There ARE Limits to What You Can Achieve with Hard Work

I see a lot of motivational and inspirational quotes roll by in my various social streams. I enjoy a lot of them and I imagine they help people. In my typical style, I also disagree with a few and find them unrealistic.

I have always enjoyed and chuckled at Zig Ziglar’s well-known quote about motivation:

“People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.”

As my disclaimer for this post, I just want you to know that I do understand that. I’m not anti-motivation, even in the form of quotes. If they give you a little extra zing or zip… hey, that’s great. No problem here.

With that said, many quotes that I've seen frequently either include or end with…

“…with hard work, there are no limits to what you can achieve.”

Really?

What if I want to teleport? Fly unaided? Run a 2-minute mile?

Lest you think I’m just messing with physics, what if you want to be the first African-American President in the U.S.? That one’s been done. That’s a real limit.

More to the point of reality, as it relates to sales: Have you ever seen the first few weeks of an American Idol season?

I’m sorry, but as an ex-pro musician, I’m here to tell you that no amount of passion and hard work is going to transform some of those failed, tone-deaf contestants into the top percentage of musicians that break into the professional recording scene.

Look, I get the positive and inspirational intent of these messages, but there are a certain amount of nature/nurture limits, and I think people have a chance to become even more successful when dealing with reality. When you combine passion, hard work, planning, execution, and optimism with the raw TALENT and POTENTIAL, the result can be absolutely amazing. But there ARE limits. And while I believe that hard work is often the differentiator between people who do have equal talent, hard work will not overcome all limitations. Sorry.

Let’s turn to sales.

The Skills of Top Sales Producers

Last year, I presented in Roxy Torres’ Sales Enablement Track at the American Society for Training & Development’s annual conference (note: ASTD has become ATD – the Association for Talent Development). The topic was 22nd Century Selling Skills (yes, I know what century we’re in), which was about the behaviors I've seen over the years of my sales research, that differentiate the top 4% producers from the rest of the pack. I also wrote a post for ATD, which you can see here.

For that presentation, to a community of learning and sales enablement practitioners, I tried to focus on what these top 4% do that is replicable and scalable across a sales force (or at least across the remainder of the top 20% and possibly the first half or more of the middle producers). Not all of what I shared is EASILY reproducible or learnable, but it’s at least POSSIBLE (interestingly, some is more akin to developing leadership skills than the typical sales skills we teach).

What I didn't share there, were the personality traits I’d seen emerge, many of which are inherent and very difficult to replicate. With time, training, coaching, mentoring, and yes, hard work, it’s possible to see some improvement in these areas… but most of these are things that someone brings to the table.

The Traits of Top Sales Producers

These are not statistically validated, meant to be the right list for you to hire to in your business (context and nuance matter a great deal), or possibly even inclusive. They are the behaviors and inherent traits I've observed, though. (See the presentation for my disclaimers – I summarized the skills on slide 8; jump to slides 9-11 if you just want to see the disclaimers.)

The Traits

• Drive
• Empathy
• Focus
• Responsibility
• Optimism
• Ethics
• Bias for Action
• Persistence
• Interpersonal Skills
• Influence

Drive

This is the drive to succeed, to compete and to win. It’s the fuel for the engine, the spark that ignites them. And this is very difficult to replicate. You can create the right environment (read Drive by Dan Pink) and use rewards and incentive motivation, but the drive is there already, or maybe idling and waiting to be lit, or it isn't.

Empathy

In the sales context, this is the ability to “feel your customer’s pain,” relate to them, understand the personal impacts of business issues, and a desire to help people and improve their situation. If you sell life insurance, watching a few videos at LifeHappens.org might energize your empathy a bit, but only if it’s already there. If you’re Dexter, it isn't happening.

Focus

This is the ability to prioritize, plan, execute, judge progress, adjust course, and stay focused, to achieve. You can teach time and task management, or you can take dextroamphetamine if you’re truly ADD or ADHD, but some people just have a naturally stronger ability to stay focused on what matters.

Responsibility

This is a sense of duty, commitment, a feeling of obligation to those they serve. You can motivate, you can create the right environment to pull it out of people, but they need to feel it.

Balanced Optimism

Top sales people and many successful people in general, tend to look at the bright side of things, use humor as a self-management and stress-relief tool, and possess a sense of humor, fun, and general positivity. I have noticed, however, that top producers are not Pollyanna, or blinded to reality, either. While they are realistic, they tend to focus on what they can control, stay on course optimistically about what they can achieve, and not let the rest drag them down.

Ethics

Sad that needs to be said, but a strong ethical foundation and a moral compass is a powerful trait in top producers. They’re competitive (drive to win), but unlike the “whatever it takes” motivational posters (another disagreement), they won’t really do whatever it takes. They’ll do it ethically and legally, within policies and guidelines.

Bias for Action

Don’t confuse this with Ready, Fire, Aim. Top producers are often very intelligent and thoughtful, consider and weigh options, think strategically, and come in all shapes and sizes in regard to outward personalities and preferences. But they do also certainly have a penchant for acting and making things happens. This one is pretty difficult to replicate in others, in my experience, but you can set up systems and processes and coach to it.

Persistence

While I disagree with some of this, too (so annoying, I know), I have always loved this quote from Calvin Coolidge:

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

I still think you need talent, or to have seeds of potential, especially in some endeavors (like the Olympics... or Sales). I have, however, seen what I consider to be a far greater level of persistence and determination in top sales producers. Again, this one is hard to replicate.

Interpersonal Skills

Communication skills, interpersonal savvy, political skills, business etiquette, and related skills can be taught and learned, but top producers often have these in spades. They listen well, they communicate well, they play well with others.

Influence

Influence and persuasion skills can certainly be taught and learned, as well. Aristotle, Madison Avenue, entertainment media, and neuroscience have a lot offer, to help us understand the science and artful application of influence and persuasion. I’m not sure that most top sales producers have read or researched any of this, however. Most of them are hard-wired, were mentored, or have picked it up along life’s path through lessons learned.

The Right Blend is a Sliding Scale

Interesting note… too much of any of the great things above, can become a
derailer. It seems that a balance is best. As with many things… extremes are not always advantageous.

This is why you need to dig into these traits, to learn what YOUR company’s top producer profile looks like, and try to find ways to source, recruit, select and hire more like them (and if possible, to a top-producer benchmark for your specific industry, if available).

Psychometric tools, bio-data, behavioral interviewing, Topgrading?, simulations, background screening, job trials, and other methods are all worth looking into. It's a topic for another post, but you can see an old one here about psychometric tools.

Well, that’s it for this “Sales Myth Buster” post on hard work, and the traits of top sales producers. As usual, this is what I think. More importantly, what do YOU think?

I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on these traits, and what you've seen or researched over the years. Since context and nuance matter so much, it’d be especially interesting to hear whether some things matter more or less in your specific world.

As always, thanks for reading, be safe out there, and by all means… let’s continue to elevate our sales profession.

Mike Kunkle

:: transforming sales results ::

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