Focus on What You Can Control

One of the reasons why I decided to pursue a career in sales was my initial belief that I would be 100% in control of my own results.

Today I know: I am not.

Sales cycles are complex phenomena that usually involve a variety of stakeholders: Your marketing team that builds your company's and product's brand, the SDR sourcing and qualifying the sales opportunity, the solution engineer supporting on the technical side, the external implementation partner and finally, the manager and RVP breathing down your neck.

Now, you may argue that through effective stakeholder management, these uncertainty factors can be managed. I do not disagree. Knowing your stakeholders and how to manage them will help offset that risk.

And what about sales territories? If you’re part of the average sales or business development team, 80% of the results are typically generated by 20% of the reps (I love Pareto). Surely, they are sitting on the nice sales patches and receive the most leads and have the fast-growing and cash-rich customers and prospects. For those reps, the product literally sells itself. Meanwhile, you are struggling with your small patch - the prospects in your territory never pick up the phone and if they do, they do not have the money to buy...

But have you ever asked yourself how those reps got there? They were just smart, you might say. They knew that this or that territory was the best one and positioned themselves well in order to be assigned to it. They did their research the year prior and observed their predecessors’ results.

But is that not fully in your control? Sales results are generally visible to everybody - what prevents you from talking to your manager and positioning yourself well for the next fiscal period way ahead of time?

Territory carving is a science, but also an art. That’s because the future is so hard to predict. Nobody (not even your manager) truly knows how the market will develop next year, if there will be a recession (the death penalty to every sales rep), a stock market crash etc. Territory carving is typically based on historic figures and therefore naturally subject to error.

Territory carving is a science, but also an art.

Also, managers typically lean towards assigning the best-performing reps to the seemingly high-potential territories as this seems to promise the highest revenue yield for the team. Quite intuitive, right?

Now, perhaps you dealt with your stakeholders and also your territory. Still, you might say, my team lacks the training and development for me to become successful. My manager does not coach me well, we do not have the budget for sales seminars, I joined the company from external and do not have the product knowledge etc, etc...

In sales, perhaps more than in any other profession, you are the master of your fate. You are the captain of your soul. You lack product knowledge? Buy the books, talk to your product engineers. You are not good at cold calling? Seek out the best cold caller in your team or perhaps the entire company and ask for 1-on-1 training. You need to sharpen your negotiation skills? Well, that’s an easy one: Discuss with your partner or spouse over the shared household budget and try to get something in your favour.

You are the master of your fate, you are the captain of your soul.

(William Ernest Henley, 1875)

Yes, there will always be factors and variables that will impact your sales performance for better or worse; no, you will never be 100% in control of your own result. But will worrying and complaining improve your situation? Most likely, it will do the opposite.

Focusing on factors outside your control can have a crippling effect. The world seems unjust. You feel demotivated. What’s the point of it all?

The truth is: None of the best salesmen and women ended up where they are by coincidence. The all worked their way up, some faster and some slower. But they all had one thing in common: they did not focus on their outcomes (not 100% in control), but rather on their input (100% in control).

What are those input factors? Let's look at these 5.

• Quantity: the amount of work you get done. The best performing salespeople are some of the hardest-working. Part of it is pure effort and grit. However, just working harder can lead to serious burnout - everybody in sales will know what I'm talking about. You also need to work efficiently - define a daily process, plan your weeks and months ahead, have a good structure. My personal credo is: Show up early, get the work done, and leave the office on time.
• Quality: the extent to which you focus on the current task. I am a big believer that multi-tasking hampers our success. Focus on one thing at a time. Did you put your best effort into your last customer call? Did you choose your words wisely on that last basho email? Did you go all in on that customer presentation? Bring your best self to work and attend every single task with a woke mind.
• Longevity: aim for longterm success. In fact, think longterm in anything you do. As quota-carrying sales reps, we are incentivised to think in months, quarters or years. Think five years, ten years! What will be the longterm impact of today's work on your customer, employer, yourself? There will always be opportunities to cut corners and get some quick wins, but sometimes they can come at the expense of your credibility or, worst case, your integrity. We tend to overestimate what we can do in one year, but underestimate what we can do in five years. To build a great career, you need to move fast from day to day (micro), but stay patient to achieve longterm success (macro).
• Visibility: build your brand. In today's day and age, it's not enough to be a top-performer. You have to tell everyone about the work you do. After the work is done and results are created, you better put them on billboards all around the office! Building your personal brand and visibility of your work will become ever more important with every step you take on the career ladder. Consider yourself a politician: nobody will vote for you if they don't know you! Show everybody the work you have done.
• Self-development: always invest in yourself first. Your skills are your assets. Commit to constant learning and development to find your edge in today's fast-moving world. Technology trends are disrupting our lives every day and it is crucial to stay on top of everything. Whenever a new trend emerges (social selling, for example) there is a short time window for arbitrage: the opportunity to tap into a new sphere where there is little to no competition. We constantly need to find new ways to cut through the noise to reach our customers and prospects better than our competitors.

Now, this list is probably not extensive and each of these areas probably deserve their own full-length article. Which one of these would you like me to dive deeper into in the next blogpost?