PSYCHOLOGY
Improve Your Sales Performance Profile DR. ALEC MACKENZIE
Is it possible to be considered a success and still fall short of your full potential? Since so many salespeople just coast along, I challenged a group of top producers in Denver to spend three months in a time management study group finding out how successful they really could be – if they applied themselves with en- thusiasm and direction.
During the three months, five of the original 18 members lost their assis- tants or had personal difficulties that prevented them from continuing. The remaining 13 experienced an average increase in annualized income of 50 percent within six months of com- pleting the study group! One agent doubled his income (to $160,000) and tripled vacation time with his family (to six weeks) during the year after the study group.
These agents all were surprised to find they had been successful failures. They had not been doing their best – not even close.
TOP PRODUCERS NEED HELP With so much early promise, why do many top salespeople reach a plateau
and stay there? Most top producers are honored and rewarded by their companies, but many admit to finding the recognition unexciting. They have lost interest in their work and com- plain that the challenge has gone out of their working life. The problem we discovered was in their goal setting – actually, in their lack of it. When I challenged them to raise their sights, it became clear that many of them had accepted the goals given them by their companies without ever asking themselves what they were truly capable of doing. The competition to win recognition and rewards was always in terms of doing better than someone else. None of them had ever thought about what a tough goal could do.
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Sales managers are surprised when I suggest that the salespeople they need to help most are their top producers. A beginning salesperson will strive to do the best possible to gain acceptance, while top produc- ers usually enjoy fairly comfortable incomes and are praised as successful by their companies. The incentive to stretch – to work to their full potential – is lacking. And that incentive has to come from within the individual. Take the most successful failure I’ve ever known. Under 30, gifted in selling skills, he’d already won most of the awards his company offered for sales records for his years of service. His goal for the next year was to keep on the same path he’d been on – because it had been “successful.” When I asked if coasting was his idea of success, he responded, “Well, my record is pretty good.” “Measured against what?” I que- ried. “Are you measuring yourself against the sales of others or against the best you are capable of doing?” After a moment, he replied, “I guess you’re always measured against oth- ers.” We discussed the possibility that the best of a poor lot of sales- people might still be far below his own potential.
Having become bored with his work, he admitted he was considering
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