The Productivity Factor in Sales: Why Traditional Training Is Holding Your Sales Team Back

What does your Productive Flow have to do with your Sales Ability?

This is an important question and process to understand because people who experience feelings and beliefs around rejection and not being enough, tend to go into careers that push them to prove themselves as "accepted" over and over again.

Sales and Entrepreneurship lead the charge for these individuals for just that reason. This is why it's so important to understand the connection because awareness creates transformation.

On any given sales team, you'll notice there are those who always feature at the top of the leaderboard- these are your "sales hunters". They are the ones who are highly focused upon the "hunt-shoot-kill" modality of sales and tend to be the sought-after favorite for sales managers and team leaders. Sales hunters have a serious drawback though... no follow-up. They aren't relationship builders, they're short-lived charmers. They know what to say to a particular individual to get the sale and then move on to the next. They listen to craft a response without really paying attention to the needs being expressed. Because of their sheer numbers, they hit their quotas, but they rarely bring in referrals or repeat business because there's no relationship being built. They leave the relationship to customer service- from their perspective, it's not their job.

The other side of any given sales team are the ones who rarely, if ever, feature on the leaderboard. They appear to be less focused, less motivated, and less driven than the sales hunters, spend more time with each person they speak with, go off script or refuse scripts in general, and tend to be softer spoken, even shy at times. These are your "sales matchers". Sales matchers have an incredible strength though- they build and maintain strong relationships. This results in referrals, repeat business, and customers/clients who are intensely loyal. Sales matchers listen to truly listen and problem-solve with the person they're speaking with. They identify a need and match their solution to that need. It's either a win-win for the matcher, or it's a no, and they'll be the first one to say no to the customer, that it isn't a fit but here is what could be, and make a referral to a different product/service. This creates intense loyalty and avid referral partners.

To clear up the biggest misconception with matchers, it's important to know that they aren't less focused, motivated, or driven than the hunters, they are simply different. Here's a comparison on those factors between hunters and matchers:

Focus:

Hunters- get the YES and close the deal

Matchers- understand the need and problem solve

Motivation:

Hunters- money and winning

Matchers- positive impact and making a difference

Drive:

Hunters- competition and reward

Matchers- collaboration and being accepted (not spotlighted)

As you can see, there's a huge difference between these two types and managers/team leaders are traditionally trained to look for, recruit, and retain the hunters and train, motivate, and reward to the hunter's mentality.

So what happens when you treat a matcher like a hunter?

A matcher has many sales strengths but they have a very different process.

• Hunter scripts don't feel natural to them so they chuck them out and make their own.
• They won't be motivated by your typical tactics so when the day is started by driving your hunters into a frenzy, your matchers are actually demotivated and made to feel like they don't fit, aren't accepted, and it creates a block in their ability to reach out to others as openly as they would naturally because you've actually just activated their deepest fears of personal rejection.
• They are repelled by competition and actually prefer not to be spotlighted. They want to collaborate and be part of a team where everyone is accepted as an equal. They want to learn and grow together. The hunter drive tactics of competition and reward make them feel isolated and unaccepted and when they do have a big win and are spotlighted, this rejection is felt even more deeply because they know the acceptance was about the perceived win and not for serving in the way they want to serve, by making a positive impact.

Ultimately, the sales hunter environment becomes a toxic culture for the sales matcher and they'll move on to a different company, hoping for better, and if they don't find it, they'll end up leaving sales altogether. This is a shame because the sales matcher's skills are much more effective than the sales hunter's, especially long-term, but those skills have to be cultivated by the right environment that supports their strengths and leads them through understanding and addressing the blocks that hold them back.

Remember that Productive Flow is created from your personal expression of Emotion-Energy-Time-Focus. See previous issues of this newsletter for more details on Productive Flow. By adjusting these four elements, you can adjust your entire flow and become as productive and efficient as you like. When a sales matcher is in a sales hunter environment, this affects all four elements negatively and they end up stuck in negative emotional loops, lack energy to fulfill their daily obligations and responsibilities, find it near impossible to manage their time, and are constantly distracted by anything that will take them away from facing the thing that keeps them stuck- sales from the perspective of the hunter.

So, how about you? Are you a sales matcher? If you think you may be, grab your TOP 10 LIST of TELL TALE SIGNS you are definitely a "Sales Matcher" and what to do to grow your business and achieve your end goals when all those traditional sales and productivity training/tactics have left you feeling overwhelmed, disorganized, and stressed-out.

Are you leading a sales team? If so, did you know that sales training has been operating in the same way, using the same tactics since the 1950's? That was a very different world back then and society has evolved along with our awareness of the importance of company culture, emotionally supportive environments, and continuing education that helps us serve our clients/customers from a space of authenticity and integrity. Your sales matchers know this, operate from this space, and are ready to show up and serve. Are you prepared to serve them and support them in achieving their biggest goals? What would happen if you created an environment through training, focus, motivation, and drive that supported the matchers? How do you think this would improve your sales numbers and retention of sales team members? How would this improve your customer relationships and loyalty? I have just the thing to help you figure this all out... I'm now offering a free Sales Team Audit session one-to-one with me. During this audit, I'll analyze your sales team's strengths and weaknesses to create a customized plan that's tailored to your team's unique needs.

Don't wait, schedule your free sales team audit now and let's get started on your journey towards whole team success and retention of the top talent you didn't even realize you had.

Please be sure to comment below and let me know your thoughts and please share this edition of Discover Natural Productivity if you found it interesting and/or insightful and subscribe (if you haven't already).