The Coaching Controversy Part III: What to Coach? Advancing Opportunities.

This will be posted by the end of the month. Please visit back then. As always, thanks for reading and following.

Matt

The Coaching Controversy Part II: Is ‘When’ more important than ‘How’?

Five Key Principles for Knowing When to Coach, by Matt McDarby, Founder & President of United Sales Resources LLC

Like a rising tide that lifts all boats, an effective sales manager can intentionally lift the performance of an entire sales team by focusing on a few fundamentals of great sales management.  Conversely, a sales manager who is not so effective can have the effect of dulling the capabilities of a team or worse… effectively lowering all boats to the harbor floor and rendering them valueless.

So what is it that separates effective sales managers from ineffective ones?  If we’re to set aside the really bad managers out there… because they’re so bad we can’t even put our fingers on where the badness begins and ends… and focus instead on those who are just ineffective, then the task of answering this question becomes a bit easier. 

By studying the research of people like Neil Rackham, Richard Ruff, Ken Blanchard and others who have used research to develop models for effective sales leadership, it is possible to isolate key areas of difference between average and excellent sales management performance.  In this three-post series, we are focusing in on three of those key areas of difference.  Matt Goff’s first post centered squarely on the idea that great managers know who to coach.  In other words, they invest their time on the largest portion of people who give them and their company a positive return on their management time. 

In this post, I will focus on when to coach, which is a second area in which excellent sales managers separate themselves from their average counterparts. 

The “When to Coach Principles”

 Let’s face it… the fact that a sales manager would even consider the question, “When should I coach (versus doing something else) to bring about the business outcomes that I am paid to achieve?” suggests that he or she is probably a very good manager. 

If simply considering the question of when to coach means that one is likely an above-average manager, then having answers to that question must surely mean that one is in the upper strata of today’s professional sales management ranks.   Wouldn’t it be valuable to know what some of those answers might be?  (Yes! – Ed)

The “When to Coach” Principles follow:

• There is a time to sell and a time to coach.  It is not possible to do both at the same time effectively.
• Who we are coaching affects when we coach.  We need to invest more or less time coaching individual salespeople because of who they are, their learning style, their workload, and a range of other factors . One size does not fit all.
• Different types of coaching require different amounts of time and preparation.  Choose them wisely and don’t short-change the types of coaching that require a significant investment of time.
• Coach early and coach often.  Our window for influencing the actions of salespeople closes earlier in the selling cycle than we might realize.
• We should coach when the risk of not coaching is too great.  When future outcomes are at stake, the risk of missing an opportunity to coach is massive. 

Let’s break these down a little bit.

Selling v Coaching

Knowing that there is a time to sell and a time to coach is one of those easy to understand but difficult to execute principles.  Once a sales manager has been trained and has experienced what it is like to quietly observe someone else’s performance with an eye toward giving  that person targeted feedback, then that sales manager understands just how difficult it would be to try to sell at the same time.

For those who haven’t experienced this, we can use the analogy of a golf pro standing in the same driving range stall as his student, swinging his own club and striking balls straight down the middle at the same time that he gives the student advice on his or her swing.  The student naturally questions the advice that the teacher doles out because the student knows the teacher wasn’t paying close enough attention.  The student may give tacit acceptance to the teacher’s advice, but the likelihood of the student’s behavior (i.e. his swing) and performance changing are slim to none.  The same occurs with managers who attempt to offer feedback or give coaching when they’ve been in the thick of the meeting as a participant and not as a quiet observer.  If one’s mission is to coach and improve someone else’s performance, then they must not be part of the performance themselves.  

Who Affects When

Regarding the principle that who we are coaching affects when we coach, I must refer back to the first post in this series by Matt.  “…Coaching should start on the sales reps that have the highest potential of the core performing group / steady eddies, rather than those who already have higher sales performance of the core performing group.”  Fair enough.  It stands to reason then that an important part of the answer to the question of when to coach is, “Coach whenever your high potential core performers, also known as under-achievers, need coaching.” 

