The Three Ts of a Winning Sales Team

By way of example, Palomino describes his early days as a sales rep in the late 1980s at Tandem Computers, a B2B supplier of mainframes that was later folded into Compaq and HP in a series of acquisitions. The organization’s leading sales professional at the time was a man named Duane, who was celebrated for having sold to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). While others scoffed at the idea of attending a training event, Duane embraced it. One day, Palomino approached Duane in his cubicle and asked him why he wasn’t as jaded as the other seasoned veterans. Duane gestured toward the 22 books on sales stored in his cubicle, indicating he always had more to learn and ways to improve his craft.

“There are people who say, ‘I have 25 years of experience,’ and what they mean is, ‘I have one year of experience repeated 25 times,’” Palomino says—because, unlike Duane, they haven’t committed to being better now than when they began.

Ideally, all sales professionals should be as passionate and dedicated as Duane. To identify such traits early on, you should gauge how well the candidate sells himself during the interview process, Palomino says. “Are they following a process? Did I get a thank-you note? Was the follow-up email succinct? If they’re not showing their skills when they’re selling the thing they know best and the stakes are highest, then why would I expect they would get better when they’re on my payroll?”

During an interview, you should try throwing candidates some curveballs, Palomino says. To see how they handle objections, interviewers can also employ a good cop/bad cop method, having one of the interviewers act as a contrarian. It’s important to ask as many experience questions as possible rather than just testing knowledge. One such question is this: “Tell me the hardest objection you ever had to overcome, and how did you manage that?”

2. Training and Certifying Skills: Building Commitment

Another key ingredient found in stellar sales organizations is a commitment not just to training but to the certification of skills, experts agree. Certifying, as opposed to training, “means that the learner can do those things in real situations when [the training is] finished,” Osborne insists.

“If you don’t have a good coach watching you and helping you, you can very quickly develop bad habits,” he says.

A common tendency for sales coaches, unfortunately, is to avoid nudging employees on an ongoing basis to see that they are improving in key areas. Too often coaches prefer to spend their time elsewhere, whether it’s looking at reports, forecasting, or stepping in to make sales calls on their reps’ behalf. Coaching takes discipline, according to Osborne. “You have to deliberately and intentionally set aside time to coach,” because “coaching is your only job if you’re in sales management,” he says.

Some lessons can be learned on the job, but many should have been learned prior to taking the job. Osborne makes the distinction between learning and experience. For instance, if you are working in a pet store, it’s best to learn how to handle dogs to avoid getting bit. A manager can teach that; the experience aspect, however, is not possible to teach and needs to be gathered on one’s own over time.

REINFORCING LEARNING WITH VIDEO

Fortunately, technology is, for the most part, on the side of coaches, as there are plenty of CRM tools that go beyond serving as basic systems of record to helping management maintain connections with their sales teams.

One such tool is provided by Allego, a sales training technology that seeks to eliminate the excuses coaches and reps have for failing to adequately prepare for selling by making the process collaborative and compelling.

Related Articles

Brainshark Announces Enhancements to Its Coaching Platform

The enhancements aim to provide a more intuitive user experience as well as give managers and peers more flexibility in delivering feedback and assessments.