Management Perspectives

MYTH 1: Extroverts make the best salespeople
True sales leaders focus on reality-on facts. One fact that many in our profession overlook when recruiting, hiring, and promoting salespeople is that introverts can, and do, succeed at the highest levels of professional sales.

This is a personal issue for me. I began my association with Sandler as a client. The organisation I worked for as a salesperson told me that I had to attend a sales training event, and honestly, I was not very excited about going. In the training and development field, there is a name for participants who are told to show up for training and would really rather not be there: ‘hostages’. My first encounter with Sandler was as a hostage. Fortunately, I had a great experience, and I was motivated to put what I learned into action. It did not take long for me to realise that what I was learning was a powerful communication model, one that was based on me being me.

Suddenly, I did not have to pretend to be an extrovert-something I definitely wasn't. I could apply tactics and strategies based on sound, proven principles of communication psychology, and I could do it as myself, without having to rewrite my own personality. I could be an introvert and still do this.

That realisation was a real breakthrough for me. Using what I had learned and reinforced in my training, I became the organisation’s #1 salesperson…and I eventually went on to work as a salesperson for a Sandler office in Connecticut. To make a very long story absurdly short, I took on the senior leadership role. Just as important, I began sharing the reality behind the myth that “salespeople are born, not made.” At Sandler, we do not believe anyone is a ‘born’ salesperson, and we certainly do not believe that success in sales is limited to those who are extroverts. Whether you are outgoing or reserved has nothing to do with your potential, and neither does whether you are task-oriented or people-oriented. You can be you.

MYTH 2: Great salespeople already have a leg up on being a great sales leader
Why wouldn’t they? All the salesperson needs to do is share the winning tips and tactics that allowed them to excel as a contributor. Surely whatever that magic is, some of it will rub off on the rest of the team once they assume a leadership role! The reality is more complex. Leading a sales team is a dramatically different job from contributing as a member of the team. In terms of attitude, this job requires a consistent teamfirst focus, an endless willingness to help others secure the credit for victories, and vast reserves of patience, resilience, and curiosity when interacting with direct reports who look to you for support. Not all top salespeople are used to thinking like that.

In reality, a whole new skill set is required in this job, one that supports the daily habit of empowering and motivating others, rather than moving a deal forward yourself. Lacking such a skill set, the salesperson who is rushed into this role may fall into what we call the Superman trap: “Here, stand back, let me show you how it’s done.” This is not an effective leadership mantra.

All too often, top-tier salespeople receive little or no training and development, formal or informal, in preparation for a management role. They are left to figure things out for themselves. Many of them conclude, wrongly, that their best path forward is to “lead by example”—which usually means putting on the Superman cape and jumping out the window. Reality check: when they fall, that is the fault of the person who put them into that role without first investing in the appropriate learning path.

MYTH 3: Onboarding is not all that important when you are hiring experienced salespeople
Too many executives hire a salesperson they believe to be a ‘seasoned veteran’, then minimise or skip the onboarding step altogether, based on the new hire’s supposed depth of experience. They believe the new hire can “hit the ground running.” The reality: it is a huge mistake to expect them to.

In the crucial 60 to 90 day period following the hire, all your new people-the seasoned veteran, the promising rookie, and everyone in between—should know exactly what you expect to happen, when you expect it to happen, and what tools are available to make it happen. For instance, if their online product/service training is supposed to be complete by Day 14, and their elevator speech is supposed to be delivered comfortably and confidently by Day 30, your onboarding process should make that clear... and it should give the new hire all the resources necessary to meet those goals.

Onboarding is not just for them. You, as the sales leader, need to know some things, too. Specifically, you need to know whether to hold on to this salesperson…or let them go and hire someone else! When you give people the right tools and set the right activity benchmarks, you typically get the answer to that important question within 60 to 90 days—as opposed to the fifteen months or longer it can take you to figure it out without an effective onboarding process.

Fact: Plenty of ‘experienced’ salespeople end up being a bad fit for your organisation and/or your market. When that happens, you are better off figuring out the truth sooner rather than later.
MYTH 4: My people do not get distracted. They are always focused like a laser beam on the activities that they need to be successful
Maybe. Just to be sure, though, work with them one-on-one to set up a behavioural plan - also known as a ’cookbook’-that aligns with their income goal, targets the buyers you most want them talking to, and makes it crystal-clear to both of you what specific actions need to happen on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

MYTH 5: The people on my team know it is okay to kick unqualified opportunities out of the funnel
You will be surprised.
Many of the executives we work with suffer from a dangerous blind spot when they look at revenue forecasts and the individual pipeline summaries that support them. They assume that the members of the sales team have already removed inactive or unqualified opportunities from the equation. Our working assumption has to be that they are not doing this.

Why not? Salespeople may have more optimism about a given opportunity than the facts justify—the ‘happy ears’ syndrome. They may not want to face up to the true state of their own pipeline. Or they may simply have fallen behind on their to-do list. Whatever the explanation, there needs to be a process in place that confirms that an opportunity still belongs in the pipeline. Specifically, we want to confirm that the deal has not been ‘pending’ for too long, that there is a pressing problem your organisation can solve, that the budget exists to solve it, and that there is a decision-making process in place that your salesperson and his or her contact have both agreed to. If the opportunity does not pass the appropriate reality check, exclude it from the forecast!