Retail
MarketStar Retail
MarketStar Channel
MarketStar Direct
Industry Insights
News and Notes
Let’s pretend you’re a sales manager and you’re opening a new territory that really needs to show success. You’re offered a choice between two sales reps from a neighboring department, and you have to make your decision only on the following information:
- Tommy Tortoise is well-grounded in sales methodologies and is a steady performer. His sales performance has been somewhere in the middle of the pack for the past three years. However, he is known to work long hours, through lunch hours, nights and weekends. His reporting is top notch and he always hits his deadlines for activities. He makes 40 calls a day, rain or shine, and never leaves until his to-do list is completely crossed off.
- Harry Hare, on the other hand, is a bit erratic. He has been the top producer in three of the last eight quarters and has set sales records in several categories. Of the top 10 customers, Harry landed six of them. On the other hand, Harry tends to be a loose cannon when it comes to following established guidelines. His methods are unorthodox, but he finds ways to get through gatekeepers and speak with C-level customers. He often shows up several minutes late to work, takes long lunches and sometimes distracts others on the team with his spontaneous behavior. He’s terrible on his reporting and sometimes misses deadlines and even meetings. His call routine is anything but routine; he makes anywhere from 10 to 50 calls a day.
With apologies to Aesop, if you had to hire a new sales rep, would you hire Tommy Tortoise or Harry Hare?
“Slow and steady wins the race,” right?
Well, slow and steady are great attributes for many areas of life, but sales isn’t necessarily one of them. The best sales people are high-energy, driven, innovative and quick to grasp concepts. These are qualities that Harry Hare is more likely to possess. If managed right, Harry will definitely help you achieve your sales goals, while Tommy might be better suited to an operational or sales services role.
I know you’re probably asking yourself, “But what about Harry’s long lunches, excessive breaks, poor reporting and other erratic behaviors?”
According to Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, authors of “The Power of Full Engagement,” energy, not time, is the essential resource and the key limiting factor to growth and success. In other words, top performers, whether in sports or in business, manage their energy, while middle performers only manage their time. According to Loehr and Schwartz, success in business is more like a series of short sprints rather than a marathon. We are a lot more productive when we focus our limited energy on periods of high intensity, followed by periods of recovery and relaxation. These peaks and valleys of energy come in natural cycles of 90 to 120 minutes. And if Tommy Tortoise doesn’t take time to recover, he won’t have the intense energy he needs for the next leg of the race.
Many of today’s sales managers are bent on measuring their sales teams with a clock, rather than by overall productivity. They run their teams like the accounting department down the hall. They make sure everyone is punched in by 8 a.m., in their seats until noon, back at 12:50 and ready to grind out the afternoon until the proverbial whistle blows at 5 p.m. Success is then measured by the number of forms they fill out and activities they engage in. These same managers then wonder why no one is closing major deals.
Successful sales managers, on the other hand, look beyond the hours on the timecard and measure performance in terms of deal sizes, pipeline growth and closed, incremental business.
Sales is a business of relationships – relationships that require energy to create, energy to foster and energy to transform from short-term to long-term. If you’re the customer, would you be more likely to buy from a sales rep who is mentally tired, or from someone who comes across with contagious energy and enthusiasm for their company and products?
So how can you foster a high-energy sales force?
1. Promote exercise. Multiple studies have shown a strong correlation between business success and regular exercise. Not only did daily exercise provide additional energy to participants, it also results in decreased sick days, increased cognitive function and improved mental health.
2. Reward energy. Periodic contests, sales awards and activities that focus rewards on energy output for short periods of time (rather than just a single long-term goal) will spike intensity and keep things fun. It also will lower attrition.
3. Establish times of intense focus. Power hours and other times set aside for prospecting can provide increased intensity to the entire sales team. Shut off extraneous e-mail, websites and chat windows to focus specifically on the task at hand.
4. Follow intensity with periods of “downtime.” Follow each intense cycle with a down cycle where reps might answer e-mails and do paperwork. Encourage people to leave their desks during breaks and take a walk outside. Sitting at your desk during breaks or lunch will sap energy.
5. Put the emphasis on the end goal, not the activities. According to Marcus Buckingham in “First Break All the Rules,” the best sales reps will accomplish the end goal in a variety of ways. Give them a goal and let them figure out how to hit those goals. Don’t be so pedantic about HOW to get there that you end up stifling their creativity. Then learn from that creativity.
6. Hire “hares” and not “tortoises.” Use Assessment Centers (see January’s blog post) to determine which candidates have true sales genes and are thus better suited to the intensity required to find success.
I think you need to have a good mix between the two. I would rather have someone with high energy, good on the phone, able to get people on board by thier fun personality, but I do not agree with missing meetings and being irresponsible. I do not watch the clock with my team, but when I set an expectation or schedule a meeting, I expect it to be met. I try my best to give them plenty of time to complete projects, and 2-7 days notice for meetings, so I expect them to respect my time as I do theirs. By holding Assessement Centers as mentioned before we’ve been able to find individuals who are a good mix — so they are out there, and worth the search. In my opinion just one or the other doesn’t work.
I enjoyed the article and it made me think of myself. I agree that sales are a unique bunch that cannot be compared to traditional employee roles. Salespeople are very competitive and inspired by money, bonuses and recognition. A new twist on the Tortoise & The Hare.
