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A sales leader I work with had the best quarter in his company's history this spring.
One rep took home about $50,000 in bonus for the quarter by himself. Half the team finished well over quota, several of them at 150% and 200%.
He brought all of that to our session as a win. Then he told me his actual problem.
He can't get any of them into training.
He said he understood the mentality completely. Look at my numbers. Why would I need this?
They Don't Know Why It Worked
There's a writer named Anne Lamott who wrote a book about writing. The part that stuck with me is that people don't get better at writing just because they write. They need feedback on the craft. Volume alone does nothing.
Selling works the same way and almost nobody treats it that way.
People have success and often don't know why. They point at some part of what they did and decide that was it. Take that piece away, or move them to a different buyer in a different market, and they can't reproduce the result, because they were never clear on what was working in the first place.
The Market Did Some Of It
Some of that quarter was skill. Some of it was a strong book of accounts, prices moving the right direction, timing, and relationships somebody built years ago.
The number by itself doesn't tell you which.
And the reps at 200 percent are the ones most likely to get left alone, because every manager has problems that look more urgent than a person who is winning. So the people with the most room to grow get the least attention, and nobody finds out what was actually driving those numbers until the market stops helping.
That's an expensive time to find out.
Seven Super Bowls And He Was Working On Footwork
My son plays quarterback. A coach working with him told him that before Tom Brady's last season, somebody asked what he was trying to improve in the off-season.
Shortening his steps inside the pocket. He wanted to release the ball faster and place it better.
Seven Super Bowls at that point. Working on footwork.
If that's how a career like that gets maintained, your rep at 200 percent has something to work on too. He just doesn't know what it is yet, and he won't until somebody watches him work and tells him.
Ask your best rep what they're working on getting better at. Not what they're closing. What they're working on.
If they don't have an answer, they've stopped.
What I Wrote About On LinkedIn Recently
The Sigh On The Recording A question, then the breath, then he moves on. A veteran trainer six months into coaching the same rep, sitting in a conversation he has already had. One of the managers in my session caught the sigh this time and said he never wants to breathe like that with one of his own people.
Fetch, Fetch, Fetch Your rep spends a week chasing down answers for a buyer. Specs, a comparison, a call with the engineers. Full week of activity to report on Monday. Meanwhile the buyer is building a case, and sometimes it's a case to go beat up whoever they're already paying.
