If you want to get the best out of your sales people, DON'T follow the biblical exhortation to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The fact is, they aren't you. They're individuals who have their unique way of doing things and you have to try to motivate them as individuals.
In effect, your guide should be a more important current slogan: "Different strokes for different folks."
Your salespeople have to meet corporate intelligence, experience and personality criteria to be selected. But never forget they're individuals and that you have to manage them as individuals, recognizing their particular operating styles and guiding them accordingly.
That doesn't mean trying to get people to change their styles. It simply involves understanding the relative styles involved and then trying to adapt them to the needs of the organization, playing up to the strengths and minimizing the weaknesses.
Fundamental to this view is a recognition of the fact that what seems like a weakness in a salesperson's operating methods is actually just an over extension of strengths. That sounds strange, but consider for a moment your most aggressive salesperson. You like the fact that he/she's bold, assertive, constantly breaking new territory. However, his/her weakness seems to be that he/she is often impulsive, perhaps careless at detail work, maybe pushes customers too hard for a sale. See the link between the two? One is an exaggeration of the other.
Similarly, consider the salesperson who is careful and methodical, great at details, filing reports is depth and on time. Often, though he/she may seem slow to act, wasting time with reports when he/she should be out trying to get new sales. Again, it is simply a case of a person carrying his/her major operating style too far, crossing the threshold at which a strength becomes a weakness.
Understanding this fundamental principle is half the battle in understanding your salespeople's strengths and weaknesses. Then, by helping them to see these patterns, and perhaps by juggling work loads and assignments, you can accent the positive and minimize the negative.
First, though, let's get a basic understanding of the four key operating styles of all sales people:
Supporting-Giving: This type of sales person really gets involved in his/her customers' problems, relates considerately to their concerns and needs. He/she virtually doubles as an advisor or counselor, selling products and services by helping customers to solve their problems. He/she thrives on being responsive to questions. The customer is likely to feel "here's a person who truly cares about my business and who can be trusted". He/she is not necessarily a fast starter; but builds business by taking care of customers.
When the style becomes over-extended and a weakness, the salesperson tends to become over involved with the customer's problems, over identifying with the customer, almost as though working for him/her. The salesperson may forget basic time management, spending too much effort reacting to each customer's complaints.
Controlling-Taking: This salesperson shows a lot of initiative - is a real self-starter who is off and running without prompting. He/she cracks those tough accounts, is aggressive, forceful and says what's felt. Say something can't be done and this person will take it as a personal challenge and prove it can be done. New business is obtained by persuasion, cleverness, getting clients excited about the product.
When the excess of threshold is crossed, however, this person tends to become impulsive, and may act without authority. Always seeking new challenges, he/she may become bored with current clients and let service decline. To bring in new customers, he/she may overextend things, making promises that can't be kept or pushing customers too hard for sales. It is even possible for him/her to come back to the plant and press the manufacturing or distribution people too much to fill his/her orders, battling as though his/her business was the only thing the company had to worry about.
Conserving-Holding: A true detail-person, this individual is thorough and systematic. He/she makes a point of knowing the customer's problems and his/her own product inside-out. He/she calls on customers regularly, giving equal effort to every product in the line. The reports are thorough, accurate and always on time. Although, he/she may be slow to open new accounts, he/she mines them deeply once they're obtained.
The exaggerated version of this style finds a person who is so over-thorough that he/she gets bogged down in details ("analysis paralysis"). He/she can become so tied up in corporate policy that flexibility is often lost and perhaps, sales as well. The salesperson begins to amass so much data for customer that they may be overwhelmed, bored and the sale is lost as floods of data are being presented. He/she may withdraw from challenging hostile customers simply writing them off.
Adapting-Dealing: Here's a real charmer with a marvelous light touch and able to make friends of all customers. He/she is "empathy personified", a "politician", a person who works hard at pleasing people, finding out what they want and giving it to them, thereby endearing the salesperson to customers. This person is very good at making presentations because he/she is in tune with the client's moods and reactions and is able to change as he/she goes along with the sale. There is a willingness to try new things and push new products. This person is usually well-liked by others in the company, often able to influence the production people to do what he/she wants, capable of selling internally as well as to customers.
This person can become a politician in the worst sense of the word when the style is overused. He/.she strives so hard to avoid hassles with customers that corporate policy may be bent to suit client's wants. The humor and light touch may then come to be viewed as a lack of seriousness, an unwillingness to knuckle down and get the job done. He/she may be always clowning around with someone, spending time socializing and conversing. There will be a tendency to concentrate on customers who are "friends", rather than spending time with those customers that could be most productive.
Most people are a combination of these styles, often with one dominating. The other styles come into .play according to the situation and the people involved.
Why do people cross the threshold, persisting in their dominant style so strongly that it becomes a weakness? There are a multitude of possible reasons. It may be that deadlines or sales goals are unrealistic. Perhaps, it is a case of contradictory expectations: the sales staff may have been told to boost sales but watch their expense accounts. Objectives may be too vague: the salespeople are told to boost sales but lack specific targets. Lines of authority and responsibility may be unclear so that they're not sure who they're working for or what they are supposed to be doing.
In any case, for some reason, the salespeople may feel threatened and pressured or dissatisfied with the working environment. Those feelings are then translated into excessive stress on their operating styles, causing an over and unproductive use of operating styles.
The key to getting good performance from your salespeople is NOT to treat them all alike and NEVER try to change them. There's nothing wrong with any basic style, but you have to work with people to help control excessive use and to improve their lesser styles.
This brings us back to "different strokes for different folks". To motivate the Supporting-Giving type of salesperson, stress worthwhile causes and affirm the value of their interest in helping customers. Appeal to his/her idealism, emphasizing the quality of the product's features. Request the person's aid in bolstering the department's performance. Provide assistance with self-development projects and show concern for the salesperson as an individual. This person wants his/her ideas listened to and respected, even if there is disagreement.
The person who emphasizes a Controlling-Taking approach should be given lots of opportunities, responsibility and challenge. Provide authority and resources, especially in tough, new project to leverage his/her strong need for achievement. Another possibility would be to place the person at the head of a new activity or let him/her spearhead sales strategy planning for a new product.
With a Conserving-Holding salesperson, emphasize the reliability of the product, the sales approach and the territory. This person wants to feel secure, so stress the low-risk nature of the assignment: "e.g. it's a tried and true product, presentations have worked and the territory has yielded good results"). Give this person a chance to put together data for presentations, to take advantage of his/her analytical and logical strengths in dealing with problems.
Someone who favors the Adapting-Dealing way of selling likes the chance to work with others so he/she may be the one to instruct new salespeople. Use some humorous appeals when outlining his/her new product or discussing new strategies for the territory and let the person known when you're pleased with his/her performance. Strive for opportunities to get him/her in the spotlight, perhaps asking the salesperson to demonstrate a new sales presentation to the other staff members.
If you find things are going awry and some salespeople are crossing the threshold, transforming their strengths into weaknesses, first try to identify when the excess is occurring and why. If there are environmental problems, you may be able to alter some rules and regulations to ease the situational pressures. It could be just a matter of providing more specific goals and deadlines. Then, have a chat with the salesperson whose style is becoming excessive. Outline the four operating styles and the strength-weakness irony -- that a weakness is just the flip side of a person's strongest style. Most people readily recognize the category which fits their style. Because there are no good or bad styles, people do not feel defensive about analyzing their methods. Once they perceive how their behavior has been veering into the danger zone, they make their own adjustments, reining in their stylistic stresses before they cross the threshold. In effect, the analysis itself automatically cools the tension and enables sales people to achieve greater self-control and more success.