FOUNDATIONS OF SELLING

WITH SCIENCE

CHAPTER 1

Why Salespeople Underperform

A study published in the Harvard Business Review a fewyears ago should cause everyone in sales to cringe. Why? When the researchersanalyzed the behaviors of eight hundred salespeople on sales calls they foundthat only “37% of salespeople—were consistently effective. What’s more, some ofthe behaviors of the remaining 63% actually drove down performance.”1 In otherwords, the way that these salespeople were selling was actually preventing themfrom making the sale.

Unfortunately,these salespeople are not alone in their struggle. Lack of sales production isa devastating problem. In fact, surveys that measure the sales performance ofthousands of companies found that 38 to 49 percent of all salespeople do notmake quota every year.2 This means that roughly four to five out of every tenprofessional salespeople fail to meet the minimum standard their company hasplaced on them.

The way thatsalespeople sell is a mission critical issue, because the behaviors they usewhen interacting with potential customers is a determining factor in the buyingdecision. For instance, when the performance measurement firm Chally Groupconducted a series of studies examining the buying behaviors of more than100,000 decision makers, they identified the salesperson as a deciding factorin whether buyers chose to purchase from one vendor or another.3 In addition,research published by CEB, a leading advisory company, found that 53 percent ofcustomer loyalty—customers choosing to buy from a company repeatedly—is not theresult of the product, company, or service, but the behaviors salespeople usewhen selling.4 Every day, the fates of careers and companies hinge onsalespeople because they serve two imperative functions: creating customers andproducing revenue to keep their organization alive. As Peter Drucker, legendarymanagement expert and author of many culture-shifting business books, famouslysaid, “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create acustomer.”5 That said, there is no doubt that selling has become morechallenging than ever. The marketplace is extremely competitive. Potentialcustomers are blitzed by sellers fighting to earn their business. At the sametime, buyers are extremely busy and have less time to deal with salespeople. Tofurther complicate the situation, as I mentioned in the introduction,technology allows buyers to research potential solutions online before talkingto a seller. As a result, salespeople are entering into the buyer’s decisionprocess later than ever before. The data indicates that around 60 percent ofthe buying cycle is completed before a salesperson is able to engage apotential client. Because of these new realities, salespeople have no room forerror. They are selling in an extremely complex and competitive environmentwhere they must battle competitors for every sale.

To make mattersworse, these daunting challenges aren’t the only reasons salespeople are struggling.

NATURAL ABILITY IS NO LONGER ENOUGH

For years, many in the sales community believed thatsuccess in selling is dependent on innate communication skills and a gregariouspersonality. The assumption has been, if you didn’t have “it,” you couldn’t betaught it. However, a tidal wave of scientific research studying what makespeople successful has disproven that idea in recent decades.6 Though somepeople do have heightened levels of natural ability, talent is not enough tobecome a top performing salesperson. Because of the exceptionally crowdedmarketplace, you must continually improve your knowledge and skills.

To be successful in sales today, you must sell beyondyour natural ability.

One fascinatingexample of this is seen in the work of Carol Dweck, professor of psychology atStanford University, who has conducted several studies on how one’s mentalityinfluences one’s performance.7

She has foundthat people tend to embrace one of two common outlooks:

1. Fixed mindset:the belief that you can do little to change your abilities.

2. Growthmindset: the belief that through effort you can improve your abilities.

Below is a shortquiz that will help you identify what mindset you have.

QUIZ

Which of the following statements do you believe to betrue?

1. Your abilityto sell is part of who you are and not something you can change.

2. No matter howgood you are at sales, you can always improve.

3. You can learnnew selling strategies, but you can’t change much about your ability toinfluence others.

4. Selling is askill that you can develop, regardless of your natural talent or personality.

Options 1 and 3are fixed mindset statements, while options 2 and 4 are growth mindsetstatements.

