Best Practices for Sales People?

by Dave Kahle

Best practices for salespeople?

          One of the most debilitating myths about the sales profession is this:  Sales people can learn on their own, on the job, and eventually become good at their jobs.  They’ll eventually develop their own style, this myth implies, and that will bring them the maximum results.

          That myth is true for about five percent of the sales people in the world.  For the other 95 percent, nothing could be further from the truth.  The overwhelming majority of field sales people perform at a fraction of their potential because they have never been systematically exposed to the best practices of their profession.  Instead, they have been expected to “learn on their own.”

          I like to paint.  I don’t mean pictures.  I mean walls and bedrooms and hallways.

          I enjoy the physical nature of it, and the resulting change in the feeling of the room.  I’ve always liked to paint, and have done so for over 30 years.  Once, for about two months, I actually made a living doing it.  I think I’m pretty good at it.

          Until a little while ago, when I was watching one of those reality home improvement shows.  On it, a professional painter demonstrated the best way to apply masking tape, hold a brush and apply the paint.  Yikes!  I was doing it all wrong.

          All this time I thought I was pretty good, in my own self-taught, learn-on-my-own sort of way.  I guess I really didn’t have any standard.  But I almost always painted by myself, and had only my own opinion.  I thought I was pretty good compared to what I thought was good.

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What are PIQ Solutions?

        PIQ Solutions are curated, vetted documents designed to tackle common challenges. They offer insights, principles, and practices to navigate them. Imagine having a treasure trove of knowledge at your fingertips… no more trial and error!

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        Whenever I give a seminar, I encourage people to submit a Problem, Issue or a Question” anonymously on a card during the seminar -- a PIQ!  I gather them and respond to each one.

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          Then, when I discovered the best practices of a true professional, I saw that my own ideas were not up to the standard.  I wasn’t nearly as good as I thought I was.  If I’m going to become really good, objectively, verifiably good, I have to change my routines and incorporate the best practices.

          So it is with sales as well.

          The world is full of sales people who have learned on the job, pretty much on their own, and have never been exposed to the best practices of the profession.  They delude themselves, as I did, holding the opinion that they are pretty good.  And that delusion keeps them lingering in levels of performance considerably beneath what their potential would allow them.

          Sales managers often share that delusion, and occupy themselves with other matters, unable or unsure how to improve the performance of their team.  

          Typically, the sales manager was, in a previous incarnation, a high performing sales person.  He/she was one of those five percent who learned on their own, who studied the best practices, and who incorporated them into his routines.  As a result, that sales manager, formerly high performing sales person, expects every other sales person to be just like him; to have the same motivation, the same drive, the same ability and propensity to learn.  He, therefore, makes little effort to expose the sales team to best practices, because, after all, he did it on his own.  Shouldn’t they?

          Here’s where the theoretical conflicts with reality.

          Yes, they should do it on their own.  However, few do.  Only the five percenters of the world can be counted on to invest in... READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE