
How often do you listen to a sales person in your team telling you their plan for achieving and exceeding their sales target…only to observe them not doing what they planned throughout the month?
It’s one of the biggest frustrations of sales leadership. Even when your team know exactly what they should do more of…some of them seem to avoid it quite successfully. They even give you great reasons why they couldn’t.
Working on countless plans that don’t get fulfilled is pointless when a sales person has an aversion to specific sales activities.
One of the most important things to remember in human understanding is…
Do not listen to a person’s language because their behaviour is your best clue of what is really going on inside them!
The language your sales people use when communicating with you is distorted to…
- Match what they think you want to hear
- Deliver a positive version of themselves
- Hide their negative emotions like fear, guilt and shame
- Cover up their vulnerabilities
Your best course of action
Rather than focusing on a plan going forward, you need to uncover the barriers that hold them back. These may not be consciously known to them because they have been suppressed for so long and go so deep that they have become an unconscious pattern. Despite this lack of awareness, these patterns are still working their black magic…creating doubt, fear and draining the self-belief and confidence required to achieve consistent sales success!
The only real way you can uncover these negative emotions is to use good coaching skills with a massive dose of rapport and compassion. Without these, you won’t create a safe environment that your sales person needs to feel secure enough to drill down to uncover what’s going on below the surface.
Once these barriers are uncovered your sales person has the understanding, clarity and choice to create their first steps towards growth and success.
A wonderful bonus
Uncovering and eliminating negative inner barriers has a positive impact on all areas of your sales person’s life…not just their career. In supporting them on this journey you will have triggered behavioural change, greater self-belief and confidence, which has a positive effect on every aspect of their lives.
This is such a satisfying and fulfilling part of sales leadership. Always remember that everything you do has a long lasting effect on another person’s life…so make sure it’s positive!
Until next time,