When do opportunities to coach under-achievers tend to come up?  In addition to the skill and/or strategy coaching sessions that a manager must deliver, an opportunity to coach that may be particularly appropriate for the under-achiever is the “you’re not delivering what I think you can” conversation.  This conversation may occur in the context of a formal review, in the context of a periodic territory or business review, or it might just come on a Tuesday when the sales manager becomes upset at the lack of production by a high-potential salesperson.  The bottom line is that there are specific opportunities for coaching that are appropriate for under-achievers and perhaps not for anyone else.  (How to coach these people is a topic for another day.)

A Different Approach is Required

If it is true that different types of coaching require different levels of planning and time on the part of a manager, then we must consider when different types of coaching can be fit into the manager’s operating rhythm.  In this sense, when to coach becomes a practical consideration versus a philosophical one.  Neil Rackham and Dick Ruff categorized sales coaching into two broad categories, skills coaching and strategy coaching, in their book, Managing Major Sales (Harper Business, 1991). 

Among other reasons, they did so to explain the role of coaching in simple versus complex sales.  In short, they were illustrating that in major, complex sales, the role of a coach tends to include strategy coaching and skills coaching whereas the role of a coach in simple sales was almost exclusively in the area of skills coaching.  So, it seems that a manager in a complex selling environment (e.g. commercial property and casualty insurance sales to Fortune 500 companies) has to consider an additional investment of his or her time into sales strategy coaching than would a manager in a much simpler sales environment (e.g. individual term life insurance sales).  If one operates in a simple sales environment, then the question of when to coach is answered, “Whenever my people need to apply some skill to achieve the outcome that we want.  I need to coach then.” 

Early & Often

For those of us in a more complex selling environment, the decision regarding when to spend time on strategy coaching and skills coaching is a function of the next principle, coach early and coach often.  There are moments in a sales process when the actions of the salesperson matter more than other times.  Those moments tend to be in the earlier stages of the buying process, when customer’s needs and decision-making criteria are still malleable.  So what then does that mean to the coach and the role that she or he must play to influence salespeople’s behavior? 

It means that a coach also has limited opportunity to influence sales outcomes, and that opportunity is limited to some of the earliest moments of the sales process.  Great sales managers will not only provide strategy coaching in the earliest stages of new customer opportunities, but they tend to revisit the status and health of sales opportunities all the way until they reach the point of diminishing return on coaching.  It is not enough to simply coach once, set it (the strategy), and forget it.  Hence, the “coach often” part of this particular principle. 

Risk / Reward

Finally, when in doubt, a manager should choose to coach when the risk of not coaching is too great.  Some examples of when this risk may be at its greatest include the following:

• When a strategic error or tactical mistake, if replicated, will have a negative effect on future outcomes. 
• When a change in strategy is required to bring about a positive outcome, and the salesperson may not be seeing the need to change.
• When a key customer opportunity hinges on the capability of an average-skilled salesperson.

Editorial Summary

Based on these principles that Matt McDarby has described, it is obviously important for sales managers to tailor their ‘when’ approach to the situation. The five areas discussed are an excellent starting point and tactics that can be used to the sales manager’s advantage.

What other tactics have you used to address the all important ‘when to coach’ question?? We would love to hear from you…

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My thanks to Matt for this excellent post. Matt is the Founder & President of USR LLC (United Sales Resources) a professional sales firm that helps small to medium-sized businesses grow by pursuing and capturing their most important business opportunities. Matt was previously VP Enterprise Sales for Huthwaite Inc, a professional sales training & coaching firm, where amongst other things he managed a team of global account managers and authored the ‘Why Cross Selling Fails’ white paper. Prior to Huthwaite, Matt formed MarketSoft Resources which later became Infinity Consulting.

Part Three in Two Weeks!

