Part V - Recruit Character First and Shape a High-Performance Sales Culture!

Recruit CHARACTER First
Why?  What does this mean?  How does character affect sales performance, branding, and teamwork?

For twenty years, I coached baseball from Little League to high school - hundreds of baseball games and practices.  I saw character displayed on and off the field.  In games that were tough, the same players that played well in blow away games gave up to their emotions in close ones.  When things were tough and difficult, they complained, threw their bats, and gave up at the plate.  I discovered that a team of men with characteristics like perseverance, self-discipline, personal responsibility, and a hard work ethic were worth far more than a team of “talented” players.  It’s the same with soldiers in a battle and salespeople in a market.  Character defines a culture.  It wins wars and makes a profitable difference over the long term.

Despite high skills and sales experience, with lower maturity levels on their sales teams, sales leaders deal with production and ethical issues.  Rep arrive late to work, to appointments, and to sales meetings.  They act like internal terrorists and gossip.  They talk in negative ways about the company without facing leadership with their complaints.  They lie.  With uncontrolled emotions, they create elevated customer issues that hurt a company’s brand.  When prospecting gets difficult, they quit, complain, take time off, or show a lack of discipline and perseverance.  Some reps exhibit a poor work ethic resulting in low or inconsistent performance levels.  Sales leaders, experiencing the effects of poor character, end up putting out fires and dealing with multiple problems resulting from bad attitudes and behaviors.  As a result, some hang themselves from the nearest bridges with the names of “talented” reps on their chests.

We can overcome the societal shapings in our new reps by first paying attention to character traits during recruitment.  In other words, we recruit reps with greater maturity.  To do this, we use various recruitment tools to look for appropriate levels of …

1. Honesty
2. Hard work ethic
3. Personal responsibility (or conscientiousness)
4. Servant attitudes

When recruiting great sales leaders, business owners and sales vice presidents look for two additional character traits:

• Positivity  (has a 'can-do it's my ship) attitude even in the face of adversity - looks for solutions - supports leadership)
• Humility (allows reps to feel a sense of accomplishment and pushes recognition onto them)

(a skill example during your recruitment process)

In your interviews, work to uncover emotional commitments and responsibilities tied to specific income levels.  In other words, do reps need to make a certain amount of money for a very important reason?  Do they have a motivational need to excel at a certain level?  Are the candidate’s income needs, when translated into sales targets, above minimum standards for sales performance?

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Jim Collins, author of Good to Great,  said that his team’s research found that great companies recruit character first - before skills.  The United States Marines do this as well - they recruit character and then teach the mission to those that have what it takes to be a Marine.

Dr. Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., and CEO of Emotional Intelligence Services, has written a sequel to his famous book, Emotional Intelligence (definition here), entitled Working with Emotional Intelligence.  In his book, Dr. Goleman mentions a rather unusual study began in the 1950’s.  Eighty (80) Phd candidates were given many tests, I.Q., personality, and psychological.  Along with checking intelligence and personality types, they also measured emotional balance and maturity, integrity, and interpersonal effectiveness.  Forty years later, when these former PhD candidates had reached their early 70’s, they were reassessed and emotional intelligence abilities were found to be about 4 times more important than IQ in determining professional success and prestige (even with scientists). 

Ernest O. Lawrence, the Nobel laureate who founded the labs at Berkeley that bear his name, said this “In scientific wok, excellence is not about technical competence, but character.”  Recruit character first - then personality traits and competency strengths.

You can learn to recruit character first.  Make your sales culture healthy and attractive to new recruits.  Improve performance without your presence.  Make your coaching more effective with the 'right' people as reps.  You will sleep better.  Lance.

Part IV - 10 Youthful Performance Issues in Today's Salespeople

A breakup in the family structure, the nurturing and forming area for children, creates incalculable effects on our nation’s sales teams and new pressures on sales leadership.  Children do not mature with the character traits required for appropriate growth as a sales professional.  "The scale of marital breakdowns in the West since 1960 has no historical precedent that I know of, and seems unique," says Lawrence Stone, the noted Princeton University family historian (see "MenSight" magazine).  These changes affect the formation of values and beliefs leading to effective collaboration, service to others, and perseverance when making and fulfilling commitments.

One third of America’s children are growing up  without their biological father.  

