Moving the middle part 1
Download as DOCX, PDF0 likes97 views
The document discusses three distinct ranks that sales contributors fall into - top performers (20%), low performers (20%), and the "middle" performers (60%). It argues that traditional approaches of more training and incentives are ineffective at moving the middle performers. Instead, it advocates for a holistic approach using training, mentoring, and coaching to develop abilities and critical success factors like passion, drive, and confidence. This blended approach aims to help individuals reach their full potential through purposeful practice rather than assuming limitations based on innate talent. The implications could be a sustainable step change in performance across organizations if sales leaders adopt this new mindset.
Moving the middle part 1
- 1. Moving the “middle” – Part 1 In effort to drive year-on-year improvement in sales performance, most sales leaders fight an epic battle against what is considered an endemic dysfunction of every sales organisation,the fact that over the medium to long term individual sales contributors are destined for one of three distinct ranks. The top performers,the ones who were born salespeople,the top 20% who will bring in the big deals and more than half of the overall new business wins, and that the sales leader can always rely on to get close to his number. These are the ones with a talent that is difficult to manufacture and replicate, and more often than not a great work ethic to match it. The low performers,the other 20% at the opposite end of the spectrum who happen to be insales only because it’s a profession with no barrier to entry. These are the ones who can’t be trained, and whose attitude and work ethic stinks. They are the embarrassment of the sales team, the ones who, if verbal abuse alone doesn’t do the trick, even the laziest of sales managers resolve to performance manage out through a formal performance improvement process. And then there’s the “middle” performers,that biglump of about 60% of the sales team who somehow always manage to avoid the spotlight shining on the top and low performers. They were not gifted with great sales talent and their effort seems to flounder, like their performance, raising hopes at times, but consistently delivering below expectations. No one ever bothers to performance manage them either up or out. It takes too much time and effort, and it’s better to have a warm body carrying some of the target rather than the sales manager having to lump it on the rest of the team. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut eventually, don’t they? Especially if we send them on yet another training course and maybe use a nicer “carrot” or a stiffer “stick”. And that’s how the majority of sales leaders resolve to moving the “middle”, and more in general improving performance across their sales teams.More training, different training. More incentives, different incentives. After all, isn’t it true that: Performance = Talent + Hard work If so, surely hard work can be incentivised with a “carrot” and/or “stick”, and as far as talent is concerned, there has to be some untapped, unrecognised talent in that big “middle”, some who were born to be a salesperson and that are finally going to blossom after the next training course. It never works. That “middle” never moves, or not much at least. Not enough to ever justify the investment in time and effort. The reason for this is because performance has very little to do with talent and hard work, or at least not “any” hard work. In fact, over the last few years, specialist research from psychologists and neuroscientists (Dr. Anders Ericsson above all) and the advancement in brain imaging and scanning have demonstrated countless times that there is no such thing as “talent”,and that everyone who has reached an expert level of performance in their own field, be it in sport, arts, science and/or business has done so by making the most of a gift that we all have … the adaptabilityof our brain and body to a certain stimulus,which allows our mental and physical abilities to develop beyond what we consider possible, in other words we conservatively considered our potential. That stimulus is referred to as purposeful practice. A particular type of practice that is much different from hard work alone, and which is rather based on a planned, effortful series of activities designed to improve abilities in a particular domain, and guided by well-informed, timely and expert feedback.