The Coaching Controversy Part I: Rock Stars or Steady Eddies?

Should Sales Managers try and coach all of their sales reps?

Despite the temptation to continue on with the subject of dominant personality traits and sales performance, which continues to divide the masses via business social media such as Linked In (here for example), I wanted to focus the next three posts on the area of Coaching. Specifically, the decisions sales managers have to make when addressing the coaching needs of their sales organization.

The theme of this blog as you know is ‘Sales Performance Improvement’ – which in my opinion indeed starts with getting the right sales talent into the organization in the first place, perhaps using an assessment intervention to evaluate dominant personality traits. However, even if you have this down pat – it could all be for nothing if the relevant coaching pieces of the puzzle are not in place. As we will see, even the star performers who rarely need coaching and are well rewarded are likely to abandon ship in the face of poor coaching practices.

MORE Appointments!!

Common Language

For the purpose of these articles, I want to ensure we have a common understanding of coaching so I am going to use the definition as described by Dixon & Adamson in the Challenger Sale (because its popular and topical read, and quite frankly, I like it):

“An ongoing and dynamic series of job-embedded interactions between a sales manager and direct report, designed to diagnose, correct and reinforce behaviours specific to that individual”

The authors go on to emphasize that coaching is ongoing, tailored and behavioural (i.e. for the latter, application of skill and knowledge rather than obtaining skill and knowledge).

There isn’t a sales organization that I have worked with or worked for that has not paid some degree of lip service to sales coaching. And why not – there is plenty of evidence that links coaching with skill and performance improvement as a trawl of the internet will uncover (or look at Steve Richards recent article regarding ‘Neuroscience and Sales Coaching’ as an example from this platform). Clearly, done well in business, sports, performing arts and yes, even ironing – coaching works. But too often the process and implementation of coaching is left too much to chance. The best sales organizations don’t let this happen however. Amongst other things, they ensure their sales managers can answer three important questions;

1. Who to coach?
2. When to coach and
3. What to coach.

The latter two will be picked up for the next two articles.

Who to Coach?

The ratio of direct reports to sales managers often is less than ideal. Therefore a common complaint from sales managers is ‘I don’t have time to coach everyone given all the monthly reporting and admin I have to do’. Especially when the coaching is ongoing and tailored to the individual. One answer to this gripe could be ‘great – we don’t want you to spend time coaching all your team because you are right, those monthly reports are due Friday’. A better one would be helping the time taxed sales manager to decide who to spend his or her time with – even if it’s only in the ‘a little goes a long way’ category (monthly reports are important after all). So, focus on the poor performers who just don’t get it? Focus on the reps with average sales pipelines? What about our ‘rock stars’ – will they respond to some coaching attention?

A Good Starting Point

The research conducted by the Sales Executive Council, recited in the chapter ‘The Manager and the Challenger Selling Model’ (from the Sales Challenger), demonstrates the huge impact that effective coaching can have on a sales organization. As part of this research, they conclude that spending time coaching low performers has little impact on sales improvement. In a similar vein, coaching your rock stars also yields minimal return as they are already performing at a high level. I find this a little contrary to what I had led to be believed prior – based on the theory that high performers have the cognitive bandwith to take on more challenging opportunities (and more opportunities period), therefore you can get more performance from them. Perhaps this however doesn’t fit our coaching definition because it is not behavioural  – it is just giving them more stuff to do and more opportunities to make sales. Fair enough. They also indicate that ‘bad’ coaching drives down morale and creates a toxic environment – key drivers in driving unwanted turnover. Affirmative.

The crux of the research demonstrates the power of focusing coaching efforts on ‘core performers’ – or what a former colleague of mine use to call ‘Steady Eddies’ – the average sales reps, who are neither high or low performers. They claim that ‘the median performers on your sales force could see a performance boost of as much as 19 percent given a significant improvement in the coaching they receive’. Focus on spending time on Steady Eddies is the key message for sales managers – there is more return on time invested rather than wasting time on rock stars and if you are a low performer, that’s too bad as we are running a business not kindergarten.

