you run faster (or have a higher tolerance for sweaty, stinky people) than at a 5k. Of course, the same performance benefit is true in other pursuits. The drive to compete is how humans and other animals survive, or so we think.

We sometimes picture natural selection as animals fighting for the same piece of meat. Only the strongest survive! Meanwhile, reality was a war of attrition. The weakest animals didn’t lose some Lion Kingesque battle to the death; they simply failed to pass on their genes. The lesson? If we spend too much time fighting each other we ignore the real enemy: our own weaknesses. And winning only fools us into thinking we don’t have any.

So, do you lack competitiveness? Do you lose more than you win? I’d wager these “faults” have made you more realistic, more likely to improve, and a lot easier to be around than any self-proclaimed winners. And, isn’t that something to be thankful for?

Sincerely,
Meaning2work.com

Ps. For a deeper dive into human motivation, check out The Motivation Myth: How High Achievers Really Set Themselves Up to Win by Jeff Haden. I also really liked a recent Episode of Ryan Holiday’s Podcast entitled The Daily Stoic: We’re lucky not to get what we want.

In Sales, “Playing The Game” Means "You Lose!"

Are you playing the game?
Do you ignore the inept policies, bad managerial decisions, and unrealistic expectations that come with your sales job in hopes for a brighter future? Do you instead do EXACTLY what you’re told in the manner you’re told to do it? Do you tell management what they want to hear, not how you really feel?
Why We Do It:
You look good to your manager.
You get favored treatment.
You have job security.
You see no other alternative, except the shame of undperformance.
Why We Shouldn’t Do It:
1. You look good only if your numbers are good.
Most of us are only two bad quarters away from a performance improvement plan. Following company protocols rarely, if ever, saves anyone with weak sales results.
2. You take incomplete or bad advice.
If making the sale was as simple as following the 5 step strategy you learned in training, you wouldn’t have a job. A high school kid would be doing it. There is always more to do and learn than management tells you.
3. You often don’t improve your skills.
Doing only what your told is a convenient excuse for not trying anything new. It’s been years since your boss has really sold anything. Have the courage to expand your abilities by talking to customers, reading books etc.
4. You are vulnerable to the next market change.
Selling by the book may pay handsomely now, but when your market changes, you’ll be behind the reps who were thinking ahead.
5. You annoy your customers.
Your customers pay for the value that you and your product bring them. Even the ones that like you have limited patience. Don’t waste their time with anything that doesn’t meet their needs even if it makes the boss happy.
6. You perpetuate the very conditions you complain about.
Can you lose weight without diet or excercise? If you don’t at least TRY to change your company for the better, nothing will happen! The pharmaceutical industry is a great example. For years, many doctors have often not allowed sales reps to talk to them. To make their sales call metrics, pharma reps have, for years, simply put fake calls into their CRM systems. The result? Unrealistic call metrics never go away!
Modern research supports not playing the game as well. For a more in-depth analysis, read on:
Sales is a world of accountability gone wild. When they say “Sell!”, we say “How Much!” Yet we are only as good as our latest sales report. Again, regardless past achievements , most of us are only two bad quarters away from a performance plan. You tell yourself you seek challenge, achievement, and money but more so, you fear failure.
In her book, “Leading Professionals: Power, Politics and Prima Donnas”, Professor Laura Empson says that many companies look for employees they describe as “insecure overachievers”. These employees hide their insecurity behind a tremendous work ethic. Many salespeople suffer from what I call the Oxygen Mask Problem. “Please put your own mask on before attending to children” We’ve all heard the safety message when flying. The Insecure Overachiever does the opposite. He or she thinks that taking care of everyone else will ultimately result in taking care of herself. Except the world doesn’t work that way, especially in sales.
Playing The Game
Playing the game in a sales job means blindly following a set of rules with the hope that your career will be taken care of. As an official game player, you may see others who don’t follow suit as irresponsible or reckless. Ironically, it’s you that is not facing up to reality.
Sales people complain about everything from unfair pay, to manufacturing delays, to the color choices for their next company car. Some complaints are frivolous. Some are not. Either way, when at the next company meeting, a manager asks for feedback, you, the good rule-follower, remain hidden in the crowd refusing to speak up. Then, at the hotel bar later that evening, you unleash your complaints on whomever will commiserate. Congratulations! Send me your jersey size because you are officially playing the game!
