Passion, Perseverance, and Sales Performance
A FEW YEARS AGO, I was having a conversation with a successful colleague of mine, who is also in the sales training business. Pete had just returned from an appointment, one where the purpose and objective was to close a $100,000 deal. Upon arriving at the company, his supposed-to-be new client apologized and informed him that the company had made a decision to sell the firm.
I asked, “Ugh . . . what did you do?”
He responded without missing a beat, “Some will, some won’t, moving on. In fact, this deal not coming through has actually taught me a few lessons on how to be better in the next selling situation.” No time was lost to a pity party or “why me” conversation.
That’s resiliency. That’s perseverance. That’s success.
Now here’s the backstory on Pete. He grew up in a home with an alcoholic father. At a very young age, Pete became the provider of the house, both emotionally and financially. If you were going to measure an individual on resiliency and perseverance, my colleague would score off the charts. His not so easy childhood produced a very resilient individual.
And to Pete’s credit, he didn’t harbor resentment toward a childhood cut short because he also possessed the EQ skill of optimism. More than once, he shared that his tough upbringing was a gift. Those difficult early years gave him the gift of resiliency and perseverance.
So you might be wondering: Should sales managers only hire salespeople who come from broken homes, dysfunctional families, or difficult backgrounds? The answer is no. But what I am suggesting is that sales managers put intense focus on hiring salespeople who possess the muscles of perseverance and resiliency.
These traits are often developed during a person’s childhood and are difficult to develop when a person reaches adulthood. Sales leaders don’t have the time or expertise to develop these important competencies.
Resiliency and Revenues
Back in 1997, an early pioneer in the study of resiliency, Paul Stoltz, authored the book Adversity Quotient, Turning Obstacles into Opportunities. This is a great book where he shares nineteen years of research and ten years of application toward answering the question “Why do some people persist, while others fall short or even quit?”
If you’ve been in sales leadership long enough, you’ve probably hired a salesperson who should have been successful and wasn’t. The resume looked great. During the interview, the salesperson sounded like a winner. What sales managers often miss in the interview process is vetting the salesperson for their ability to withstand and overcome adversity. Stoltz calls it the Adversity Quotient®.
I’ve seen salespeople with impressive resumes fail when they move to another sales organization. The new sales environment is more difficult than the salesperson’s previous environment. Their new sales position requires more resiliency, more perseverance.
The Need for Resiliency
Years ago, one of my clients hired a salesperson with a strong sales background. She ended up failing miserably. It wasn’t due to lack of sales talent; it was lack of resiliency.
At her previous company, the salesperson sold a well-branded product. My client’s company didn’t have a well-known brand so gaining access to prospects was a lot more difficult. The salesperson’s previous stellar track record was based on selling a need-to-have product, one where there was a deadline for renewals and implementation. My client sold high-end management consulting services, a nice-to-have service, but one that is easy for prospects to stall because there isn’t a deadline.
The salesperson got frustrated. She wasn’t willing to put in the extra work needed to learn how to sell to this new set of buyers and resigned within a year. My client learned that difficult lesson of how previous sales experience doesn’t always translate to future sales success. On her next sales hire, she interviewed extensively for resiliency, knowing she needed a salesperson who could and would persevere in spite of setbacks.
Are You Building a Campground or a High-Performance Sales Team?
In his book, Stoltz writes about three types of people: quitters, campers, and climbers. Let’s take his descriptions and apply them to the process of hiring great salespeople.
A quitter is a person who resists change. These salespeople wreak havoc on a sales culture because they tend to be frustrated individuals. As a result, they make sure everyone else on the team is equally miserable. These salespeople have given up on their goals and refuse to “climb.” Hopefully, these types of individuals don’t even make it to the phone screening interview.
Campers, by Stoltz’s definition, are individuals who lead compromised lives. At some point, they may have even been climbers but are just tired of the climb. These individuals start camping and settling for “good enough.” Their business development efforts are good enough. Their selling skills are good enough. Their sales results are good enough. Sales campers have lost their desire to learn and grow.
These individuals are frustrating to manage because they do just enough to keep their jobs. Campers are salespeople who:
• Almost hit quota, but never quite make it. Sales managers wonder if it’s them or the salesperson.
• Show some initiative, some drive, but never enough to make a substantial change in their sales results or your sales organization.
• Take calculated risks. Sales managers teach and coach sales campers how to call on new markets or try new ideas, but their desire for comfort wins. The sales manager keeps talking and the sales campers keep doing what they are doing.