A Better End Point

Where as I fundamentally agree with this position, I feel you need to go a bit further and break down the ‘Steady Eddies’ for further insight into where to spend your time. For example, I believe you have to consider two related areas  – ‘performance’ and ‘potential’. Using a graph with the axis labelled performance and potential helps here – and have the sales manager ‘plot’ the Eddies (see below).

Evaluating 'Potential' aswell as plotting 'Performance'

What they will find is that there are some solid performers (average to above average performance but low potential)– those who don’t have the potential to produce much more than they all ready are, and the ‘under achievers’ (average performers who have higher upside) who DO have the potential to produce more. How you tag these ‘high potential’ reps is a subject for another day – however this is often done via a combination of data points – performance management, assessment data, previous performance etc. I have not met a sales manager yet who can’t at least have a stab at scatter-gramming their sales force (or just the ‘core performers / steady eddies’) in terms of performance / potential. Once done, circle the higher potential individuals and start your coaching focus here. We’ll get into the ‘When’ and ‘What’ over the next two articles. But least we know where to start.

It sounds simple – but you’d be surprised how such an elementary approach to prioritizing a sales managers coaching time can be hugely effective in getting some instant results in terms of increased productivity and pipeline movement. So to recap, coaching should start on the sales reps that have the highest potential of the core performing group / steady eddies, rather than those who already have higher sales performance of the core performing group.

This approach also can act as saving grace for some sales managers worried about their time and remind them with the message ‘don’t let perfect be in the enemy of the good’. Tell them, start here and that it IS a good start and a good way to spend your coaching time.

Join me for parts II (with my third guest writer) and III over the next month. And of course, comments and feedback welcome.

Resistance! Personality Traits & Sales Recruitment

Is there value in testing for personality during the sales recruitment process?

My past post featuring Dr George Sik’s research findings around sales success and the ‘Lone Wolf’ personality type provoked some interesting discussion. The ‘introvert wolf pack’ howled recognition and acceptance to the moon. It wasn’t all that way though. One unsolicited comment described the focus of discussion (assessing sales people using a personality psychometric tool) ‘mumbo jumbo’ – infact, ‘why bother looking at all this psychoanalysis stuff – if I have sold successfully in my previous roles, then don’t insult me with some test if I am part of a recruitment process’. And this guy is a friend too! Considering most of my career has been involved in measuring and understanding personality and job performance in one way or other, this was like questioning my total professional existence. Resistance. I had to retort. I wanted to provide him some context.

In a previous role, I was part of a team who were contracted to assist with Air Traffic Controller (ATC) recruitment. A key factor for this agency’s decision to outsource what their HR team had been doing for the past few years, was that approximately 30% of new recruits were dropping out prior to graduating from training college – and this was costing the agency literally millions of dollars a year. We were tasked with finding out the motivational factors and personality traits that correlated not only with ATC performance, but also with training completion. Reduce the number of drop outs, but don’t reduce the quality of graduates. A sound business reason and a sound ‘we don’t want to crash planes’ reason. During our analysis, we were able to pinpoint a couple of motivational factors that caused ATC trainees to drop out – more on that in another blog. But the concept of looking at personality traits and ‘not crashing planes’ seemed to work and draw sage nodding from my skeptical associate. I went a bit further.

When it comes to ‘mission critical’ roles such as ATCs, it is obviously incredibly important to get the hire right in terms of technical skills and capability, and the behavioural / personality type of the individual. Special aptitude skills aside (such as spatial & diagrammatic reasoning), it was important for these individuals as an example to NOT demonstrate ‘thinking outside the box’ type behaviour (i.e. innovative thought) – we don’t want ATCs during times of busy air traffic trying to creatively fix the back log by landing planes on the next best landing strip. We want them to think very much inside the box – follow instructions and avoid accidents. In some roles it is a good thing to have low state anxiety (‘relaxed in the face of specific key events’ for example). ATCs need to be able to recognize immediately the need to act urgently and recognize danger – being too relaxed is not a good mix with this requirement.