You tell yourself there are valid reasons for doing this. It’s what everybody else does. It avoids getting you noticed for being a complainer. It puts you on your boss’s good side. Playing the game paves the way to your next promotion. It’s the best thing to do for you and your family. When the opportunity comes to act independently or speak up you turn it down. Ironically, in an effort to avoid betraying the system, you betray yourself.
Take A Time Out
Change is scary isn’t it? The system you hate is still one you know. Why take a chance when things can get worse? “I’ll just put my head down, do my job, and wait until things get better,” you may think. Unfortunately, things don’t usually get better on their own. Some have thought, “I’ll change the system by first rising through the ranks and then working to make a difference.”
Eric Barker, author of the popular motivational book “Barking Up the Wrong Tree” calls this sequencing. It’s the belief that you can plan your life in large chunks. Life often intervenes with family issues, health isssues, and anything else to send your dreams up in smoke. After downing the huge dose of conformity it takes to be promoted, you will you have the willpower to think of the less fortunate souls you left behind? There’s a reason newly minted sales managers are know for playing by the book. They are pre-selected based on their willingness to do so.
So, am I saying you should flip off the boss at the next meeting or conduct a Ghandi-style hunger strike until conditions improve? Absolutely not! Let’s revisit some reasons not to play the game and explore some ideas of what to do instead.
Reason One: Your Boss Is Human.
Sales people, like craftsmen, see their skills grow with experience. Unlike craftsmen, the material they work with, their customers, change constantly and have a mind of their own. Chances are, the customers and situations your boss dealt with, as a salesperson, are not the same as yours are now. High performing salespeople don’t even make the best managers, according to a large study published by the National Bureau of Economic research entitled, “Promotions and the Peter Principle“. The sales advice your boss gives you has it’s limits. The more experience you have in sales, the less valuable this advice is. Lower your ROI expectations on what your boss tells you.
Reason Two: You are being judged on your results, NOT on how well you follow rules.
What you do means more than a number on a spreadsheet. Like it or not, this is still the way most salespeople are evaluated. Whether or not you agree with the system is irrelevant. Most managers are playing their own version of the game and you have to live with it. In reality, how much you sell trumps everything else. A stellar record with turning in reports and kissing up to the boss rarely saves anyone with low sales numbers.
Reason Three: Remaining silent helps no one.
The Bystander Effect, coined by researchers John M. Farley and Bibb Latané in the 1960’s, is a phenomenon in which witnesses to emergencies are less likely to help a victim when in a crowd. Sound crazy? It’s not when you consider that each individual expects someone else to help out. Ignoring serious problems doesn’t solve them. It’s like telling your 13-year-old to skip all the difficult problems on his Math final. Not bringing up a legitimate concern to management can do a disservice to your real boss – the customer. Don’t forget, he or she makes the buying decision, not your manager. For a more thorough discussion of this point, check out my post “Think BACk: Free Will Is A Bitch!” Speaking of customers, how often do they change their buying habits without you or another salesperson supplying them with a reason? Serious problems don’t solve themselves. YOU need to speak up. It’s that simple.
What you can do about it.
Take responsibility of your own happiness. To address problems you can’t solve on your own, you have three options: bring the issues to the attention of someone who can solve them, decide not to let them bother you any longer, or seek out a better job.
Be thoughtful in the way you present your concerns. Do not make your complaint personal or deliberately insulting. Explain the ramifications of the problem as you see it. How does the problem hinder the sales process or your customer’s business? Finally, be prepared for any response. If you’re miserable and your company shows no signs of improving, look for a better opportunity. The same holds true if your company ignores problems and sacrifices the business you worked hard to win.
Be brave enough to demonstrate how much you care about your company. It’s unlikely you’re alone in noticing what needs improving. You might gain more respect from your peers for doing it.
Regards,
Meaning2work

The Non-Traditional Salesperson

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel via Unsplash.com

Writing this blog, for over a year now, has caused me to wonder how I compare vs. the ideal salesperson. Was I meant to be in this profession? Would I have been happier in another career? As a result, I’ve come to the following conclusion: I’m a non-traditional salesperson. Surely some customers have liked me because of it while some hiring managers have passed me over for it.

How am I different? Let me count the ways:

Sports – I watch them but only care for the outcome when my team is doing well. Yep, I said it, I am band-wagon, fair-weather fan.
Money – Like everyone else, I want more of it and I don’t want loose what I have. Yet, aside when I feel I’m getting underpaid vs. my peers, I don’t really care. I’m thankful for the commission checks and, at the same time, know they don’t bring lasting happiness.
Achievement – I like winning awards but aren’t really motivated by them. Why not? Read on.
Sales Numbers – I am skilled and I work hard. Without me, my territory would suffer. That said, I believe sales results, mine and yours, are due to the combination of hard work and generous amount of luck.
Competitiveness – I like winning, but for the reasons provided, I believe sales contests are games of chance. In the grand scheme, someone else’s achievement doesn’t subtract from mine. Therefore, I’m usually willing to talk about my successes and failures and give my peers praise.
Attitude – For my own benefit, I try to maintain a slightly positive outlook on the future. When I think too negatively, I fail to notice important opportunities and when I’m too optimistic, I fail to plan effectively.
Demeanor – Occasionally, by high-strung, type A, sales managers I’m considered too calm. To reserved and pensive customers, I can be an annoying chatterbox. Take your pick.
Nerdiness – Most salespeople consider reading or sitting through a class a painful waste of time. I’m the opposite. My brain abhors boredom and craves new ideas. Why else would I keep writing this stuff? 😂

Why share all of this? Am I saying that you need to be like me? Absolutely not. In fact, many times I’ve wished I wasn’t this way! However, my greatest failures came when I wasn’t true to myself – when I couldn’t pull off being a hard-charging, dominant closer or the beloved relationship rep. Ironically, I’ve gotten a lot more done being myself. Maybe there isn’t one ideal personality type for this job and maybe we should allow people to be themselves.

My only advice is to think of your own picture as a salesperson. What is your style? What makes you unique? Despite all the books and articles preaching ‘best practices”, it could be your success is due not to what makes you ideal, but what makes you different.

Maybe it’s not so bad to be a non-traditional salesperson. Lord knows, it’s the only kind I can be!

Sincerely,

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Beware of Representativeness

Photo by Taneli Lahtinen via Unsplash.com.

Are you an ideal salesperson? Do you possess the right habits and personality traits? Before you critique yourself, consider you may be battling an unseen enemy- representativeness.

Consider the following hypothetical scenario:
You’ve just learned your getting a new next-door neighbor. All you know is she will be one of two salespeople. Salesperson A drives a BMW. Salesperson B drives a BMW, has a confident personality, and travels extensively for work. Who is more likely to be your new neighbor, person A or person B? If you chose person B you would be… (drum roll please) wrong!

How is this possible? By definition, people like Salesperson B are a subset of people like Salesperson A. Therefore, the group of people who comprise all BMW-driving salespeople has to be bigger than those with the same car who are also self-assured road warriors. This means the likelihood of your neighbor being Salesperson A is higher. The reason it’s so easy to chose Salesperson B is because, in our minds, the extra details provided make them more representative of a typical sales rep.

According to Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow, representativeness is a mental shortcut. We use it to judge probability by looking for patterns. As a result, it’s easier to believe the validity of comparisons between reps when one meets our stereotype of the ideal rep and the other doesn’t.

In real life, high performing salespeople are a topic of great interest. Leaders, often set out to find what makes these overachievers unique. In doing so they often mistakenly settle on the traits they expected them already to have. And, rarely do they look any further. Rushing to judgement, leaders may neglect factors, like the local economic climate, that can have a strong influence on sales.

As we know, the comparing of salespeople is serious business. For reps themselves, it can determine not only their income but their overall job security. Given the stakes, sales reps and leaders both need to slow their thinking and look deeper into the validity of their measurements. It’s time to value representatives over mere representativeness.

Meaning2work.com

The Stoic Salesperson: You Lost! Why it’s Not Your Fault

You didn’t win President’s Club!

In your place onstage stands someone else shaking the hands of senior leadership claiming to be better than you. In this moment you want nothing more than for it to not be true. No, you can’t change the numbers from the past and you don’t have to fall back on excuses or bitterness. Instead the key to your come back may lie in Stoic Philosophy.

First, ask yourself, was it your name etched onto the sales trophy at the beginning of the year? Was winning this year’s sales contest a simple matter of obtaining what’s rightfully yours? Obviously not. So how then can you lose something you never owned?

Every sale requires a choice, one made only by one person, the customer. If you don’t believe me call your biggest account and ask if you can make buying decisions for them. As you can see we in sales exert influence, not control, over our customers.

A core tenant in Stoic philosophy is knowing what we do and don’t control. In the end your sales results are the output of many decisions for and against your product. How many of these choices do we control? Zero. Come to think of it, how many customer decisions did our higher-performing co-worker control this year? Zero.

Unfortunately, most of us aren’t evaluated directly on our influence, but on our sales results. One of these data points is easy to measure; the other is not. And again, if customer influence and sales results were one in the same, we’d sign the sales contracts ourselves. Is it unfair to be judged based on decisions of out our control? Maybe, but Stoicism teaches that feeling upset by this fact is also, our choice.

