Growth Dynamics Get Down

For the last few months, I have heard this line in one fashion or another from so many salespeople that I think I want to scream. It is not just this line that is the problem, but the rest of the conversation that revolves around that it makes no sense to make sales calls because prospects are going to ask for the items that are not available. In other words, selling is at a standstill because back orders are everywhere, and salespeople cannot change that reality.

As the calendar hits mid-June and I can hear the kids in the neighborhood celebrate the last day of the school year I ponder what they learned about life as well as their scholastic advancement. Those ideas provoke thoughts about what salespeople learn from one year to the next, or are they just repeating their earliest days in sales over and over, not really growing from the experiences along the way. So often when I am working with a sales team someone will complain about a prospect that will not return a call or a customer that expects to buy everything at the lowest possible price. Inevitably someone says that is just the way sales is and that complaining never makes it different. In other words, just live with it because that stuff just goes with the territory.

Why Hiring Is Still a Challenge When There is Talent Available?

The pandemic is not necessarily a negative impact event, particularly if you are looking for quality sales talent to add to or upgrade your sales team. With many employers downsizing or “smart-sizing” during the Covid impacted economy, there are quality professionals looking for new places to go to work. Bad things happen to good people, and that is particularly true as we head into the new year as some people have been caught in circumstances beyond their control and find themselves suddenly unemployed. Now just might be the right time to start hiring, but it is not the right time to hire poorly and just add bodies to the roster.

Yes, you read that right. Ditch the To Do List in 2021. Seriously, those anchors of personal productivity are more trouble than they are worth. The intentions are all good, and the trusty old To Do List is better than nothing, but honestly, they are not worth the hundreds of tablets you have them written on. Do yourself a favor and stop creating To Do Lists.

Complacency. Taking things for granted. Feeling entitled.

I am prepared for lots of pushback on this post, so please feel no hesitation in reacting positively or negatively to my thoughts on this topic.

For the last 36 months the booming economy delivered record growth and profits for many sales organizations. That growth also created a challenge that virtually every sales organization had no success in overcoming: a lack of qualified sales talent to capture the available opportunities. The constant refrain of “where can I get some more salespeople” was heard coast to coast and there seemed to be no reliable answer. As typically happens in that business environment, sales leadership quit asking for good salespeople and settled for any available body that could walk, chew gum, and hand out product literature. The recycling of poor to mediocre talent that could get overpaid for their production became acceptable as sales managers were afraid of reporting that all the territories were not being covered. The high tide floated all ships, even those that were rusted out or never really proved sea worthiness.

I have been negligent this past week about creating a Positive Moment post. The thick of thin things seemed to capture me and overcome my commitment for some reason. Maybe it was the pressure of coming up with an idea or analogy every single day that finally took me down. I just know I could not find the focus to sit and type.

Another short message today as I have had two of my favorite people connect with me and catch up.

Well, we have all been dealing with this pandemic situation for about 50 days now, and I know we are all going crazy with the varying degrees of self-isolation. It does suck, and it is OK to go ahead and admit it. There is nothing like being free to go where you want to go when you want to go, and most of us never realized it until we could not exercise that freedom. But here we all are, still existing in this state of uncertainty and not knowing when the world will be less scary or intimidating.