The Missing Sales Link with Spencer Wixom (May 31, 2023)

The Missing Sales Link: Spencer Wixom, President & CEO of The Brooks Group, shares six valuable resources that can I.M.P.A.C.T. your sales team and sales goals. Time is valuable, so let's get to it:?

?

Just like in sales, sales management requires training.

In our new white paper, you’ll learn the ten most common mistakes sales managers typically make. Download your copy of The 10 Most Common Sales Management Mistakes and review the list to ensure you’re on track to avoid those pitfalls.

I read a fascinating article recently in Harvard Business Review,?How to Motivate Employees When Their Priorities Have Changed. It’s not directed specifically to salespeople but hits on a trend directly relevant to the sales function. It begins with a common complaint from leadership, “no one wants to work hard anymore.” Is that true? There is evidence in recent trends to support the idea; career changes, quiet quitting, reluctance to return to offices, and less interest in running the rat race.??

But it’s highly unlikely that human nature has fundamentally changed. We are still interested in doing big, important things and making a difference. But, with that said, the lens by which we view that contribution has broadened and deepened. The pandemic played a key role in this. 65% of respondents to a recent survey say the pandemic caused them to rethink the role of work in their lives.??

The important learning for organizations is to appreciate this change and work to understand it at the individual seller level. Failing to do so can eat away at corporate culture and disrupt the employer/employee bargain. You can imagine salespeople, pushed to produce more, more activity, more pipeline, higher targets (with leadership assuming each seller is target focused on maximizing performance against target and individual recognition) asking themselves, “If the organization is not interested in helping me get what I want (a balanced life, additional knowledge/experience, contributing to a social good) then why should I work myself to the bone giving them what they want?”?

I get the sense that understanding motivation and tailoring the employer/employee bargain to align with each employee’s motivational profile will be one of the most important trends in selling in the next few years. Sales will not be an easy job. There will be people willing to do the job and do it well, but they will be more interested in doing so on their terms. It’s important that leadership understand what those terms are.?

?

Daniel Pink’s?To Sell Is Human?is over ten years old, but its principles are as relevant today as ever, and it’s an enjoyable read. I’ve been thinking a lot about an anecdote near the end of the book. The author shares the story of Microchip, a semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Phoenix. I’ll let you read the full story in the book, but here are the key points. Microchip’s revenue was flat, and seller attrition was high, but they were doing what they thought was right in motivating their salesforce - 60% base salary and 40% variable pay. It was then that Mitch Little, the Head of Sales, made a gutsy but brilliant adjustment. He moved compensation to 90% base and 10% variable based not on individual performance but company performance. Sales went up, attrition went down, and profitability improved. Why? The result seems counter-intuitive. Shouldn’t less variable pay lead to less motivation or interest in performing???

I’ve long been impressed with what happened, but I didn’t understand why it happened. As I’ve researched motivation and the various drivers that make it up, this outcome makes more sense. Microchip, like many companies, assumed its sellers were utilitarian and individualistic motivated – that extra effort would be strongly correlated to either the possibility of more money or a better return on time, individual recognition, or both. Here is why I think playing to these motivators didn’t work, and Mitch Little’s change did. Microchip sellers are design engineers by trade, highly theoretical and aesthetic individuals who are also part of a collaborative sales environment. What they love about the job is designing their chips into cool applications. The pressure and competition associated with a high variable compensation structure not only failed to motivate them but distracted them from what they wanted to focus on. When compensation aligned with their motivation, they felt empowered to do their best work, and better results followed.?

The Microchip strategy is not right for every organization, but it’s likely that some form of adjustment or augmentation of traditional motivation schemes is right. If organizations don’t know the motivational profile of their people, they are, at best, leaving additional effort and engagement on the table and, at worst, disengaging and disincentivizing people whose effort they most need to succeed.?

?

You can see a common theme to my thoughts in this Missing Link. At The Brooks Group, we’ve been measuring the motivational profiles of thousands of salespeople every year for ten years. Recent data (looking at during and after the pandemic) shows an interesting year-over-year trend. While these shifts are not extreme, they are significant enough to take notice, and they are validated by a host of activity from salespeople on social networks like LinkedIn.?

Among the six categories of motivation we study (Theoretical, Utilitarian, Aesthetic, Social, Individualistic, and Traditional), we’ve noticed the most significant movement in three. First, we see a shift among a good number of salespeople from being highly Utilitarian motivated (looking to optimize monetary return on their time and effort, in other words being very resourceful) toward being more selfless and willing to share time and resources with others. Second, we see a shift in Individualistic motivation from being more Commanding toward being more Collaborative (salespeople have a stronger interest in working and succeeding as a team, not just as an individual). Third, we see a shift in Aesthetic motivation from being more objective toward being more harmonious (salespeople are more interested in finding balance in work and life and enjoying each moment as they live it).?

If your LinkedIn feed is like mine, you can clearly see this. There are fewer posts about rock star like quota smashing and individual accolades, and more about rich experiences salespeople are having, working as teams, as part of great organizations, and more fully living their lives. This is a good perspective on what they are looking for.?

Organizations need to take notice. None of this is to say we should expect less of salespeople. I firmly believe salespeople and the companies they work for can be just as successful in this new environment as they have been in the past, but the way to stimulate that motivation, the way to connect with and inspire salespeople to perform their best, is changing. This is clear in both data and experience.?

We would recommend (1) assessing team members to know each individual's preference (2) looking for patterns that can be supported at the organizational level, (3) providing this data at the team level to each manager so they can tailor coaching and development to each individual’s needs. ???

?

Hear from Maxsle Butler from Volvo Trucks, discussing what IMPACT Selling? has done for the Volvo team:?

• Reps better understand the client’s business and speak on a higher level.?
• Widely accepted and implemented, providing better sales skills.?
• Customization of the IMPACT Selling? training program allows for a tailored experience, making it congruent with the corporate and dealer sides of the business.?
• Allows for an opportunity for effective sales coaching through many levels of leadership.?
• Helps achieve and exceed revenue growth goals through an integrated selling system.

From Spencer Wixom, President & CEO:?I recently wrote about a scene in Field of Dreams, a favorite movie of mine. The linked article gives more context, but it’s got me thinking quite a bit about the question, “What do you want?” I ask that question all the time – probably dozens of times per day at both work and home. I usually play bartender (in the most innocent sense) with my kids at breakfast and dinner, “What do you want to drink? Milk, juice, water?” But I ask a similar question of employees who set up meetings with me, clients I speak to, and vendors selling to me. It’s too often transactional – what can I sell you? Give you? Do for you? Let’s resolve this situation and move on.?

I realized I was missing something in asking this question; I’m scratching at needs and missing the opportunity to practice curiously, going deeper to the wants and whys in many of my conversations. My wife understands this. She’ll laugh when I act surprised that my daughter wants milk. “I thought she liked juice?” I’ll ask. “She switched when we saw how much sugar is in it.” I could have figured that out with my daughter if I’d been curious. She needs milk because she wants to keep her mind off the sugar high. I should want to know this. I should probe to understand it when she gives her order. Doing that will make me a better seller and a more understanding father. This phrase keeps running around my mind, “No one has ever needed to buy something without wanting to do something.” When I ask, “What do you want?” I should always go for the want and why.