It’s easy for sales leaders to hire a sales camper who was once a climber. Their resume is full of previous accomplishments and sales awards. They might be salespeople who have been in the industry a long time. They have a lot of connections and contacts. But many have no desire to learn new selling approaches. They have connections but are really tired of prospecting and business development. They only focus on meeting with existing accounts. A young sales professional can also be a sales camper. They lack the intrinsic motivation to learn and improve. Sales campers are motivated by comfort, not climbing.
Sales managers who make the mistake of hiring sales campers build big sales campgrounds. They are filled with salespeople sitting around the campfire, eating smores and talking about the good old days.
Look for and hire what Stoltz refers to as climbers. These people are passionate about life, continuous learning, and improving. Stoltz’s research shows that climbers, in any position, contribute the most to organizations.
Climbers understand adversity is just a part of life. And the profession of sales can present a lot of adversity such as:
• A salesperson has been working on an opportunity for two years and now it’s stalled because a new decision maker has joined the prospect’s company and is thinking about bringing in his existing supplier.
• A salesperson has one of those months where they hear more noes than yeses.
• The new product launch is failing miserably and 25 percent of the salesperson’s goal was based on sales from that line of business.
• Out of the blue, the prospect’s budget was cut and so was the salesperson’s sale.
• The salesperson won the sale and now discovers the new client is a nightmare client.
Hire salespeople who will persevere, continue climbing, and continue improving. These salespeople are better at handling the obstacles that happen in business and in life.
A Sales Climber
I met Samantha at a networking event. She was young, bright, and a sales climber. As we engaged in conversation, she shared her excitement of starting with a small company that was growing rapidly. “This is a great opportunity for me because I’m new to sales. The only downside is that the CEO, who is also acting as sales manager, is really busy so I don’t get a lot of direction.” Her eyes narrowed and her smile got even bigger. “But I’ve figured out a way to get training. He’s in the office by 6:30 a.m. every morning. So, twice a week I show up at 7:00 a.m. and ask for fifteen minutes of his time. I’m really organized, have my questions ready, and he gives me a short lesson on sales each time.”
That’s a sales climber. Think about how easy it would be for this young sales professional to throw in the towel embossed with the words “I quit.” Many would simply complain about lack of training and mentoring. Samantha’s resiliency and perseverance drove her to overcome obstacles. She set her alarm, got up, got out, and grabbed coaching whenever she could from a very busy executive.
Take a lesson from the great spiritual teacher Buddha. “If you want to draw water, you do not dig six one-foot wells. You dig one six-foot well.”
Salespeople who lack perseverance tend to dig a lot of one-foot wells. They are sales campers.
• They practice their selling skills a little—but never enough to become masterful.
• They study product knowledge enough to get them by, not enough to make them a sought-after expert in their industry.
• They do some sales activity but not enough consistent activity to produce a full sales pipeline.
Digging six-foot wells requires perseverance. It requires sales climbers.
Perseverance, Optimism, and Revenues
Optimism is an emotional intelligence skill, one that sometimes creates visions of an over-the-top, glad-handing, not-in-touch-with-reality salesperson. Again, Stein and Book share a better picture of optimism in their book, The EQ Edge:
Optimism isn’t about indulging in a perpetual pep talk or simply repeating positive things to yourself. Rather it’s the ability to stop thinking or saying destructive things about yourself and the world around you, especially when you’re suffering personal setbacks. True optimism is a comprehensive and hopeful but realistic approach to daily living.
This thing called life is full of disappointments, setbacks, and adversity. You’ll find that many high performers, including many CEOs, have encountered more than their share of adversity. The difference is always their perspective on adversity. These successful people are sincerely thankful for adversity, saying things like, “It’s made me a more empathetic person. I know I can accomplish anything because I was able to push through this setback.”
Psychologist Martin Seligman is well known for his work around optimism. In my first book, I shared his research showing that optimistic insurance salespeople outsold their pessimistic peers by 88 percent.
His extensive research shows that optimistic people are better equipped to deal with adversity because they look at life through a different lens. Their lens of the world is that a setback is only temporary and limited. Pessimistic people have a very different lens, viewing setbacks as permanent and pervasive.
Listen to an optimistic and pessimistic salesperson and you will hear a distinct difference in their self-talk, their belief systems. The optimistic salesperson experiencing a sales slump views the slump as temporary, not permanent.
“This is a temporary setback. I’ve been here before and I know what to do. I’ve got the ability to get sales back on track.”
The pessimistic salesperson caves to a different type of selling behavior and self-talk that the problem is permanent and pervasive.
“There’s nothing I can do about this situation. None of my prospects are buying right now. This economy is never going to get better.”
