CAN AN INTROVERT SUCCEED IN SALES? In the mid-1980s, David Mattson wasn’t so sure. Back then, he was selling office equipment and getting a lot of rejections. He was uncomfortable cold calling. He’d go to networking events and stand in the corner – waiting it out until he could leave. During sales calls, he would jump right to business to keep meetings short and avoid the dis- comfort of small talk. No, Mattson was fairly sure introverts weren’t cut out for sales.
But he was willing to give it his best shot; so, in 1986, he spent his own money to attend a Sandler training seminar. He sat in the back, thinking about how he hadn’t been born to do this, but he listened and learned. Then he prac- ticed what he’d learned. Then he went back to his job and quickly became his company’s top sales rep. Whoa, what happened? “Sandler allowed me to keep my personality but learn the skills I needed to succeed,” says Mattson, who was so impressed with Sandler’s ap- proach that he joined the company as a trainer in 1988. Today, he is president and CEO of Sandler and a strong advocate for the argument that great sales reps are made – not born. After all, he is living proof.
SALES LEADERSHIP IS THE CORNERSTONE So how does Sandler take people like the Mattson of the 1980s – an introverted, unexceptional sales representative – and turn them into superstars? It’s all about teaching the behaviors, attitudes, and techniques that lead to success – then ensuring they are practiced and applied regularly. There is no mystery and no indefinable art here. Sandler’s approach is pure science and methodology: perform this action, with this frequency, in the way that best fits your personality, and results will follow. This is good news because – if great sales reps are made – your own organization can make its reps great. How? It all hinges on sales leadership. Sales leaders are the corner- stone of an effective sales organization, as this is the group that hires, onboards, trains, coaches, and manages the people who generate revenue. Yet sales managers are often the least trained group of people in the sales organization. “When a medium-sized organization has an opening in the sales manager’s spot, they tend to look around and ask, ‘Who’s our rock star?’ and convince them to step into the manager’s role,” says Mattson. “But they learn by failure because what the rock star did in front of the customer is different than what they need to do as a sales manager.”
This begs the question: What should a sales manager be doing to make his team successful? After nearly 30 years with the world’s largest sales training organization, Matt- son has a ready answer. He says there are five actions sales leaders can take that will significantly improve the effec- tiveness of their teams. Companies that implement these
five recommendations, he says, see at least a 20 percent improvement in productivity – and, in some cases, Mattson has seen organizations more than double their revenue. Here’s a look at Mattson’s five prescriptions for success:
1. TEMPLATE YOUR SALES PROCESS
Think your reps all follow a defined sales process? At your next sales meeting, hand out blank sheets of paper and ask everyone to write out the steps of that process. Guaranteed, every sheet of paper will look different. “Companies tell me they’ve got their sales process but- toned up and I tell them I’ll bet my fee they don’t,” says Mattson. “I haven’t yet lost my fee.” Formalizing and documenting a sales process has many benefits. With an effective roadmap to sales that works, new hires ramp up much more quickly. Coaching and train- ing become more targeted and more effective. If a man- ager knows that 36 percent of prospects should progress from step one to step two – but Rep X’s numbers are con- sistently around 14 percent – the manager can zero right in and address the problem. A defined sales process also allows companies to scale. Without it, team performance rests on the personality and approach of each manager. Once you have codified your sales process, “be boring and follow it,” urges Mattson. “People get away from fol- lowing a sales process because they get bored, but – once you find a process that works – stick with it.”
2. CREATE A PROSPECTING PLAN
When Mattson asks salespeople how many unique conver- sations they need to have every month to meet their num- bers, he is usually met with silence. They don’t know. Yet a recipe for generating new business to meet goals is essen- tial for consistent success in sales. To create this recipe: Brainstorm with sales reps to identify all the different ways they can initiate conversations with potential cus- tomers. You’ll likely wind up with a list of up to a dozen different ideas. Have reps choose the five to seven methods that work best for them based on their experience and personalities. Assign a target number of conversations to each source. For instance, if Rep A needs 20 unique conversations each month to meet his sales targets, he might decide to seek five of the conversations on LinkedIn, another five from customer referrals, and so on. Once this recipe is established, it simply becomes a mat- ter of following it.
“This kind of plan is great because it builds accountabili- ty and self-sufficiency,” says Mattson. “If it’s the 15th of the month and you need 15 conversations by this point – but
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