Sales Wolf Blog

Is your mindset one that is reactive or proactive?

For most CEOs and sales leaders, turning around a sales team is a reactive, futile effort that occurs ONLY when the sales team is floundering or dragging the company under. In most reactive sales team turnaround instances, the effort is futile because the mindset that got them to floundering / dragging the company under is what ultimately keeps the doomed company on track to destruction.

You only have one chance to do this the right way.

Building your sales team will define the short- and long-term success of your business. You only get one shot. When your company is founded or when a new business unit is first set up, assembling a team of Sales Wolves is critical.

But here is the sobering truth: Few organizations do it well.

Few decisions impact a business model more than the quality of sales talent hired to represent a company.

It happens all the time. Sales hiring managers predicting strong sales performance from a candidate who later performed poorly.

This train wreck is easy to avoid.

The candidate positively lit-up multiple biases that the sales hiring manager was unaware were being lit up. The hiring manager should be selecting sales hires based on the merits of their background, education, experience, and sales personality match.  

If only the egos of those involved in the sales hiring process were hedged by a data-driven sales hiring strategy.

...what?

Most sales job interviews are meaningless.

“Nothing happens in business until something gets sold.” - Thomas J. Watson, IBM Chairman and CEO, Called “The World’s Greatest Salesman”

All of our business successes hinge on selling. Sell and succeed. Don’t sell and die. It is an absurdly simple formula.

So why do so many businesses screw it up?

The death of a business ultimately starts at the head – the CEO. What the CEO allows, so shall the sales team.

All problems start at (and in) the head.

Have you ever seen a star pitcher or quarterback just lose their IT factor in the middle of the season? Their mojo is gone. They can’t score a touchdown or strike out a guy for anything. But just a week or two (or a season or two) prior, they were at the top of their game.

Sure, there is the inevitable physical decline in athletes, but that’s usually pretty recognizable. This is different. I would even say it is an aura they project.

They lost their mojo.

You’ve heard of Scott Adams. You’ve inevitably seen his work posted around your office. No, we’re not talking about those insipid motivational posters that show a soaring bald eagle and pithy, generic phrase like, “Only those who strive will fly.”

Adams created the comic “Dilbert”, which has been circulated in 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries in 25 different languages. It’s a hilarious skewering of the absurdities of office culture that has joined the ranks of movies like Office Space and television shows like The Office. 

But what most people don’t know is that Adams’ productivity goes far beyond cranking out thousands of comics. Over the course of his career, he’s opened two restaurants, written hundreds of blog posts, hosted a podcast, and become a highly sought-after speaker.

The pattern of your thoughts shapes your future reality -- individually and collectively.

Mindset is one of those topics that is very “buzzworthy” among sales leaders. It has become such a trendy term that in a way, you could say its value has been somewhat cheapened.

How many times have you experienced this scenario?

You walk into your office, eager to get the day started and excited about an important project. You sit down at your desk, fire up your laptop, and are suddenly confronted by a spewing Vesuvius of, for lack of a better word, “stuff”. 

Overnight, your inbox blew up. You check your phone and see that you have 43 unread text messages and nine unheard voicemails. A few of the most eager members of your sales team arrived early and have already started pinging you on Slack. And you have an enormous digital stack of unread industry-related articles to plow through.