- 2. Indeed, the only thing that sets apart the so called natural talents like Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Michael Jordan, Garry Kasparov, Albert Einstein, Mozart or whoever else resonates with you, has been the passion, drive, conscientiousness, confidence and mental toughness that they have been able to sustain in applying purposeful practice to the development of their abilities,which has allowed them to push past what we have been conditioned to believe is an otherwise limited potential that the rest of us inherited at birth. In other words, achieving a step change in performance is possible for all of us, even for salespeople, if we could to make the most of the adaptability of our brain and body through purposeful practice. None of us is performing anywhere near our own potential, not the mid performers, not the low performers, and not even the top performers. Maybe our potential is not as great as it was in our early years, but we are not talking about becoming PGA Tour Champions, Chess Grandmasters or world class musicians, just much better salespeople. In fact, the performance equation, also relevant for sales performance, should rather be written as follows: Performance = Abilities + Passion + Drive + Conscientiousness + Confidence + Mental toughness As far as individual sales contributors are concerned, abilities refer to mastery in the execution of sales activities according to sales excellence best practice, plus the abilityto build credibility, trust and likeability. Abilities can be improved beyond what we believe possible by applying the learning from training into purposeful practice supported by expert mentoring. And what about the other elements in the equation? What exactly do we mean by them? Do we inherit them at birth or can we develop and improve them? Passion is where it all starts, the highest leverage point to lift performance to new levels. If we are not passionate about what we do, then we are unlikely to be motivated to improve. Passion doesn’t have to be about a big cause, passionsimply comes from having a clear sense of purpose for what we do. Anyone can be coached to find purpose in their current job, or in another job somewhere else. Passion ignites drive, which is about having a clear and compelling vision of success for what we do, which enables us to set priorities and propels us towards the achievement of SMART goals. Again, drive isn’t a genetic disposition, and anyone can develop and improve it through coaching. Passionand drive are necessary, but unfortunately not sufficient conditions for excellence in performance. In fact, we require conscientiousness to turn wishful thinking into action and to stay focused on priorities, to plan and execute for success with a desire to do a task well and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to easy-going and disorderly, they exhibit a tendency to act dutifullyand aim for achievement; they displayplanned rather than spontaneous behaviour; and they are dependable and accountable to self. Conscientiousness is not genetic, but rather the result of habits and mindset that can be developed through training, mentoring and coaching. Achieving excellence in performance also requires a healthy dose of confidence in one’s ability to learn and improve, in the process that leads to success, and in the fact that by focusing on solutions rather thanproblems will help us get there. Confidence is not just about being “naturally” optimistic, a “glass half full” kind of person. Confidence can easily be developed and improved through coaching. None of the above is alien to any of us. At some point in our lives, we have all been passionate, driven, conscientious and confident enough to perform really well at something, even just for a short period of time. So, once again, it’s not genetic and doesn’t require any specific talent. In fact, what we need is mental toughness, which is the ability to sustain the level of passion, drive, conscientiousness, confidence and effort in developing the abilities required for living up to our potential, despite adversities. Finally, even mental toughness can be developed and improved by adopting the right strategies through training, mentoring and coaching.
- 3. So, in summary, performance has nothing to do with talent. Top performers in any field, including sales,are not born as such, and can be made. The implications are quite remarkable for the sales leader who is prepared to consider a new, albeit proven, more holistic approach to the development of “talent” (I hate this word) across the sales organisation to achieve a sustainable step change improvement in performance. For the sake of simplicity, we can re-write the performance equation as follows: Performance = Abilities + Critical success factors where by critical success factors we mean passion,drive, conscientiousness, confidence and mental toughness as described above. The best approach to improving performance in any sales organisation is summarised by the diagram below, which represents a blend of expert training, mentoring and coaching in support of an individual’s learning and purposeful practice for the development of mastery in the required abilities and critical success factors for excellence in performance. Training is about imparting knowledge with very little, if any, opportunity for practical application. Training is necessary in the first phases of an individual’s journey to mastery, but on its own will not result into the development of the abilities required for success in sales and more importantly in embedding the behaviours that produce results. It’s also important to note how the development of abilities alone doesn’t necessarily
- 4. result in a marked improvement in performance, which is something sales leaders have painfully experienced many times before in their teams. Mentoring is about helping an individual apply learning into purposeful practice by using a mentor’s own subject matterexpertise to provide feedback after the evaluation of an individual’s abilities, show how things should be done, and to define the most effective practice methods depending on an individual’s challenges, requirements and stage of development. Most people mistakenly refer to mentoring as coaching. Coaching is appropriate at every stage of the development of mastery and it focuses on developing and strengthening an individual’s passion, drive, conscientiousness, confidence and mental toughness required along the journey. Coaching is not appropriate for the development of sales abilities,but rather for developing the required level of motivation, accountability and resourcefulness. Whilst this approach would guarantee an improvement in performance across all three ranks in the sales organisation, it is not recommended to adopt it in the case of the top and low performers. In the former case simply because “if it ain’t broken don’t fix it”, in the latter because the return from the investment in time and money required may be too long term for any sales leader to justify it, or be still around to see it ... In the next article we’ll look at how to turn the high level approach to “moving the middle” into practice, the smart way.