Therefore, instead of personal wins and losses, you now have permission to focus on customer wants and needs. After all, isn’t that what we’re here for?

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

For a free and inspiring lessons on Stoicism, check out Ryan Holiday’s podcast, The Daily Stoic.

Filling the Void: How to Make the Best of Down Time

When it comes to travel, it’s all about the bag you carry. Take two identical suitcases. Despite weighing the same, the one stamped to a Carribean vacation feels infinitely lighter than one ticketed to a sales meeting in Des Moines, Iowa. Traveling for fun and traveling for business can look very similar, yet feel very different. For vacations, we count down the days until we leave, for work trips, the days until our return.

Why do we hate business travel of all sorts? It’s not the work. Selling makes each day go faster. Conversely, it’s the dead time in-between the work. Whether it’s time spent driving, flying, or in hotels, it all feels useless, and for good reason. By driving 30-40k miles, I spend an estimated 50 working days a year, staring through my windshield. Other salespeople leave town for weeks at a time. Either way, it amounts to valuable time siphoned right out of our lives!

Still, we all accept sales travel as necessary, but does it have to be a necessary evil? Thanks to technology, we have more choices to pass the time than ever. Unfortunately, they’re not all created equal. Some time-killing activities make us feel and perform better, and some ultimately make life more difficult. Below is a guide to help salespeople make the most of down time. Consider avoiding the bad behaviors and replacing them with the better options provided.

AVOID THIS: Unhealthy or Dangerous Habits

Yes, ideally, we’d all snack on quinoa and green tea all-day. Back in reality, we satisfy ourselves, on occasion, with unhealthy habits. Afternoon escapes to our favorite drive-through or retail wonderland can have harmful long term consequences. In fact, one habit is likely to feed the other (I love puns, please don’t judge!). Other habits, like texting and driving, put our lives at risk and should be eliminated. It’s helpful to remember the quicker the satisfaction arrives from a given activity, the quicker it leaves..

REPLACE WITH THIS: Learning and Creating

Consider the following temptation-inducing situations. Stuck in an airport terminal? Grab a book! It’s one of the best ways to sharpen your mind for selling. Have a long drive ahead of you? Download and listen to an audiobook! You’d be surprised how much time you can fill without extra calories or credit card bills. And what the heck do I mean by Creativity? Travel time provides the ideal environment to brainstorm! In fact, many of Meaning2work.com’s posts started as dictations to my iPhone while driving. The key, I’ve found, is to learn and write about subjects you enjoy. You’ll arrive at your destination, refreshed and fulfilled instead of haggard and annoyed.

AVOID THIS: Co-worker Gossip, Office Politics

Photo by Axleandre Boucher on Unsplash.com

Nobody’s perfect and we all need to let off steam, on occasion. It’s nice, at first, to know someone else shares your sorrow and frustration. As an ongoing topic of conversation, however, commiserating does little to make us feel better. We all know, that at times, life sucks. Why should we waste time bringing ourselves down? After all, bad luck has a way of interrupting us whenever it wants.

REPLACE WITH THIS: A Focus on the Future and Collaboration

Relax, no pom poms are required! Without using false positivity, we can acknowledge current problems and direct our conversation to actions. This is one of the most powerful ways we can use down time. Your mood will lift when you focus on what can be done instead of what can’t. And, talking through alternatives forces us to organize thoughts into logical form. In this way, the practice of verbally responding to a customer problem, in the safety of a coworker phone call, helps bring the solution to light. In my experience, trusted colleagues have helped to formulate my best ideas!

AVOID THIS: Negative Self-Talk

We’ve all done it. The minute we’re out of a bad sales call, we review it in our minds repeatedly, and experience the same pain, repeatedly. We know something must be our fault, so why not everything? Refer to “Your Worst Sales Manager: A Survival Guide” earlier in this blog for more on negative self-talk. Stories abound of perfectionist types, like Steve Jobs, and how much they accomplish. Does anyone ever ask them how happy they are? It’s good to be driven, as long as you also enjoy the journey itself. Sorry perfectionists, instead of making us better, self-criticism usually makes us worse.

REPLACE WITH THIS: Stoic Philosophy

Stoicism is the belief that we don’t control others, only our own choices here and now. And, not only do our choices include our actions, but also our feelings. Try listening on your podcast player to Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic. Each episode lasts less than five minutes. Neither pro or anti religeon, Stoicism is simply an empowering acknowledgement of reality. Learning it is like being handed something you’ve tried to find for years, the rules to life. The choice of what to do with the wisdom is yours.

