Growth Dynamics Get Down

The pursuit of understanding oneself is at the core of the human experience, and people today are no exception to the desire to self-actualize. Personality psychology is one of the fastest-growing fields of psychology today, and social psychologists have branched out from academia to become a permanent part of the corporate workforce worldwide.

Symptoms:

Julie felt conflicted as she listened to the other members of the sales team talk about how they were going to spend the big commissions everyone was earning this quarter. The sales managers created a program that paid bonus dollars to everyone’s comp plan if they sold the base products and three or more add-ons to at least 50% of their customers for this quarter. The payoffs added potentially 50% to the average commission for anyone that made the extra effort. Julie was not troubled by the amount of money on the table, but she was troubled by the way a few of the top producers were willing to take advantage of some of their customers to qualify for the extra pay. It seemed to Julie that these people were crossing the line, and to her that was greedy and perhaps unethical. Of course, she wanted the extra money, but Julie felt like life was good and that the incentive was nice, but not all that motivating.

Symptoms:

Ruben was excited about the call he just finished with the Facilities Manager at a school in his territory. The situation was a perfect fit for his company's new line of industrial faucets. Plus, the Facilities Manager told him the hardware needed to be installed ASAP or the school would face a fine from the local building inspector. Ruben couldn't help but feel this was one of those sales that all salespeople dream about, a prospect that had to buy right now and they had to buy a product Ruben could deliver. And when the timeline was ASAP, Ruben thought this was going to be a quick and painless sale. So, six weeks later, why was he still wondering when the PO was going to show up in his inbox?

Symptoms:

“The weather is changing; flowers and trees are popping out and I am exactly the same” thought Sam. Sam has been in sales for her entire career. She knows she does well enough as she has climbed the ranks through various companies, but she tends to plateau with medium accounts. Sam has yet to earn some of the major accounts and or territories that make salespeople’s careers. She has always been one to read all the top business books, listen to podcasts every chance she got, attends conferences, and even enrolled in a few training classes that promised to help her reach the next level, but nothing ever changed, despite putting all the things she learned into practice immediately. Sam felt ready to make some significant life changes on her own and earning more commissions would make it all possible. Now, she really wanted to see if it was her turn to be one of the big-time players.

How many accountants do you know that can offer to take a few hours out of their day to be a guest on a podcast? That should tell you a little bit about our guest Corey Talone on this episode of Charlie & Company Talk Business, Life and Everything else.

Symptoms:

Forget desperate housewives. What really scares buyers are desperate salespeople. How many times have you run into a salesperson that is not in sales for the love of the game, or to be the best at what they do? They act as if they need a sale to pay their bookie by Friday! Buyers have come to loathe this fast talking, pushy pitchman stereotype.

On Monday, my kids went back to school full time. Normal school, or well, as normal as school can be when everyone is still masked up, spaced out and limited interaction with friends.

Symptoms:

“Here we go again,” Jim thought as he walked into his last call of the day. He always scheduled this monthly call to be the last of his day as it left him annoyed, angry, and confused when he walked out the door. Jim just could not create the type of relationship with this business owner that he felt was key to his success with other clients. There were never issues with products, pricing, or communications from Jim, his agency, or the manufacturers, but these monthly update and prospecting meetings always ended up making Jim feel like a complete failure. Jim’s positive, enthusiastic, and lighthearted approach obviously missed the mark with this client, and Jim was sure the client disliked the meetings as much as he did.

The article below comes from our Objective Management Group Partner Dave Kurlan. If you have any questions about OMG and the assessment and evaluation tools utilize through them please contact us talk about your questions.