How Your Sales Reps’ Beliefs About Selling May Be Quietly Working Against Them
Imagine that you coach a college rugby team. You have a potential star player. He’s big, fast, talented, has a mean sidestep, the team respects him.
However…he doesn’t really have much passion for rugby itself. He was a star football player in high school who didn’t get the college scholarship offers he had hoped for. He walked onto the rugby team more as something to do to stay in shape than anything else.
Will he ever be able to realize the potential that you know he has? Will he ever really be committed to the activities necessary to be a star player on the team? Probably not. Even if he does play, he will never throw himself into the game. He might be attentive and train hard, but his unspoken beliefs about and lack of passion for the game of rugby will always be the root cause of what holds him back.
Now let’s use this as a metaphor for selling. What are some ways that a salesperson’s beliefs about selling may unconsciously hold him/her back?
How Beliefs About Selling Impact Sales Performance
Below are five all too commonly held beliefs that salespeople won’t say out loud — and may not even recognize in themselves — but they are very real and are often at the root cause of what holds many salespeople back. Each of these beliefs has a direct impact on sales performance.
Views selling as: Bothering people, interrupting their day
- Low prospecting activity
- Prefers to call happy customers and friendly prospects
- Will only call prospects that he or she knows won’t answer
- Will use social media and emails to the exclusion of making calls
Views selling as: Educating the customer
- Won’t ask for commitment
- May habitually over-invest time in preparing and gathering research data
- Protracted sales cycles
- Forecasts often slip from month-to-month
Views selling as: Challenging the customer and ‘competing to win’
- Can be perceived by customers as pushy or transactional
- Can get frustrated when he or she doesn’t “win”
- May damage relationships externally and internally
- Often stuck with lower-level buyers
- May struggle to build executive-level relationships
Views selling as: All about building relationships
- Wants to be the customer’s friend and won’t ask the tougher questions
- Doesn’t want the customer to feel bad, so will revert to talking about product
- Fears doing anything that may damage the friendship
- Needs social approval
- Opportunities tend to be smaller in size
Views selling as: Not a profession to be proud of
- Will tend to seek out non-selling activities
- May habitually over-invest in the mannerisms and appearances of success at the expense of goal-supporting behaviors such as prospecting
- Doesn’t feel on par with other “professionals” like doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.
- Will not tell others that he is “in sales”
- May eventually look for another career
Your salespeople’s view of selling often percolates beneath the surface and quietly influences their behavior in unforeseen ways. A poor view of selling is not as immediately obvious as poor product knowledge, weak selling skills or a misguided sales strategy. But the impact can be very frustrating for managers and sales reps alike as they struggle to decipher the reasons why the rep that showed so much promise continues to underperform.
4 Strategies Improve Sales Performance by Addressing Negative Beliefs About Selling
Here are four strategies sales coaches can teach to address this insidious problem and turn a career around:
Awareness of Beliefs About Selling
Discuss with your sales team the importance of developing a productive sales mindset. The most successful sales professionals have mastered three conversations:
- the conversation with their customers (skill set)
- the conversation with themselves (mindset)
- the conversation with their coach
Skill set typically gets the most attention and focus, while the other two are frequently overlooked entirely. Raising awareness is the first step to helping salespeople understand the critical role their mindset plays in motivating them and helping them reach their goals.
Get Clear About How the Organization Defines Selling
Have you discussed with your sales team exactly how your organization defines “selling”? This might seem obvious, but if you don’t explicitly lay out what selling means and looks like in your organization, you should assume everyone is operating by their own definition — and those may or may not align with what you expect and what will serve them most effectively.
For example, we define selling as uncovering needs, meeting needs and creating value for people. These phrases are important because they give salespeople clarity about specific actions, behaviors and objectives:
- Uncovering needs means being skilled at asking the questions to help customers discuss their challenges and needs — even those that the customer may not be fully aware of yet.
- Meeting needs means that instead of discussing product features, you highlight how you can help solve their problems and address their needs.
- Creating value for people requires discussing how you can help them achieve better outcomes and realize their desired state. That’s the kind of value customers often say they will pay a premium for.
When sales is defined in these terms, it also debunks many of the negative internal myths and stigmas salespeople may have internalized about their role — beliefs that are likely sabotaging their success.
Work Towards Congruence
“View of selling” is just one of five categories of self-beliefs that impact selling success. Their view of their abilities, alignment with values, commitment to the activities that will generate results and their belief in the promised benefits that your product will deliver to customers are also critical mindset elements.
The more your sales reps can bring these beliefs into alignment or ‘congruence’ the more achievement drive they’ll have. That’s the fire in the belly that defines top performers and sustains them through the inevitable ups and downs of selling.
Coach to Sales Mindset
Back to those second and third conversations, effective coaching isn’t just focused on selling skills, or account strategy. The best coaches know how to increase awareness and understanding of the role of mindset. As a result, they coach their salespeople to a more productive place.
The next time you’re feeling frustrated about a promising sales rep’s seeming inability to live up to their full potential, consider whether there are some hidden internal barriers that are getting in their way. We often say selling is an inside game. Product knowledge and sales techniques are important, but they can’t take you the distance if your inner beliefs about selling have one foot on the brake.
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