Most would agree that yes, it is important to seek to understand and measure personality traits and correlations with ATC performance. In my opinion, it is no different with mission ‘uncritical’ roles like sales. Seek to understand and measure the correlations between a sales rep’s performance and their dominant personality traits – it’s not life and death, but why not take the time as a business leader to increase your chances of bringing on board the sales reps with the potential to be good for business?

A very talented senior sales trainer that I worked with in the sales training industry, Art Escalera, contacted me after my last post suggesting that I read ‘The Challenger Sale’ by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson from the Corporate Executive Board (specifically Sales Executive Council). Art pointed out that the ‘Lone Wolf’ type sales personality is one of the ‘buckets’ that this book labels as a type of sales performer, but it is ‘The Challenger’ that is best suited for success in complex sales environments. I have not yet read the book – it’s on my reading list for March (and is forwarded by Neil Rackham, which means that the research elements must be sound) – however I did come across an earlier genesis of this body of research a couple of years ago when I was partnered with Chally. The feeling at the time, echoed and described in a white paper called ‘Profiling Successful Sales People – Myths, Folklore and Progress (you can download here and here – the latter was an edit I provided here in Canada), was that even this type of ‘success profile’ is a little too generic and that you need to peel back the onion a bit more to understand the layers. Understand the individual traits that are linked to these ‘dominant’ descriptive sales profiles. And recruit against them.

During my client work with International sales forces, I have been fortunate enough to be involved in validation studies linking successful sales performance with specific personality traits. Although some of the results did indeed vary from organization to organization (all B2B complex selling environments, however different industries), there were three consistent findings over and above a high level of ‘Achievement Orientation’ (e.g. driven to succeed, sets high standards and goals) which were:

• Lower levels of ‘gregariousness’: which echoes the findings of Dr Sik in as much that this more ‘introvert’ type trait is associated with sales success – individuals preferring to keep a low profile.
• Higher levels of ‘conscientiousness’: a strong focus on finishing what one starts and being in control of the sales process, whilst taking personal responsibility for results.
• High levels of ‘optimism’ and ‘resilience’: the ‘cup half full’ individual is more likely to take knock backs and sales failures in their stride, and to dust themselves off and track down the next opportunity.

And these traits were able to be identified at the recruitment stage for sales people – and subsequently used to filter out those who did not match these criteria. Discussing this example, my doubting friend began to see things from a different perspective. He could see this approach could benefit him as he possesses these success criteria. So to answer my own question from my subtitle, yes, there is value in testing for personality traits even if I do say so myself.

In support of these findings, I came across a Harvard Business Review article from last year authored by Steve Martin, which listed seven personality traits that he found to be resident in top sales people based on his research. Encouragingly, the three (four) above were present, it some shape or form. Interestingly, Steve makes a link between what he calls ‘Lack of Discouragement’ (whereby only 10% of top sales people were classified as having high levels of discouragement and who experienced being overwhelmed with sadness) and competitiveness in the form of sports. In short, he found that a high percentage of top sales performers played organized sports in high school.

I think this is a very interesting link. I don’t want to fall into the ‘outlier’ trap, whereby my skeptical friend who inspired this post, is indeed a top sales performer, but he can’t skate, putt, pocket, hit, throw nor shoot to save his life. That said, I would be interested in your thoughts about this potential link between sales success and organized sports. Food for thought for another day?

Thanks for reading.

Matt (@mattgoffsales, @theqformula)

The Introverted Lone Wolf: The Model for Sales Success?

