TEN WAYS
TOP SALES REPS
ARE DIFFERENT
By Duane Lakin, Ph.D.
Copyright 2015 Duane Lakin,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2577-1
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
“The Unfair Advantage” and “Sell with NLP!” are trademarks of Lakin Associates.
Preface
Everybody wants to have Top Sales Reps. But few managers understand what makes them tick. They are different, and they need different management attention. This book is about Top Sales Reps—sales professionals who are consistently top performers.
This book does NOT answer the question, “What does it take to be a great sales person?” You probably have seen hundreds of lists and books that try to answer that question. It is likely that most Top Sales Reps have many of the characteristics posted in such lists, but having many of those characteristics does not mean the person is a Top Sales Rep. Ask any Sales Manager.
Few managers understand Top Sales Reps. Top Sales Reps have needs and concerns that are different from what is found in average sellers. What a manager might say to an average sales person could be seen as insulting by a Top Sales Rep.
Managers need to know what makes Top Sales Reps different. What do they have in common? What motivates them? What offends them? How can I best help them be successful? How do I know if my sales candidate is a Top Sales Rep? Should I promote my Top Sales Rep? What do I do when I see my Top Sales Rep is in a slump?
What, then, is found ONLY in Top Sales Reps? What makes Top Sales Reps different? How do you find them and care for them? That is the focus of this book.
I have worked with Top Sales Reps for over 30 years, and I want to share my observations with you. In this book, I describe what makes a Top Sales Rep different. I also offer interview tips and management tips to help you find and care for your Top Sales Reps. I hope you find the book useful.
Duane Lakin, Ph.D.
Lakin Associates
Chapter One:
INTRODUCTION
Not all sales jobs are alike. If you look at the jobs that are called “sales”, you will see that some are order-taking jobs. Some include delivery of the service or product. Some are one-time sales while some require maintenance of a relationship. Some require a seller who can speak knowledgeably about highly technical details, while others require creative selling of intangibles.
To be successful in any of these sales jobs, the individual must meet the job requirements for that specific situation. Perhaps some can be “challengers” while others need to be “missionaries”. Every sales job has unique character-istics that must be respected. What determines success in any specific sales job is job specific.
Therefore, it should not be surprising to hear that not all sales people are alike. They don’t look alike or sell in the same way. When test sellers want to “profile” your top performers to build a model of the traits that will create success for you in future hires, they are often very successful…at selling tests.
Try this: Take your top sales producers and put them in a room. Do they look alike? Do they dress in a similar way? Do they sound alike? Do they have similar interests? Are they all extroverts? Are they all verbal?
Probably not!
Any group of Top Sales Reps is more likely to include more individual differences then similarities on the surface. It is only beneath the surface that you can begin to under-stand and see that a Top Sales Rep thinks in a unique way when compared with an average producer.
Yet writers are constantly telling us “Fifteen things that make a sales person great!” Then we see a list like the following:
Positive self-image (confidence)
Passion
Integrity
Ambition
Dependability
Gregariousness
Empathy
Energy/Persistence
Hunger for money
Comfortable talking about money
Assertiveness
Durability
Ego strength
Positive attitude
Hard working
Thick-skinned
Lists like this may tell us what characteristics are needed to succeed in sales. They might make good checklists for interviewing sales candidates. But these characteristics do not really show us anything that is unique about Top Sales Reps—those who are consistently high producers in any setting.
If you look at the above list, you will see great ideas about what a seller needs to be effective. But some weak sellers may also have these characteristics. Haven’t you seen an average seller who is still confident and committed? Many average sellers are sociable, friendly, outgoing. Any seller who has sold for more than two years has to have learned to be thick-skinned. And if a seller doesn’t have integrity, he/she will not last long in any setting. “Hard working” seems obvious as a success requirement, yet I have known Top Sales Reps who do not work particularly hard. They work smart but not necessarily hard. How about “Positive Self-Image?” I have seen Top Sales Reps who have awful self-image issues, yet they can put on a mask in a sales situation and appear confident and assertive. These lists are interesting, but they do not tell us much about Top Sales Reps.
Psychologists talk about the “Big Five.” These are traits that describe people and represent five independent dimensions: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. Yet, these “super-traits” do not tell us much about sales people, especially Top Sales Reps. In fact, most research has found that only Conscientiousness helps predict work performance in general.
So what does it take to be a great sales person, a Top Sales Rep? It depends. It depends on the sales job and the environment. And in fact, the magic formula is not known.
The basic problem with these lists is that they are a list of traits and attitudes that sound good. Probably many Top Sales Reps have most of these traits. But so do a lot of average sellers.
But Top Sales Reps actually do things differently. They see the world differently. And they often do the right things for reasons that may not necessarily correlate to an assumed trait. Just looking for a list of traits in a candidate can be misleading.
Traits help us describe the dynamics that make up the personality of a person. They can sometimes help us understand a person’s potential as well as inherent limitations if not addressed. Absent or missing traits can be as important as positive active traits in helping us to understand observed behavior. (If a person is missing “integrity”, it can explain a lot of observed behavior!)
Behaviors are more prone to change or to react to the environment than are traits. If a trait is