Fantastic Sales Nuggets, Your Thoughts?

Thanks Jim Graham for sharing this with me!

Subject: Not Every Salesperson Rises to the Same Level


A noted author on sales is David Kurlan, the founder of Objective Management Group, an assessment firm that we rely heavily upon for our sales assessments. Recently I was reading some things he had written and wanted to share his comments and add some of my thoughts.

When I began coaching top level salespeople ten years ago, it quickly became obvious that not everyone needed the same thing, and certainly not everyone who entered our training program was equally prepared to move forward with their sales development. I came to the realization that in order to properly help salespeople grow in their sales performance, four things had to be evaluated correctly:

Desire: Do they really want to get better? Desire is actually a fear based emotion. There has to be something that is driving a person: a goal, a purpose or reason that is significant – no meaningful goal means no real desire.

Commitment: Are they willing to do whatever it takes to reach their goal, including taking a risk to change? Commitment means eliminating any excuse making, blaming and victim thinking.

Identify Anchors Below the Surface: There is so much about a salesperson you can’t tell by observing, interviewing or listening to them. Their internal anchors – those things that hold them back.

Coachability: Will they actually be willing to be coached through the six steps to evolve and change into a master salesperson?

Kurlan identified six steps of evolving as a person learns to consistently and successfully execute any sales process, concept, strategy or tactic they are trained and coached to perform. These six levels are:

Listening
Understanding
Internalizing
Embracing
Attempting
Mastering

Kurlan says if there are stalls at any one of those levels, they may continue on to the next level, but with an improper balance. For example, if they weren’t listening carefully and didn’t quite hear the entire message, they will inappropriately approach the next five levels. If they listened and understood, but selected a poor frame of reference for internalizing the message, they probably won’t embrace it.

Even if they advance through all the first four levels, the key level of evolving takes place at the level of attempting. Some salespeople never evolve from Level 4 – Embracing to Level 5 – Attempting. This is where internal weaknesses will have the most powerful effect. Those hidden, underlying weaknesses cause discomfort and hesitancy preventing them from taking what they would believe to be a big risk. Others may make the attempt, but they are uncomfortable and do it poorly, and their undesirable results cause them to give up very quickly.

Many clients ask why it takes so long, so many months to train and develop a salesperson. The reality is that concepts can be taught in a short period of time – that’s listening, but the other five steps to evolve take months, especially getting salespeople over the weaknesses that prevent them from attempting and executing.

Kurlan further reports through valid research (and we would confirm this based on our work for the past ten years at Edmundson Northstar) that 76% of salespeople in the U.S. are typically underperforming relative to their goals and the goals of their company. 21% have moments of exception and periods of success, but are routinely falling short of their own goals. Only 4% of the sales population really masters the art and science of selling.

Have you evolved into mastery? Why not? The first step would be to find out through a valid assessment and determine what’s holding you back.

Great Stuff Read Over till you comprehend.
Bill