{"id":6895,"date":"2014-05-01T09:13:04","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T13:13:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theweekinimaging.com\/?p=6895"},"modified":"2014-05-01T09:13:04","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T13:13:04","slug":"are-there-born-sales-professionals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/feature-articles\/2014\/05\/are-there-born-sales-professionals\/","title":{"rendered":"Are There Born Sales Professionals?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"little<\/a>There is a question being asked on a sales management LinkedIn group, and I am paraphrasing, \u201cAre high quality sales professionals born that way or developed?\u201d This question demeans the sales profession. Would anybody ever ask if a doctor was born with his or her talent or trained? An architect? An accountant? Are there individuals who truly believe that the profession of sales is an intrinsic skill, maybe part of the DNA of some people yet excluded from others?<\/p>\n

The most important question is do you believe that it is paramount to develop your sales force? If you answered yes to that question then the next most logical question becomes, who has primary responsibility for that development? To me the answer is the person\u2019s manager. But is that your managers\u2019 focus?<\/p>\n

If your management team is going to focus on developing each member of their team they need to have the correct set of metrics and a scalable and repeatable process. If \u201calways be recruiting,\u201d \u201ctelephone time,\u201d and \u201cfield time\u201d are the extent of your management process you are both missing a great opportunity to help your managers and sales professionals succeed as well as focused on activities that seem to have been introduced into this industry in another age without a lot of thought of how they affect success.<\/p>\n

Today, the manager should be focused to helping the sales professional develop a robust and growing pipeline: Pipeline growth needs to be the most important metric you focus on if you want to grow your business.\u00a0 But pipeline growth doesn\u2019t happen easily or magically and that is where the manager\u2019s focus on and ability to develop their employees comes into play. If the sales professional is having difficulty securing appointments I\u2019d spend time on how he makes his initial contacts, both the person he is contacting and the message. If he leaves his first meeting with a prospect and the next action item is almost always, \u201ctheir lease is up in 15 months so he wants me to call him next year,\u201d I\u2019d focus on how well the sales professional probes for a business case.<\/p>\n

Managers should be measured on how they develop their employees, which to me boils down to low turnover, under 20%, a high proportion of sales professionals achieving quota\u2014see Gary Schwartz\u2019s article titled \u201cCopier Sales is Like Baseball\u201d to determine if your quotas are logical\u2014a growing business and promoting sales professionals to bigger jobs in the company.<\/p>\n

If this isn\u2019t happening in your company then you should focus on getting your managers trained so that they can develop their employees.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss the Strategic Sales Management Class in Philadelphia on May 6-7 with Tom Callinan.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a question being asked on a sales management LinkedIn group, and I am paraphrasing, \u201cAre high quality sales professionals born that way or developed?\u201d This question demeans the sales profession. Would anybody ever ask if a doctor was born with his or her talent or trained? An architect? An accountant? Are there individuals who truly believe that the profession of sales is an intrinsic skill, maybe part of the DNA of some people yet excluded from others? The most important question is do you believe that it is paramount to develop your sales force? If you answered yes to that question then the next most logical question becomes, who has primary responsibility for that development? To me the answer is the person\u2019s manager. But is that your managers\u2019 focus? If your management team is going to focus on developing each member of their team they need to have the correct set of metrics and a scalable and repeatable process. If \u201calways be recruiting,\u201d \u201ctelephone time,\u201d and \u201cfield time\u201d are the extent of your management process you are both missing a great opportunity to help your managers and sales professionals succeed as well as focused on activities that seem to have been introduced into this industry in another age without a lot of thought of how they affect success. Today, the manager should be focused to helping the sales professional develop a robust and growing pipeline: Pipeline growth needs to be the most important metric you focus on if you want to grow your business.\u00a0 But pipeline growth doesn\u2019t happen easily or magically and that is where the manager\u2019s focus on and ability to develop their employees comes into play. If the sales professional is having difficulty securing appointments I\u2019d spend time on how he makes his initial contacts, both the person he is contacting and the message. If he leaves his first meeting with a prospect and the next action item is almost always, \u201ctheir lease is up in 15 months so he wants me to call him next year,\u201d I\u2019d focus on how well the sales professional probes for a business case. Managers should be measured on how they develop their employees, which to me boils down to low turnover, under 20%, a high proportion of sales professionals achieving quota\u2014see Gary Schwartz\u2019s article titled \u201cCopier Sales is Like Baseball\u201d to determine if your quotas are logical\u2014a growing business and promoting sales professionals to bigger jobs in the company. If this isn\u2019t happening in your company then you should focus on getting your managers trained so that they can develop their employees. Don\u2019t miss the Strategic Sales Management Class in Philadelphia on May 6-7 with Tom Callinan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82],"tags":[151,339,346],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6895"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6897,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6895\/revisions\/6897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}