In a recent article from Management Association, Mary Lynn Fayoumi talks about the importance of HR professionals having good sales skills.  She speaks about the necessity of “selling” great talent on coming to work for you. 

In a competitive marketplace, where specialized skills and experience are increasingly important, the ability of hiring managers to differentiate themselves and their company is critical.

If we surveyed HR professionals, asking them to define what a successful salesperson must do well, I suspect that articulating the company’s value proposition would rank very high.  The question is how?  The best salespeople help the client to discover that core business issues and unforeseen consequences make the value proposition important.

Salespeople often start off in the right direction, but then quickly find themselves in presentation mode.  The result is a loss of control and differentiation.  I believe that HR professionals suffer from the same problem.

My experience is that far too many HR executives underappreciate the science, art and difficulty of professional selling.  They can articulate the business case, cost and impact of underperforming salespeople.  They understand the opportunity cost of turnover, but they really don’t “get” salespeople and, in too many cases, underappreciate the difficulty of the sales job.  This probably isn’t surprising since most CEO’s have the same challenge because they’re from the finance, operations and/or technical side.  HR professionals also happen to spend a lot of time interacting with vendors who often don’t live up to expectations.

What makes salespeople different? 

• They are usually highly emotional and sometimes volatile people.
• They are not good at being introspective.
• Asking for help is typically a weakness.
• Compliance is not in their vocabulary.
• Most are fairly self-absorbed.
• They love teamwork when they are in control of the team.
• They should ask questions which make prospects uncomfortable.
• Details are not that important.
• The good ones fight when prospects say no.

What percentage of these traits do you think HR professionals possess?  More importantly, how many look for these attributes when hiring great employees and how does this affect the sales talent recruitment?

A client of mine sent me an article recently from the Harvard Business Review titled The End of Solution Selling.  It is a long, well-researched piece which challenges the status quo.

A key premise is that customers now are investing a significant amount of time and energy before they engage salespeople to diagnose their own problems and identify the solution. Salespeople, who historically have focused on finding a problem and identifying the solution, now increasingly are seen as unnecessary and redundant. 

Many salespeople view themselves as facilitators of a buying process, which they frequently allow the prospect to design and control. They spend much time explaining why people should buy from them instead of helping the prospect identify the potential flaws in their logic and decision-making. They get lost in the details and miss the opportunity to discuss the big picture, including industry change, disruptive events and how this aligns with or may undermine the potential customer’s strategy.

Yesterday, I spoke to a recently hired sales leader. In our conversation, he shared that while improving the effectiveness of his sales force was an important priority, the bigger issue was getting senior management to understand that “sales” is as important as operations and that great products don’t sell themselves. This comes from a company with over 500 employees.

Developing salespeople, from presenters of a value proposition to proactive hunters with great consultative selling ability, is the biggest and most important challenge facing the sales industry today. The days of building a relationship and presenting a solution are gone forever. Unfortunately, most salespeople don’t know that a seismic shift has already taken place and they’re not prepared for what’s coming.

Great salespeople love when prospects push back. They relish the idea of being challenged and engaging prospects. They understand that their real value comes from dialogue and their ability to change people’s thinking and perception. In Baseline Selling terms, they spend much time between first and second base, building SOB quality. Remember that SOB means that the prospect is paying more attention to you than anyone else because you have helped them discover new challenges, opportunities and concerns which need to be addressed.

Which percentage of your salespeople are proactive hunters who excel at consultative selling? How many lean in when their prospects push back, not out of frustration but because they naturally engage in honest two-way conversations? Lastly, how effective are your sales leadership skills in developing your salespeople in these critical areas?

Kurlan & Associates, Inc. is holding a two-day Sales Leadership Intensive in Boston on October 3-4. The program is for CEO’s, President’s, GM’s and Sales Leaders committed to excellence.

Yesterday, while out getting coffee, I watched a Chocolate Labrador Retriever chase his morning pick-me–up:  a well-chewed tennis ball.  It was cold, gray, raw and pouring rain.  His ball-throwing partner was bundled up in a winter hat and heavy raincoat.  The dog, however, was in heaven!  He bounded across the grass, tongue fully extended, sliding and falling when be reached the florescent green ball only to wait eagerly for the next opportunity for a good ball chase.

I was thinking about the parallel between this and a day in the life of a salesperson.  Metaphorically speaking, the sky can turn gray and raw at any moment.  Spontaneous rain showers and thunderstorms pop up when least expected and your prospects frequently stop playing catch with you.  What’s a salesperson to do? 