Salespeople with low optimism lack the ability to quickly get back in the sales saddle when disappointment hits. They lose weeks of productivity because they don’t have the “bounce-back factor.” Think of a quarterback taking a long break after getting sacked or throwing an interception. Not happening! Sales organizations lose thousands of dollars every year because they hire salespeople who can’t get back up after being “sacked” or throw the sales ball again after experiencing a difficult sales meeting.
Look for and hire optimistic salespeople. They are easy to recognize as they are the ones running around with glasses that are always full, not half empty.
Where Is Your Potential Sales Candidate’s Focus?
I am all about making a sales manager’s life easier. And life becomes much easier when sales managers hire salespeople with a high internal locus of control. It’s been described as an individual’s belief that success in life is attributed to his or her own efforts rather than external circumstances.
Back in the 1950s, American psychologist Julian Rotter conducted research showing that people with a high internal locus of control believe they can control their outcomes, despite external factors. Since that early research, other studies show that individuals with a high internal locus of control produce more work and better work. They also enjoy a higher degree of career satisfaction. This is a winning formula for hiring great salespeople.
The salesperson with an internal locus of control looks inward for answers and solutions. If the company isn’t generating enough leads, they take charge and figure out ways to fill their sales pipeline. If the company doesn’t have certain systems and processes in place, they install their own systems and processes in order to get the job done.
The salesperson with an external locus of control is an expert at the blame game. He is great at finding—and blaming—external forces for his lack of success. This salesperson possesses a victim mentality, believing that life is happening to him. Therefore, he’s not responsible for his outcomes or actions. In the world of psychology, this is defined as learned helplessness. It’s the internal belief that what you do does not matter. This belief quickly saps a person’s sense of control and ownership.
These salespeople are exhausting to manage. External locus of control salespeople are masters at turning their sales manager into an act at the circus. Has anyone had a ringside seat at this show? The sales manager keeps jumping through hoops, trying to meet the demands for more “external” resources from her salesperson. As she jumps through one hoop and then another, the salesperson demands still more resources. This circus act never stops because this type of salesperson never takes responsibility for her own success.
Your job as a sales manager is to identify and disqualify these salespeople quickly. They are actually not that hard to spot because an external locus of control salesperson has always had a history of blame (see Figure 5.1).
FIGURE 5.1
But take a closer look—the common denominator is them!
I fully support trying to remove obstacles and providing resources for salespeople to be successful. But in life and business, there are always going to be obstacles and lack of resources, especially in fast-growth sales organizations. I know because I started in sales with a fast-growth company. When companies are growing, there will be times when internal systems, processes, and resources just can’t keep up. Resilient salespeople figure it out. They have the ability to push through the tough times, push through adversity.
A Lesson in Sales Resiliency
Angie Stevens and I worked together at Varsity. Today, they are the largest company in the world in their industry. They’ve done many things well and one is hiring people with a high internal locus of control. Angie Stevens is one of those individuals. In the early years at Varsity, it was difficult to forecast production of camp wear. For those of you not familiar with the cheerleading business, this is the matching sportswear that cheerleaders wear to camp each day.
In the fashion business, it’s difficult to predict which design is going to sell. When I was a sportswear buyer in my twenties, we were always trying to forecast “what piece of merchandise was going to blow out of the store.”
More than once at Varsity, we’d have a sleeper design that would start “blowing out of the warehouse.” It was stressful managing the unexpected influx of orders.
As vice president of sales, I observed two distinct responses from my sales team in dealing with this challenge. The first response was high locus of control. Instead of complaining about the situation, these salespeople focused on taking control of the situation. The second response was, as you probably have already guessed, a low internal locus of control. These salespeople would sit back and complain loudly about the situation.
Angie Stevens was in the first bucket. She was very proactive about follow-up, calling her customers two weeks ahead of camp dates to double-check deliveries. When working with her coaches and customers, she was very diligent about uncovering the dates they planned to attend cheer camp.
The external locus of control reps (thankfully we didn’t have that many) favored another approach. Their responses included, “That’s not my job. This is the production department’s problem. I sold it—they need to get the merchandise delivered.” Their external locus of control, not taking responsibility, created a lot of unnecessary firefighting.
Angie ignored that type of self-talk and approach. She may not have been able to control production; however, she knew she could control giving herself enough time to get another solution in place. It’s no wonder she was consistently one of the top reps in the company.
Take a look at this chart and ask yourself what type of salespeople you’ve been hiring.
Internal Locus of Control Salesperson |
External Locus of Control Salesperson |
Looks inward for answers and solutions. |
Looks outward for answers and solutions. Waits to be rescued. |
Focuses on resources she has. Finds and creates new resources. |
Complains about lack of resources. Waits for someone else to find and provide. |
Takes 100 percent responsibility for sales success. |
Blames external factors for lack of sales success. |
Asks the question: What can I do to change my circumstances to be more successful? |
Asks the question: What circumstances need to change in order for me to be successful? |
Will You Persevere?
