There has been much attention given over the years to Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. And certainly all of those things are applicable to Salespeople. However over the years I have come to see patterns that lead me to believe there are 6 key ingredients to being successful in a Sales role - be it account management, inside sales, territory sales, technical pre-sales, or sales management. I’ll introduce what in my experience are the 6 Habits in two parts - here and in my next blog. So here are the first 3 - these are not in any specific order nor is one prioritized over the other.
Highly Organized- Any Sales role requires a very strong organizational skillset. There are a lot of constantly bouncing balls with customers and partners, and internal issues to handle with the support, development, marketing, or product management organizations. There are constantly meetings to be set up, travel to be managed, forecasts and quotes to prepare, account plans to maintain, and the like. Some might like to believe that Sales is the high life on the golf course, travelling to exotic locations, staying in best hotels, eating at the best restaurants, and drinking the best wines. It is in reality a 7 X 24 job that requires a lot of work, time and effort to be truly successful, and is not for the faint of heart. You must have the ability to parallel task and process, plan, prioritize and focus. And fundamentally if time management and the ability to operate on a self-managed schedule are not in your bag of tricks, I would strongly recommend against a career in Sales.
Pessimistic- This one may seem a little counter-intuitive to many. Probably because the common view that most people have of Sales individuals is from a customer context and is one of enthusiasm, wild optimism, and the projection that anything is possible. But in reality the best Sales people are highly pessimistic. They look under every rock and in every crevice for reasons that they can’t get a deal done. They never view that their probability of closing a deal as better than 50% - either they’ll win it or they won’t. They are hard on their internal organization and push at every button to make sure that once the solution gets to the customer, it is going to work and fit the bill for what the have sold to the customer. Unfortunately the perception within an organization of individuals possessing this trait is often that they are negative. I’ve particularly found that engineers or managers/executives that have graduated from an engineering background will have this view. Unfortunately the same is true about a lot of VC Board Members. They fail to recognize that the Salesperson is looking out for the best interests of the company and the customer, is doing their job by constantly looking for points of failure, and is not putting the company out on a limb for something that just may not happen.
Win As a Team, Never Lose Alone Attitude- Sales is a team sport. The lone wolf might close one deal, or even a few. But the wheels will fall off over time. Every Salesperson needs to pull upon whatever resources are necessary to get the job done. They solicit opinions from their peers, and provide help to their peers so they can win too. While I do believe that every Sales organization needs a spirit of healthy competition, there also has to be an attitude within the team that when one account or territory team wins, everyone else does too. Every good Salesperson also knows that they can’t be the winner every quarter. When they do win they give the credit to the team, not to themselves. And when the losses do come around, they better make sure to have pulled out all of the stops and to have brought as many resources (as were available) to bear to try to win.
In Part 2 I’ll talk to the remaining 3 habits.