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.