"There has been nothing like it for the last 2,000 years, and probably longer."  Life without father leaves a  negative competency imprint upon those pursuing adulthood.  In David’s Popenoe’s book, Life Without Father, he gives compelling new evidence that “growing up without a father may be a root cause of many social ills - from crime to academic failure.”   Many studies show that the decline of fatherhood is a major force behind many of the most disturbing problems that plague American society: crime; premature sexuality and out-of-wedlock births to teenagers; deteriorating educational achievement; depression, substance abuse and alienation among adolescents; and the growing number of women and children in poverty.   The United States Center for Disease Control reports that 85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes.  Studies involving over 25,000 children, who lived with only one parent had lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations (ambition), poor attendance records, and higher drop out rates than students who lived with both parents.

Effect on Sales Team Performance
These changes leave a negative imprint on the character available for our nation’s sales teams. Attachment to a moral code has diminished.  Guyland has appeared.  The family structure has eroded.  Fathers are absent.   We find emotional and behavioral problems formed at childhood and carried into an extended time for children to remain boys and girls.  Sales managers work with an entitled pool of young boys and girls, ages 21-28, in need of a mentor and for the first time in American business, a dad-coach.
As they read the new books on coaching and embrace this competency, sales managers face the following 10 challenges.  We call these ...

“10 Youthful Performance Issues in Today’s Salespeople.” 

Our young sales recruits do not:

1.  Have obligations or clear emotional attachments to sales and income goals.
2.  Give consistent effort and then persevere during setbacks.  Instead they complain or quit.
3.  Display mature behavior and emotional control during customer service issues.
4.  Show up on time.
5.  Have an understanding of what it takes to reach high expectations and achieve their dreams.
6.  Possess political or interpersonal savvy necessary to lead or to gain respect and influence.
7.  Listen well and interpret the needs of teammates or those they serve.
8.  Sacrifice time and effort to win the hearts of customers and co-workers.
9.  Seek to exceed customer expectations.  They do just enough to get by and make the sale.
10. Expect that goals require hard work.  Instead they expect an easy path to riches and fun.

What should those responsible for sales performance and a company’s brand do with this information?

Recruit CHARACTER first (see upcoming post).  Use a multi-step recruiting systems, including well thought out source channels, to separate those with greater maturity and emotional competence.  Then, learn the philosophy and system for great mentoring and sales coaching.  Also, put very mature people in charge of sales teams.  (Check out this article: "Five Considerations for Selecting a Great Sales Manager")

Part III - Coaching Salespeople to Win Today ... REQUIRES Mentoring Character Development

... in a very special way - without judgement and with care and concern for their well-being.

We have many cultural changes affecting today’s sales forces.  For example, religious affiliation and commitment to a set of standards and moral values is decreasing (see Barna statistics).  This contributes to a cultural loss in customer service values, honesty, hard work ethic, and personal responsibility (see U.S. debt levels).

Even our sports heroes (Tiger Woods) or political figures (President Clinton) suffer embarrassing failures in front of their admirers - failures that when endured by our leaders create new cultural norms for the people that follow them.  These “new” norms, established by today’s legends, denigrate the “older” values of integrity, fidelity, loyalty, and teamwork.  Ross Perot once remarked, “If a woman cannot trust her man, why should I trust him.”

Michael Kimmel, in his research and book Guyland, has identified a new social stratum which affects 22 million young men ages 16-26.  Men mature later today.  They live together in a state of suspended boyhood - out of college - yet still acting as if they still belong there.  For many, they job hop, live with their parents into their late 20’s, stay single, drink an extended number of nights each week, and dive into sports, online games, or fantasy.  Fewer boys grow up with mentors or dads.  All of this has profound meaning for sales managers and leaders.  It affects an attachment to responsibility and reduces achievement drive levels.  It impacts sales.

When I am quizzing young salespeople and sales leaders in their 20’s, I see no goals, low commitment, and an entitlement mindset unlike the values and beliefs of two generations before.  However, they know something “ain’t quite right.”

Look on the bookshelves on in the digital libraries for sales management today and what subjects do you find ... coaching, mentoring, and leadership.  Stay tuned for the posts ahead and please tell me what you see as we discuss cultures, character, recruiting salespeople, and coaching high performance.

In the meantime, get in the trenches with your reps ... improve your character and emotional competencies.  Find your leadership and lift others up with you.  Lance

"Part II - A Sales Culture and Its Performance Reflects its Sales Leaders"

Sales leaders shape and cultivate a tribal culture - the customs and standards of their sales team.  First, they recruit people with certain character traits like honesty, conscientiousness, hard work ethic, etc.  Then, they coach them or lead them to develop and sell in a particular way and at a specific rate.  Sales leaders talk about, coach, and reward the skills, attitudes, and beliefs they value.  They discipline what they do not want repeated.  (When they ignore an attitude or behavior, they become responsible for the corresponding results by default.)  They lead by example and what they inspect and care about gets done. 