Paul, Nice Blog. I do feel that Harry would make the better sales person, but the key is to properly managing him. People like Harry tend to get off track and chase the wrong opportunities. Having a manager that micro manages Harry’s activities and schedule will hurt Harry spirit. I feel there is a balance between holding a sales person accountable, and managing the fire out of them. Good Selling! Mark
Paul,
Well thought out and presented. Some people say work hard and play hard, I have always believe that the best way is to work smarter (hare).
Jerry
I agree with Paul’s description and assessment of the sales function, but would like to add that the same dynamics are at work in all other creative enterprises. Entertainment, sports, fund raising, design and any competitive enterprise relies on motivated, energized performers, and the combination of energy and motivation is rebuilt during the short periods of down time. Besides that, some of the better performers in the relationship professions are actually working when they appear to be relaxing, talking, even goofing off. It’s those relationships built during short down times that are leveraged when the real competition begins.
Forcing the Hare to work in a highly structured environment will make one very unhappy Hare who will not stick around.
I agree in principle with your observation to this version of the question- are great sales people born or taught, but I also feel some consideration should be given to the product type and the customers you are working with. High energy closers may not be the best personality suited to selling technical, long sales-cycle type products. For example software solutions, computer centers, machine tools, power plants and national defense products would be better suited to a Tortoise type sales personality (the IBM type sales person). Products such as automobiles, laptop computers, light bulbs and toothpaste are a perfect fit for a Hare.
Nice article!
In my opinion sales is completely inter-related with emotion. Emotion is therefore energy in motion. Unfortunately or fortunately very successful sales individuals are very emotional, which in turn makes them more spontaneous, creative, sporadic, less controlled by schedules or long term goals. Short term wins however, provide a tremendous amount of satisfaction, and it becomes the fuel to move faster, more agresieve, in untraditional directions. Most people in sales and I used to be one; are in sales because of the perks of technically running their own schedules and agendas as though they owned the business. Traditional thinking of course focuses on the clock as you said, and for most organizations that is what is needed, in a succesful organization I would propose you need something much more robust, more demanding, you need organized structured flexibility; both in management and workforce.
Very thought provoking. You are right on target with the hare. The management is the key to harnessing the performance of this performance type… The sales team will typically be made up of a combination of these examples but through ACs, one can craft a high performance team full of focused hares and reap the rewards…
Thank you all for your thoughtful comments. I took the analogy to polar extremes with the tortoise and the hare — personality types you would rarely see in real life — to demonstrate that sales managers must often make the choice between slow/steady and fast/erratic. Usually, sales people veer slightly in one direction or the other. A good sales manager can temper a “hare” to be more responsible, attend meetings and do the paperwork, but it’s nearly impossible to coach a turtle to move faster. It’s also true, as Jim pointed out, that sales reps temperament should be matched to the products they are selling. But a well coached seller can quickly generate new business, then modulate themselves to show patience through long sales cycles. And this is where winning as a team comes in, which is a blog for another day.
Love that you started your six points with a focus on the whole person with exercise. Well done post.
Paul well thought out. I agree!! Those of us in sales are high energy individuals who hate being tied to desks and repetitive tasks. Drives us nuts!!! Although we need to read our customers. I think one of the others commented that depends on the product being sold. I would agree with this, However being the competitive person that I am. I always find ways to work with different personalities that make up the customer. It is the ability to adapt to any situation while maintaining our over active personalities to fit in the moment. Go with the hare!!!
I have seen this scenario repeat itself time and again on my team and on the teams of our partner organizations. While there are tortoise-appropriate aspects to my job, the team goals are fundamentally dependent on the hare-like ability to make the sale. Our organization’s recent strategy has been to divide responsibilities and assign people to tasks that they are best suited to.
Within our partner organizations, however, the reigning philosophy is rooted in the archaic measurements that you mentioned. As a result, they rarely have the energy to perform when it really matters. I’ve been continually amazed at how they can sacrifice these Churchillian moments that could have been their “finest hour” because it’s not within their restricted methodologies.
As an employee (not in sales) I am amazed at the variety of times that co-workers like to start work. From 5:30am (when the gates open) to 10am. The workplace needs to be as flexible as possible so that all employees can be productive.
Brilliant!
What a great article. I have to agree with Kirt that this metaphor extends beyond sales. One of the best systems engineers that I know works the craziest schedule and hates the “paperwork.” He’s also the person that everyone on his team turns to when they’re completely stumped by a problem. A manager that can help a person like this to establish priorities when it comes to meetings and paperwork will find that they have a top-notch, if not necessarily in the traditional sense, employee.
Nice article Paul! If I could hire all hares, I would. As a sales business person at any level, you are there to produce results…with the caveat that those results are produced in accordance with ethics and company standards. Anything else is a distant second.
As Managers, we can fall in to the trap of seeing “hares” as natural rebels or erratic. Being sort of a hare myself, I can tell you that it is absolutely not true. Hares are focused at the above mentioned goal. Things that detract from that can be seen as obstacles–that can include some meetings. I have found that the best way to manage a hare is to connect with them. Be at a level with them where they respect your need to keep the entire team in sync (including them). If they learn that you sincerely care about their career and success (key word is sincerely), they will likely return the favor.
Just my 2 cents. I’ll take the hares all day.
Great article…bullet point number 4 resonates with me… “it’s a marathon, not a sprint”. It’s actually neither. Instead, a series of sprints followed by periods of rest/downtime which nets the most desirable results…
Excellent article Paul. The six bullet points were accurate. I especially believe that points 3 & 4 represent the point of demarcation between good and great sales people.
Hi there thank for give us valuable information in your blog i hope you can provide more information like this in future.