So do these mindsets influence sales results? Yes,because the outcomes these mentalities produce are radically different. Thosewho have a growth mindset are far more likely to be successful than those whodon’t.8 One of the main reasons a growth mindset drives high achievement isbecause it alters how the brain perceives failure. Those with fixed mindsetsare more prone to see failure as a judgment on themselves. If they fail, theyfeel like failures. In contrast, people with a growth mindset view failure asthe feedback that shows them how to adapt and take their abilities to the nextlevel.

Over the years,I have witnessed the vast difference in performance between salespeople who arecontent to rely on their giftedness to bring in enough sales to squeak by(fixed mindset) and those who work hard to surpass their natural aptitude toachieve or beat their sales goals each year (growth mindset). In fact, this isone of the things I recommend that sales leaders test for when hiring for anopen sales position. (We’ll talk more about how to do this in Chapter 10.)Those with a growth outlook are more motivated to succeed and, as a result, farmore likely to become top performers.

What about you?If you have a growth mindset, great! If you have a fixed mindset, you shouldaddress it because it will hinder your ability to achieve the level of successyou desire. The good news is that your mindset is your mindset, and you canchange it. By choosing to embrace the new, empowering belief that your salesskills are like a muscle that needs to be continually strengthened, you willinspire the work ethic necessary to achieve high levels of sales performance.

SALES TRAINING HASN’T BECOME MANDATORY . . . YET

Why do elite salespeople make selling look effortless?It’s easy to assume they have always been terrific at selling. But restassured, they make selling look easy because they have been capably trained.Science has shown that these individuals’ brains have been altered by training,and this is what allows them to competently execute selling behaviors. Let meexplain.

People used tobelieve that the human brain was static, remaining unchanged through adulthood.However, neuroscientists have recently demonstrated that the brain containsneurons that are constantly changing based on one’s thoughts, behaviors, andexperiences.9 Neuroscientists describe the brain’s flexibility as“neuroplasticity.”10

When you learnany new behavior, your brain changes and new neural pathways are created. Themore these neural connections are used the more they develop and, as a result,the more proficient you become at the activity they are associated with.11

For example,research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesanalyzed the brains of experienced London taxi drivers who were skilled atnavigating the complex streets of London.12 The researchers identified that thepart of the taxi drivers’ brains (the hippocampus) that deals with spatialrelationships (navigation) had grown in size and contained an elevated numberof neural networks. Essentially, these taxi drivers had changed their brains.

In much the sameway, when salespeople go through effective training, their brains are beingrewired. New clusters of neurons are formed and existing clusters connectedwith previously learned behaviors are strengthened.

Here are twofascinating examples that illustrate how training reprograms the brain andequips people to perform well beyond their natural abilities.

Behavioralscientist K. Anders Ericsson has led a series of research studies over analmost thirty-year period on how training can produce exceptional levels ofperformance. In one of his most famous studies, Ericsson and two otherresearchers studied how memory could be enhanced with continuous training.13They recruited a college student (whom they referred to by his initials, S.F.)with a normal IQ and memory; after listening to a sequence of numbers, he couldrecall around seven digits. After several hundred hours of memory enhancementtraining, S.F. drastically exceeded the goal of the training (fourteen digits)and was able to memorize eighty-two random digits. Just so you appreciate theimpact of this, below are eighty-two random numbers. Read through them and trymemorizing all these yourself. It’s harder than it looks!

2 4 7 9 3 6 2 5 3 2 6 8 9 1 1 0 3 6 3 2 6 1 7 3 4 6 2 7

9 0 1 4 9 7 8 2 5 2 3 5 1 7 9 2 8 4 5 2 7 9 2 1 4 0 5 9

6 3 7 0 5 2 7 9 5 6 6 8 2 1 7 2 0 8 6 4 8 6 9 5 2 1

The researchersattributed the vast improvement of his memory to his use of mnemonicassociations—such as converting random numbers into running times, so 247became 2 minutes 47 seconds—and relentless training.

The effects oftraining on memory performance have been replicated many times by numerousresearchers and participants.14 When behavioral scientists from Florida StateUniversity analyzed the decades of research in this area they concluded thatthere is no “evidence that would limit the ability of motivated and healthyadults to achieve exceptional levels of memory...