Watch the morning coffee clutch gather for their morning ritual. Try to listen in to what the tone of the day is going to be. Are they focused in on trying to solve the world’s political problems? Maybe the tone will be centered on global warming, or the price of oil? There’s always that center-of-attention person trying to steer the conversation towards what’s not happening rather than what is happening.
If you were to observe the attention grabbing lieutenant you might be able to see the driving force behind his/her failures. Generally speaking, the disruption in the mental psyche of the staff is at the provocation of this person. Noticeably missing from this collective group of disenchanted mourners is the top producer. Coincidentally, the top producer is busy working at his/her game-plan for the day. They’re following up on unsold customers, greeting existing customers in the service drive, mailing out thank you cards, sending intelligent and engaging emails and constantly working their managing the client pipeline. Truth be told, they don’t have the time to sit around and talk about world issues.
The remainder of the staff that support the coffee clutch group generally make up the bottom third of sales. Those under-achievers wonder why top producers stay at the top and consistently make more money. Some are content watching sales being conducted around them while they ponder why no customers’ are walking through their front door.
The common misnomer is the top-tier sales producer seems to be lucky. It’s no wonder the elite appear be in the right place, they put themselves in that position. They’re not off smoking cigarettes, on an endless coffee break, running errands or conveniently unavailable when a challenging customer arrives.
The intellectual cancer that metastasized needs to be managed. The severity of the destructive behavior dictates the treatment be swift.
Surrounding your salespeople with positive productive people is essential to a successful sales environment. In every sales environment there are the “outliers”, that is the small group usually consisting of one to two people who are on the edge of greatness. The outliers want to be great, they think there is a possibility of greatness but, they just haven’t experienced success yet. The outliers haven’t been poisoned yet but there’s potential to be misdirected by the masses to be mediocre. These are the people we need to redirect and save from the mundane.
In the end, it’s the mood of the coffee clutch that tells you what’s happening in and around a sales environment. If the tension is transparent to leadership then one can only imagine what the customer is likely to feel and see. Don’t allow the undercurrent of the coffee clutch to affect the performance. Work to disrupt the course of the scheduled meeting by offering constructive solutions to downtime. Disrupt the mental conditioning being created by giving the group a list of tasks to promote intellectual stimulation.
A lot of great leaders have said that enthusiasm was the single most important ingredient to their achievement and success. Enthusiasm then is at the very epicenter of selling success. Values such as; persistence, work-ethics, effort and other attributes contribute to massive and consistent success.
Surround the sales environment with those individuals that have high expectations and inspire superior performance through the daily activities.
Live good, be strong in your convictions and make it happen!
This is a great post thannks