A sales team’s culture develops from the character of its leaders and salespeople.  Character is the summation of values and beliefs operating through an individual or team and upon the world.   A sales team’s effectiveness is a direct reflection of its leaders’ values and beliefs. 

Mediocre sales leadership produces mediocre sales teams.   A few sales leaders by intentional effort create healthy sales cultures.  They lead cultural change.   They stand for certain values and beliefs.  As a result, and because of the values and beliefs chosen, their teams get better or worse.

Sales leaders and their team’s culture affect every company stakeholder.  They impact customers and their belief in a company’s promises through the type of service mindset that is valued and rewarded.  They affect back office, installation, and other office co-workers and staff by the cooperative spirit encouraged and displayed by reps.  They create jobs and cash flow by how they sell prospects and in some businesses by how they service customers.  Sales leaders also affect other sales teams and markets within their company by the attitude and behaviors witnessed in their sales unit.  One sales team can turn around or bring down an entire company.  What sales leaders do with their culture has a dramatic effect on multiple parts of a business and its life. 

What is an unhealthy sales culture?  Please write in and tell me your thoughts.  Is it a team operating below budget?  Is it reps who lie to customers or complain about a lack of leads?  Is it internal competition carried to such a level that reps sabotage the efforts of their teammates?  Is it one with massive turnover and low production?  Or, is it a team with no leadership - one where anarchy reigns with no standards of right and wrong - every person for themselves?

Healthy or unhealthy sales cultures result in high or low performance sales teams. 

Every tribe of reps behaves in a manner reflective of its character.  Its character, or its values and beliefs, comes from the culture created by its leadership. 

Sales leaders are responsible for the character of their cultures.  Great sales leaders commit themselves to the development of healthy sales cultures.  They recruit the best people.  They coach them, with a specific system, and with attitudes, beliefs, and values that have a positive, long-lasting effect. 

In the next issue, we will discuss the effects and challenges of societal and family culture on new recruits.  In the meantime, please write in with your description of a healthy sales culture and its values and beliefs.

Be better.  Lance.

"Coaching Sales Cultures that Win BIG! - Habits, Work, Results - FUN!"

This starts a multi-part series.  In it, I want to help you understand how to do your part in shaping a high-performance sales environment.  I want to help you see the challenges that sales leaders face with today’s culture, its character loss and performance effect, and how to shape it in a way that makes a positive difference in long-term sales results.

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"Part I - What is a Sales Culture and Why Shape It?"

Cultures affect people.  They exist in countries, states, cities, religious organizations, ethnic groups, , churches, colleges, families, sports, and on playgrounds.  Last week I read about Coach Pat Summit, winner of 8 women’s NCAA Basketball Championships, and her announcement of a diagnosis of early-onset dementia, Alzheimer’s type.  Coach Summit remarked, “I’m surrounded by people that I know I can trust, she said, “I know they have my back and, from that standpoint, I go into this next season feeling good about it.”  Not every coach, sales leader, or person could say this in similar circumstances.  That she is surrounded by people she knows she can trust is a cultural effect after years of service and sacrifice at the University of Tennessee.  It says much about former and current members of the program, her assistants, and people who are members of the Lady Vols fan club.   Much of that effect has to do with Coach Summit and her leadership over the years.  She has been a person of trust and has surrounded herself with people of trust.

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Sales teams are made up of a group or tribe of people.  As John King mentions in Tribal Leadership, “Fish school, birds flock, people tribe”  It’s in our nature to come together in groups and adopt the behaviorpatterns we find there.  The values and beliefs of its leaders form a culture.  This impacts and to a large degree determines the effectiveness of the tribe and each tribal member.

The Tarahumara Indians, who live in Mexico’s Copper Canyon, run 50 miles a day for fun.  In his book Born to Run, Christopher McDougall explains to grow up in the Tarahumara culture means to RUN every day and to gain a different mindset about it than say a child growing up in an American city.  It’s the same for sales teams.  Some thrive and others do not just because of the culture and how it RUNS.

As an effective leader in a high-performance sales environment, your values and beliefs shape who you hire and how you coach them.  Choose them well.  The health of your sales team depends upon your choice.  It depends upon the strength of your character and how its values and beliefs effect the performance of the team.  Be better.  You can.  Lance