In my nearly 20 years of sales and sales leadership experience, I have noticed that the most successful salespeople share one major commonality: the ability to snap back quickly after a difficult experience. Resiliency, a subject that has intrigued me for a very long time, is a key competency in sales. Can someone learn to be resilient? If so, how do you nurture it? Recently, while at my 9 year-old son’s baseball game, I was able to gain some real clarity around this.
The team had just blown a 7-run lead to fall behind by a score of 10-11. The fact that they later came from behind to win the game on a last-inning homerun was not the symbol of resiliency that so moved me as much as the moments that preceded the victory. This play captured the essence of resilience for me: immediately after the other team scored 5 runs to move ahead, our shortstop, catcher, pitcher and third basemen all ran hard for a foul ball. I heard the opposing team's coach yell to his players, “You see that? You guys should be running like them!” Just moments before, our team had blown the lead, yet they came right back and played their hearts out. I thought, “Wow! This is what being resilient is all about!”
This experience illuminated and reinforced that, yes, resiliency can be learned under the right conditions. Internally, there needs to be a high level of commitment, desire and a positive outlook. Externally, there needs to be a clearly-defined goal that is attractive, as well as strong leadership who can coach, hold people accountable and motivate.
Most sales organizations have a dilemma. Do they take the time to nurture and develop their sales people and/or do they look to hire salespeople who already have the those traits and sales leaders who already have the skills needed to nurture and develop resiliency? Depending on the business reality, both approaches have merit. The issue is how to identify those people who either are resilient or have the potential to make the turn.
A great way to identify these traits in both your existing team and potential new hires is through a sales force evaluation and sales candidate assessments. In my experience, this is the key to efficiently determining, 1.) who on my current team can and cannot make the turn and 2.) of the potential new hires, who already has these traits and has been resilient in the past?
Hands down, it is much more difficult to sell today than ever before! In almost every industry, there's been an increase in competition. Technology makes it possible to reach more people, faster and easier than ever before. However, calling and getting someone to either pick up the phone or call you back is more difficult. If your salespeople aren’t able to be resilient, your sales efforts will surely fall short. The upside is that you can fix it!
by Jason Schwartz
http://www.omghub.com/
The team had just blown a 7-run lead to fall behind by a score of 10-11. The fact that they later came from behind to win the game on a last-inning homerun was not the symbol of resiliency that so moved me as much as the moments that preceded the victory. This play captured the essence of resilience for me: immediately after the other team scored 5 runs to move ahead, our shortstop, catcher, pitcher and third basemen all ran hard for a foul ball. I heard the opposing team's coach yell to his players, “You see that? You guys should be running like them!” Just moments before, our team had blown the lead, yet they came right back and played their hearts out. I thought, “Wow! This is what being resilient is all about!”
This experience illuminated and reinforced that, yes, resiliency can be learned under the right conditions. Internally, there needs to be a high level of commitment, desire and a positive outlook. Externally, there needs to be a clearly-defined goal that is attractive, as well as strong leadership who can coach, hold people accountable and motivate.
Most sales organizations have a dilemma. Do they take the time to nurture and develop their sales people and/or do they look to hire salespeople who already have the those traits and sales leaders who already have the skills needed to nurture and develop resiliency? Depending on the business reality, both approaches have merit. The issue is how to identify those people who either are resilient or have the potential to make the turn.
A great way to identify these traits in both your existing team and potential new hires is through a sales force evaluation and sales candidate assessments. In my experience, this is the key to efficiently determining, 1.) who on my current team can and cannot make the turn and 2.) of the potential new hires, who already has these traits and has been resilient in the past?
Hands down, it is much more difficult to sell today than ever before! In almost every industry, there's been an increase in competition. Technology makes it possible to reach more people, faster and easier than ever before. However, calling and getting someone to either pick up the phone or call you back is more difficult. If your salespeople aren’t able to be resilient, your sales efforts will surely fall short. The upside is that you can fix it!
by Jason Schwartz
http://www.omghub.com/
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