Sales and Personality: The Myth and the Reality by Dr George Sik, Consultant Psychologist, Eras ltd

With the most recent blog looking at personality and trainability, this article focuses on the subtleties of personality and overall sales performance. When Matt asked me to contribute to his articles, my thoughts went back to when we worked together in the field of work-based psychometrics, still very much the focus of my own work today. I am often asked what personality profiling reveals about those who succeed in sales and whether the knee-jerk stereotype is reflected in the research that has been conducted. What always strikes me, having been immersed in this field for over a quarter of a century, are the subtleties and shades of grey which emerge when the personalities of salespeople are studied systematically.

A couple of years ago, we conducted a study on a large UK company (manufacturing & equipment hire business, +100 sales reps) in which the entire sales team completed The Quest Profiler, a multi-scale personality instrument. The company’s interest was in identifying those aspects of personality likely to contribute to success, enabling a more scientific and objective selection of future members of the team.

People generally set about their task with good humour although, not unnaturally, most already thought they knew what the results would reveal. After all, don’t most people have a picture in their mind of someone who succeeds in sales? Often they will think of the ultimate extravert, never short of a pithy phrase and able to talk anyone into agreeing with anything.

In the UK at least, this image is reinforced in the almost archetypal British character of the ‘wheeler dealer’, the ‘mover and shaker’ of such comedies as Only Fools and Horses and Minder (Or WKRP and Herb Tarleck – Ed). The reality can be somewhat more complicated as I’m sure you’ve guessed, and as this study very clearly showed – much to the surprise of many who took part in it.

One of the perennial problems of such studies is getting a good measure of performance. Here we had two: one was the softer measure of a performance rating by each individual’s manager; the other was a surely uncontroversial measurement: the figure of how much they actually sold. Well, actually it was rather more controversial than we had thought: people argued that certain territories made for easier sales, client relationships could sometimes capitalise on successful predecessors and so on. Nevertheless, nobody argued that, practically speaking, a better measure was available.

The first surprise to many taking part was how poorly the managers’ ratings correlated with actual sales. It seemed that the managers valued the more procedural, reliable members of the sales team, those who kept their timesheets up to date and gave little trouble. You can see why this kind of personality might play well in this context – but these were not the people who actually sold most. In fact, it was quite the reverse and those who achieved better sales had less time (and generally little enthusiasm) for procedures and systems.

What I found more interesting is the subtle puncturing of aspects of the image of the extravert salesperson, using the more solid criterion of amount sold. Certainly the more successful were relaxed in the company of other people and found it easy to relate to strangers – so far, so extravert. Beyond that, the picture was more interesting.

The organization had always valued team spirit within the sales team – indeed, there was a certain pride attached to it. Imagine the surprise which greeted the fact that it was the less team-spirited individuals who achieved better sales, the ones less dependent on colleagues, the ‘lone wolves’ who just got on with it. Perhaps this is not too surprising with hindsight, especially as sales performance was individually rewarded. In a setup where team performance was collectively incentivised (something common in media advertising sales, for example), it might well have been a different story. This shows how the subtleties of a particular company’s or department’s culture can make a real difference.

The thing which really surprised everyone was that it was not the more talkative people who achieved better sales but the quieter ones. This might at first seem like a total shock but, stepping back and thinking about it, the explanation is logical enough. To begin with, it is unlikely that there were any exceptionally quiet individuals doing the job at all, much more likely that all of them were at least a little talkative. Nevertheless, it was the less talkative ones who performed better and I suspect this is simply because they were better listeners. The sales relied on building up a loyal client base, having customers who returned to you again and again…customers who might be put off by those who talk too much, preferring instead those who let them do the talking.

Once again, the nature of the sale is crucial. In the kind where the customer and salesperson meet only once, a much more talkative personality may be required (the clichés here include replacement windows, used cars, timeshares in the Mediterranean etc – yes they are clichés, Ed), but these days the overwhelming majority of sales involve building up good long-term client relations, so it’s food for thought.