Dogs just don’t give up when they are in full ball-chasing mode.  If you throw a ball deep into the woods, they will happily run there and come back for more.  If you throw a curve ball, they will wait for the next one.  If you stop playing catch, they bark and dance until you give in.

Salespeople, on the other hand, get emotionally involved when it rains, feel rejected when the prospect says something unexpected, get frustration when a prospect throws a curve ball and sometimes walk away when the going gets tough.

What’s the difference between the Chocolate Lab and a salesperson?   Dogs are hard-wired for play and ball-chasing.  They are singularly-focused and live completely in the moment.  When there is a ball to chase, it’s all they think about.  Most importantly, they are really good at having fun regardless of the circumstances.  In contrast, salespeople have trouble living in the moment, get distracted, lose sight of the goal and make selling way too serious, removing much of the playfulness.

Professional salespeople need to be smart, savvy, brave, goal-focused, resilient, empirical and process-orientated.  Prospects stretch the truth, hold back crucial information, have trouble trusting salespeople and worry about making a bad buying decision.  What often gets missed is the playfulness and singular focus regardless of whether it’s pouring rain at the moment.  Salespeople need to bring fun and playfulness to the sales process.  They also need to weather the wind, rain and bad weather with a smile on their face.

My challenge to you is to consciously remember the Chocolate Lab doing what he loves most regardless of the environmental conditions.

Duke University research on subliminal advertising shows that we are strongly impacted by what our subconscious mind experiences and it can activate based on what the imagery represents to us.  The study uses the Apple logo and its brand image of creativity to trigger creative behavior in the study group without them knowing it. 

When our subconscious minds believe something is true, whether these thoughts have a positive impact on us or not, the conscious mind will work to assure that contradictory beliefs are eliminated.  This means that what our subconscious believes has an enormous impact on our behavior.

Let's look at sales-specific beliefs that negatively impact sales execution.  When a salesperson subconsciously believes the statements below are true, coaching alone will not be enough to overcome the problem.  Until the subconscious mind agrees with the coaching, the subconscious mind will resist it and our attempts to embrace it.

• It's OK if they think it over.
• I have a long sales cycle.
• I don't like making cold calls.
• I have to call on procurement before end-users or decision-makers.
• If they're happy with their present vendor, then I can't help them.
• Prospects that think it over will eventually buy from me
• It's not OK to confront a prospect.
• Any lack of results are due to the economy or marketplace.

In the context of a sales call, when prospects say things that are aligned with our subconscious beliefs, we begin an internal struggle over which belief to act upon.  For example, even though "my experience is that most people who think it over don’t buy from me, it sounds like this person may be the exception.”  This thinking is the result of the conscious and subconscious disagreeing and the subconscious attempting to convince the conscious that it is correct.

The first step is to get your salespeople to understand that what their mind tells them may cause nonsupportive actions.  The salesperson's natural reaction will be to explain why, in this situation, their thinking is correct and they should ignore lessons from prior, similar sales scenarios.  Sales leaders whose thinking is similar to their salespeople may not even recognize the problem, which makes it very difficult for them to help their salespeople overcome these challenges.

Sales leaders often express frustration that their salespeople have a difficult time executing the strategies they develop for them.  They may take it personally or wonder if their salespeople are smart enough to incorporate new ideas.  While these are understandable responses, they miss the mark.  The problem is not whether they know what they should do, but whether they are ready to do battle with their subconscious thinking.

Do you know how your salespeople's subconscious thinking affects their ability to execute your coaching?  A sales force evaluation will quickly get to the heart of these issues.

Frank Belzer's post about Chinese work ethic and competition highlights something most people don't want to think about. The competitive landscape has changed forever.

Putting aside the impact of increased globalization, and the rise of China and India, America's challenges with the deficit, tax and monetary policy and unemployment just to mention a few:  they aren't going away anytime soon.

People are smarter and more cautious, armed with information which may well be inaccurate.  Witness the healthcare debate, under tremendous pressure to make the "correct decision", fearful about losing their jobs and feeling stressed out and overwhelmed.

Competition comes in many forms and from different places. It's direct or indirect, external and internal, foreign or domestic, price based or value based and outside your control or self-inflected. Success will be more difficult to achieve than ever before and, like the economic situation, this won't change anytime soon. 

I'll leave you with some questions to ask and find answers to:

• How do prospects and customers see you, as vendors or someone of higher value?
• Do you and your company position yourselves as advisors and, if so, do you act the part?
• Do you know specifically what your competition does better than you?
• Are you doing everything you can to impact the sales process even when you are not in control?
• How has your value proposition been affected by the economy?
• Are you mentally and emotionally tough enough to fight through these changing conditions to ultimately prosper?