Building a great sales team starts with you. Apply self-awareness and examine your sales management behaviors. Have you invested the time in learning and mastering behavior-based interview questions? Do you have weekly or monthly goals for interviewing top sales talent, even when you don’t have an open position? Are you digging a one-foot well or a six-foot well?
Hiring great salespeople is difficult for several reasons. The first is that people often get into sales as a default profession. “I’m going to do this until I find something better.” Twenty years later, they still haven’t found something better. They retire while working on the job.
Sales managers and CEOs have new challenges in recruiting and hiring today because of changing dynamics in the family unit and technology. Let me explain.
The boomers are retiring and young sales professionals are taking their place. Many boomers grew up in large families with five to ten kids. The sheer size of the families often created more resilient people. It wasn’t anything special the parents were doing. It’s called survival. Parents simply couldn’t do everything themselves. I grew up in a family with eight children. My parents ran a small office that never closed! (And they couldn’t fire any of the employees—we had immediate tenure.) Everyone was assigned chores at a young age in order to keep the “office” running. It didn’t matter if you were young or tired. The work had to get done. This environment created resiliency, responsibility, and accountability.
Technology is also a contributor in creating less resilient individuals. Again, “back in the day” a person just didn’t pick up the phone and call their parents for advice. Long-distance calls were very expensive. There were no cell phones, so access to adults and advice wasn’t easy. This non-tech environment forced people to make decisions and live with the consequences of those decisions.
Today, parents are dispensing advice all day long through phone or text. Many young people aren’t learning how to think through their own challenges or deal with adversity.
I’m not jumping on the popular bandwagon bashing young sales professionals. I’m actually tired of the hit tune named, “Young people are lazy and entitled.” Believe me, I’ve met my share of lazy, entitled boomers. But the reality is that sales managers are faced with different challenges in hiring as they have more sales candidates who are products of helicopter parenting and technology.
Don’t settle! Persevere in your search for the right salespeople. Not every sales candidate grew up on a street named easy.
Sales managers may need to look longer and further, but good salespeople of all ages are out there. I have worked with sales rock stars in all age groups. Make sure you aren’t camping, settling, and looking for an easy path to hiring great salespeople. There isn’t one or we would all be on it!
Sales Universities
Many of my clients are partnering with the progressive universities that offer sales degrees. This is great news for sales managers because these graduates aren’t defaulting to the profession of sales. They have chosen sales and have a passion for sales. They recognize sales as a great career path for individuals who want to be rewarded for perseverance and personal performance.
Sales managers, apply delayed gratification and put in the work to establish relationships with local and national universities. Recruit early and often in a young professional’s life. Keep your people pipeline full.
Winning the Future
One of my clients, Gallagher, is a great example of partnering with colleges to build their sales force of the future. The company has developed an incredible intern program that attracts over four hundred new, young recruits annually. The company hires many of them upon college graduation, approximately 60 percent.
What’s equally impressive is the amount of training and mentoring they provide for their new recruits. Each new hire is enrolled in a two-year program where they learn skills on emotional intelligence, networking, prospecting, sales, and product knowledge. Senior executives at Gallagher take time out of their busy schedules and get involved in judging the sales contests. They host networking events where the senior executives meet the new hires, providing great insights and support. This company attracts top sales talent because they persevere in their goal of hiring the best and the brightest.
Test your sales candidates for the competencies of adversity, resilience, and perseverance. Find out if your candidate is willing to do their “first year.”
Sales EQ Interview Questions
1. Tell me about the hardest you’ve ever worked to achieve a goal. (Test for perseverance.)
2. Why have you switched jobs every two years? (Hint: Job-hoppers often lack the perseverance it takes to succeed. When the going gets tough—they get going.)
3. Share with me the biggest adversity you’ve faced in your life. What did you do to overcome it? (Has your candidate ever faced obstacles?)
4. What are some of the biggest decisions you’ve had to make on your own? (Is this candidate going to need their parent with them on a sales call?)
5. Tell me about a time when you wanted to give up but you didn’t. What made you keep going? (Will this candidate dig a one-foot well or a six-foot well?)
6. What have you done to prevent a potential problem in the delivery of your products or services? (Check for internal or external locus of control.)
7. Tell me about a time you took responsibility for fixing a problem you didn’t create. (Internal locus of control people take charge and deliver results.)
Sales is a great profession, one that requires the ability to persevere and push through adversity. Hire salespeople who aren’t looking for greener pastures. Hire salespeople who make greener pastures.