To summarize, those who sold most were:

• more keen to take charge,
• more strategic in their outlook,
• thirstier for challenges,
• less cautious,
• less team spirited,
• and less outgoing.

The study certainly made me think how easy it is to stereotype and to jump to conclusions. Of course, it may be that none of it surprises you at all. In a sense, I’ve come at it as an outsider – while I’m not unknown to sell the services and products my company provides, I’m principally a psychologist.

Talking of stereotypes, I’m more than aware that most people have pretty clear ideas about the likely personality characteristics of a typical psychologist too! I wonder how many of the boxes I would tick?

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My thanks go to George for his contribution and indeed for introducing me to the world of psychometric assessments over 15 years ago. Aside from being asked to comment on topical business news items, Dr Sik is also widely sought after in the world of Sport Psychology, as a quick google search will uncover.

Join me soon for part III of ‘Personality Traits and Successful Sales’. Matt Goff, February 8th 2012.

The Hub Part II…

Please join me on Wednesday 8^th February for my second guest blog writer who has written a thought provoking article entitled ‘Sales & Personality: Myths and Reality’. This paper is written by Dr George Sik and is based partly on some the scientific research conducted by Dr Sik over the past couple of years. This is the second of three articles around personality traits and successful sales people.

Dr Sik is one of the most prominent psychologists in the UK and has probably trained more people to use and understand psychometric tests and questionnaires than anyone in the world. He has published on the use of personality assessment in the workplace in academic journals (such as The Psychologist), Business & HR publications (such as Institute of Leadership & Management) and the national press (The Guardian, Telegraph, Times etc) and frequently comments on psychological matters on the radio and on television (BBC Radio, SKY TV, Channel 4’s ‘Britain’s Next Boss).

He has also authored two best selling books entitled ‘I Think I’ll Manage’ and ‘In Ma Head Son’. George is currently a consultant psychologist for Eras Ltd. See you Wednesday.

Personality Traits, Neuroscience & The Gym

Does our personality type enhance our chances of improving our sales skills through training and coaching?

The previous article posted on this blog, Neuroscience & Sales Coaching, written by my associate Steve Richard, created quite a reaction and it made closet neuroscientists of many of us. Myself included. The New Year brings many a vocalized promise to get oneself down the local gym to work on ones neglected physical form; however the whole idea of training your brain has also become very topical. I was on the subway a couple of days ago and overheard a pledge between two young professionals, a pledge involving the purchase of training exercises for the brain – to help focus and to ‘think smarter’ (said professionals direct quote, not mine). Not fifteen minutes later I was flicking through the February 2012 edition of Psychology Today and on page 52 – ‘Get Smarter: How to bulk up your creativity muscles’ jumps out at me.

 And then my Harvard Business Review newsletter – ‘Train your Brain to Focus’ hits my inbox.  Interesting stuff – ‘Tame your frenzy, Apply the brakes, Shift Sets’ are the tactics in play. All this talk of increasing your cognitive functioning.  My mind shifts quickly to sports (it often does – and this can be rectified too apparently) and to the whole pre-game ritual of Roy Halladay and how he has perfected the use of ‘mental training’ (Dorfman’s ABC of Pitching) as part of his seasonal preparation. Train the Brain to be better. Wow. Seems cool. It’s relevant to sales. I’m hooked.

The evidence suggested by Steve in the last article – that repetition (and sleep) are key components in sales skill development, with post training coaching a key ingredient – is compelling enough for sales managers to buy into. However with only so many hours a week available for coaching, most would agree that knowing who needs more of those hours than others would be incredibly useful.  That’s a no brainer. From a sales performance improvement perspective, the one part of this whole ‘brain training’ aspect that I find most fascinating is around personality traits – specifically, whether our personality type can dictate or influence our ability to benefit from training and coaching methods around sales skills and strategy. Put another way if you are, for example, an agreeable, conscientious and extraverted type, are you more likely to get more out of focused skill training and coaching than your brethren who seem to be more introverted and self interested?