Getting Started…

There are many books and courses designed to help us optimize our down time. Some may be quite effective, given the time and effort. To get started, I offer a much simpler idea; use positive habits to crowd out negative ones. Think of your time like a garden. If you fill it with good things like seeds, fertilizer, and water, you can grow a bountiful crop. Otherwise, the weeds take over. Let’choose to spend our downtime wisely and cultivate the lives we want!

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Your Worst Sales Manager – A Survival Guide

Think about the worst sales manager you’ve ever had. What about them irked you the most? Did he compare you unfairly with others? Was no accomplishment ever good enough? Did she monitor your every move, never allowing you to ever feel in control?

Relax. Put that person out of your mind. You’ve had worse.

Our worst manager is probably still with us.

Indeed, that jerk that we slaved under years ago may be gone. But someone more ruthless may have stepped in to take her place. It’s the one person with the ability to always slip past our defenses – ourselves.

Our problem is not in handling poor managers, but in being one.

Think about it. Managers grow frustrated with employees who can’t take criticism. And, we employees despise being crticized unfairly. Yet, as evil as this atrocity is, we freely commit it on ourselves. We search far and wide for managers who don’t micromanage but ironically expect our days to go perfectly to plan. We hate when the boss plays favorites while, at the same time, we put others on a pedestal as somehow better than we could ever achieve.

Doesn’t criticism make us better?

No, improvement does. That doesn’t mean all criticism is bad. When it originates from and is delivered with respect and care, criticism can be life-saving. The problem is in the packaging. When used correctly, criticism is a fire that can forge us like steel. Shame, on the other hand, is a gas can to be thrown on that fire, only more dangerous. If we allow it, shame triggers our internal tyrant to take over and magnify any criticism to harmful and unproductive levels.

Self-criticism: we don’t wear it well.

Your worst managers (the external ones) may have also been critical of themselves. Does that make their actions any easier to take? Humility and self-acceptance, can free our minds to focus on others. Conversley, what good are we doing anyone else when we down ourselves? We may even risk becoming someone else’s worst boss.

Don’t criticize, Accept.

Upon admitting we have a problem with negative self-talk, we can start the challenging process of accepting ourselves and others. Psychologiy pioneers like Albert Ellis and David Burns have done some life-changing work in this area. Anyone who lacks the patience to read their books should subscribe to this blog where I often summarize their findings.

Accepting yourself, regardless of faults and mistakes, will make you both a happier and better person. And yes, this will help you be a better salesperson as well. We may indeed still be our own worst sales manager. Now, at last, we can do something about it.

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

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?”.

Pharma Rep Confessions – What the Job’s Really Like

Dear Pharma Sales Reps,

Here are my observations from 14 years in the business. Do you agree?

Six confessions of a long-time pharmaceutical sales rep:

Achievement is highly overrated. I’ve been both in the bottom 15% of rankings and at the top. I’ve earned bonuses as high as $47k and as low as zero. Every success felt like a lucky break. I was almost never present when a prescription was being written. Plenty of doctors told me they were excited to prescribe but never followed through. Others, who I thought hated my product (or even me) became my biggest supporters. The money is nice, but quickly spent.
Doctors don’t care nearly as much as we want them to. I’ve sold lifestyle medicines, chronic medicines, and life-saving rescue medicines and it’s been mostly the same. Doctors typically DO care about their patients. The drugs they use, however, are like tools in a carpenters hand. Unless they cause trouble or fail to work, they’re largely an afterthought.
Out of sight, Out of mind. For many physicians and their staff, their responsibility is to TELL the patient the right thing to do – not to ensure it gets done. They may prescribe the medicine you sell but give little care to whether or not the patient fills the script.
For the patient and the office, money trumps all. We reps know this. Our managers know it too but are sometimes too afraid to say it. Patients don’t see medication as being a matter of life and death until they are in pain or are dying. Medicines that make them prettier, better in bed, or (sadly) give them a buzz, are worth cold, hard cash.
The only thing that makes you an expert, to management, is your numbers. Therefore, never get too full of yourself. We’re all a couple bad quarters from some kind of probationary status.
If you judge yourself using sales acheivement, you will never fully like your job, or yourself. Whether or not you’ve finally become an expert is a question only you can answer!

Congratulations! You win the Ritalin award for reading the whole article!

Feel free to comment below or send me a note at Meaning2work@gmail.com with your thoughts. And, don’t forget to subscribe if you want to hear more!

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com