Hospitality Sales & Management International


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Sales Management Training: Protect Your Company From (sales) Identity Theft in 3 Simple Steps?

Business Development Officer? Business Procurement Specialist? Did you know these types of titles for salespeople can ultimately rob your organization?

As a Sales Management Training Consultant, I often notice business cards from salespeople with titles that require some effort to decipher. As I inquire further about their role, eventually it pops out – “I’m in sales”. It makes me wonder, when did “Sales” become a five letter word that can no longer show up on one’s business card? It gets deeper…

Building high performance sales organizations is my specialty. Much of my success is a result of a startling discovery made years ago – there is no proven correlation between Personality and Sales Productivity. This discovery enabled me to lead a team that transformed a B business unit into a B business unit in 18 months for a Fortune Global 500 company. How? We recognized anyone can succeed in sales despite personality. Sales is simple if you learn how to master sales behavior intelligence and develop your salespeople accordingly. Sales is about behavior and our proven sales system is built on the 25 behaviors that is proven to impact sales productivity – Sales Identity is one of the behaviors we measure.

What is Sales Identity?

Sales Identity measures a salesperson’s pride of the sales profession. If a person views selling as noble, they are considered to have a strong Sales Identity. The opposite is true for those who view a sales position as something to be ashamed of, they are considered to have a weak Sales Identity.

Selling is noble, we all sell everyday whether we realize it or not. However, selling is often perceived negatively because of bad experiences. To some degree, society tends to cast a negative light on people in the sales profession. Due to the strength of society’s misguided views, some sales professionals feel shame and are compelled to hide their sales position and adopt deflected titles such as, “Business Development Officers” or “Procurement Specialists”. Such behavior is proven to be costly, read on…

Some people refuse to accept the notion of selling altogether, even though they are in fact trying to close a deal. A classic example…

Recently I was on a flight to a sales conference in Atlanta and I struck up a conversation with the gentleman next to me. Our idle chit chat led into a careers conversation. He shared with me how he worked for a major home improvement company in charge of the distribution centers in 4 states in the South and Southwest. After explaining my role as a Sales Management Training Consultant and how I help sales teams and salespeople. He immediately responded with “I could never be a salesperson!” We continued our conversation and he explained to me that he was preparing for a major presentation with the Executive Team of the company because he felt he needed an additional Million allocated to his budget for the following year. He went on to demonstrate to me how the organization “would ultimately benefit from the additional spend with a better Return on Investment (ROI)…”

As he was explaining this to me, I began to smile and chuckle. Initially, he probably thought I was being rude. Then I asked him “So, you are trying to convince the Executive Team to give you an additional million for your budget, correct?” “Yes.” He replied. I then added “And you can support the benefits of doing so, correct?” “Yes” he replied again. “Are you sure you’re not a salesperson?” He sat back in his chair and smiled, I could see the light bulb turn on. My point dawned on him. I eventually gave him some coaching on how to think more like a salesperson and improve his sales presentation.

Why Measure Sales Identity?

Measuring Sales Identity can ultimately save your organization a substantial amount of money long term. How?

Organizations all over the globe are challenged to hire high performance salespeople, not doing so can be costly in terms of sales results, hiring and training costs. Recent studies show, the average cost of hiring a poor performing salesperson has swelled to over 0,000/year. Think about it, how much are hiring mistakes costing you?

Research shows – salespeople with weak Sales Identity will under perform within 6 months of joining an organization and ultimately “self select” out of the sales profession within 18 – 24 months. In fact, we found people with weak Sales Identity prefer to apply for “sales” positions with deflected titles because they insinuate less sales accountability.

Unless detected, salespeople with weak Sales Identity will struggle and steal valuable resources from your organization via increased turnover, higher training costs and poor sales results. Here are 3 simple steps to protect your organization going forward:

Step 1: Remove the Identity Crisis

A surefire way to jeopardize long term sales productivity is to have your organization struggle through a sales identity crisis. If the role is a sales role – title it as such. Top performing salespeople absolutely love sales and prefer to be called – Sales Representatives. Having deflected titles attracts weaker performers who will struggle to get out of the ranks of mediocrity long term.

Step 2: Monitor Your “Motivational” Costs with Sales Reps

If you find your sales organization spending more time on motivating sales reps within the 6 – 24 month window of being hired, you may have a Sales Identity issue. Depending upon the severity, there may be hope.

Step 3: Know What You’re Hiring, Prior to Making the Offer

Hiring mistakes pertaining to sales positions can be costly! Use an assessment tool that measures the Sales Identity of your candidates prior to hire.

Hospitality Sales & Management International


Image by LunaWeb

Hospitality Sales & Management International


Image by LunaWeb

Sales Management: More, Better, Faster Requires Change

I’ve been doing some prospecting lately and found that every CEO and Sale Manager I speak with has issues with their sales, but few want to do anything significantly different about their sales issues.  Sure they want everybody to do more, better and faster.  However this is the classic definition of insanity – doing the same thing and expecting different results. 

Managers don’t want to change.  They live in the hope it will get better, or they make excuses, or they use the work harder tactic.  Whipping your horse that feels he’s going all out doesn’t work, and feeding him high energy motivation doesn’t last.  It’s better to teach the horse a different gait (if he’s capable) and then maybe he can go faster, do better, and accomplish more. 

Here is the key to your success.  Your sales will grow only as fast as you grow.  In other words;

1. Do something different
   a. Have a different kind of meeting, phone conference or review.
   b. Read a book and deploy 2 ideas.  I recommend Take Me To Your Leaders.
   c. Hire someone to run a teleseminar with one specific topic and then discuss how all of you will implement it.  Majority rules.
   d. Analyze each sale and lost sale.  What worked?  What didn’t work?  Then reinforce what worked and start implementing the opposite of what didn’t.

2. Buy Help
You ask your clients to buy your expertise.  How come you resist buying expertise for yourself?  Ego??  Face it if you knew what to do you would have done it already.  You like most people in sales learned by trial and error.  Since closing ratios average less than 33%, the errors dominate.  So admit it, you do not have the answer, the time, the energy, whatever. Something is missing.

Then there are the excuses of why not to buy help. 

Budget??  I don’t think so.  How many additional sales would it take to justify a M, M, M, …, investment??

Or, time out of the field??  Maybe, since average sales people have to spend 2-3 times longer than better sales people to make a sale.  Why you’d actually save expense account money by bringing them in for something to change their behaviors vs. wasting time and money on useless sales calls and blown opportunities.

Yeah, this is tough talk, but wake-up and do something different.  Otherwise, you’ll maintain your position and float down and up with the economy against competition – assuming competition does nothing.

So here’s an action item for you.  Do it now!!

Voice what’s on our mind regarding sales – your issues, your concerns, your challenges.  Call me if you’d like.  Say it to a mirror, but you have to get it out of your mouth.  Then you’ll hear it for yourself.  Write it down and now ask yourself, “What can I do about it.  Listen from within for answers and/or sleep on it until the answers come.  If you listen they will come.   If you don’t they won’t

Once these ideas start surfacing, again, writing them all down.  It’s critical to see them with your eyes.  Eliminate the least acceptable and select 2-3 good ones.  Commit to a date to complete each.  Speaking it, listening to it, and see it are all critical component for you to grow. 

So go out and make some changes.

Now I invite you to learn more.