Having spent a lot of time helping organizations recruit, train and develop sales people, I have stumbled across many a business leader who has a very defined take on the personality traits there are looking for in their sales talent. High levels of “extraversion” for example.  However there is a lot of evidence out there that flies in the face of some of these commonly held beliefs around the personality traits of the most successful sales people which I will pick up on in the next two blog articles. For now, and in relation to the topic in hand, here are three of the traits (defined from a ‘Big Five’ perspective) that are resident in some of the most successful sales professionals – and importantly, traits that you should look to identify to really make your training and coaching dollars work for you:

• Analytical Reasoning: an analytical outlook in life in this context really relates to how curious one is to understand cause and effect principles. Commonly related to a larger personality grouping of ‘Openness’, sales people who demonstrate higher levels of this trait are more likely to embrace training and coaching and apply this to what matters to their customers. A read through one of Neil Rackham’s articles ‘Why Bad Things Happen to Good New Products’ speaks to this very well, if a little dated in the product categories (good old’ Xerox)  -  instances where the sales reps who were the most successful in selling new product (after a product launch) in terms of sales revenue were those who generally appeared to be less enthusiastic (exhibiting less examples of general extrovert type behaviour) about the product launches / new  training in the first place. Upon closer inspection, these reps tended to be more in tune with how the product helped their customer – and were very analytical in their approach to acquiring new knowledge in this very vein. Understanding and being intellectually stimulated by cause and effect.
• Imaginative Application: a demand for innovation and involvement in creative original thought. Similar to the ‘Analytical’ scale, this also relates to the larger Personality factor of ‘Openness’.  Sales reps who demonstrate high levels of this trait are more inclined to use new ideas and approaches to tackle new or unfamiliar problems with regard to sales strategy. When they learn new skills via coaching or training, they are more likely to be creative in applying this training to their sales plan and ultimately creating a successful result for both themselves and their customer (in terms of how they themselves can add value to the customer).
• Achievement Orientation: related to ‘Conscientiousness’, this trait speaks to how persistent and driven a sales rep is to set high standards and achieve goals. Not necessarily correlated with external motivation factors (i.e. financial incentivisation), this perhaps is the most obvious of the three – in as much as that a sales rep demonstrating naturally high levels of this trait is more likely to be a) interested in training and coaching in the first place and therefore b) quick on the trigger to implement what they have learned to the greater good.

A combination of the three would be ideal – and is not uncommon amongst high performing reps – and knowing the existence of these traits in your sales team would go a long way in supplying more ROI backing for the implementation of training and coaching initiatives. This is not to say training and coaching cannot work for everyone – however, if you are piloting or looking at where the results might come straight off the bat, focusing on sales reps with these traits is the best place to start.

Interestingly, the final article I read in the last week unfortunately quashes notions of multiple benefits of some of the ‘exercise your brain’ techniques out there.  Published by the British Psychological Society last year, titled ‘Coach your Cortex – is brain training a sales con or evidence based exercise’? the author calls for caution when considering ‘brain training’ software and applications (likely what was being talked about in the subways as described in my opening paragraph). In short, in reviews of research into cognitive improvement in healthy adults, although there is evidence to suggest that performance on training tasks does improve with repetition (i.e. on short term memory test, spatial memory tests), there was no evidence for generalized improvement in cognitive function following training, even for tasks which involve similar cognitive functions to those trained. In short, training on one task (i.e. sales call planning) is not going to have a knock on effect with improvements in other tasks (i.e. being more focused on generic tasks).

Infact, the author suggests that there is much more evidence around physical exercise having a positive impact on improving generic cognitive function than brain training. Love it. So if you can’t seem to contact your best reps at 10am on a Monday morning, perhaps they are in the gym? And they have the perfect excuse! 

Matt

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Interested in learning more about personality traits? Email me at: matt.goff@rogers.com