Episode #126: Hustle

We need “good hustle” from our salespeople. Not “hustle” in the sense of tricking clients into arrangements to secure a big commission or a fat bonus. “Good hustle” is about focus on getting commitments from buyers to proceed, that will benefit the buyer, because it will improve their business. This is usually not about long-term massive interventions but about the practical improvements that can be executed quickly, that produce an immediate outcome. Getting the client to that point of agreement requires energy, lots of energy.

That energy is needed to make the phone calls to follow up on leads which come through to the website, from advertising, ad word campaigns, social media outreach etc. Also, contacting potential clients we have met at networking events, seeking referral clients and selecting prospective clients to be contacted through cold calling. What is needed is meet, propose, meet, follow up, meet, gain commitment, follow up, follow up and further follow up.

Clients need more consulting skills from salespeople than ever before and that requires intelligence, analytic ability and clarity. The reality is we need smart people who can hustle. They are motivated to serve the client and are equally motivated to sift through a lot of potential clients, until they find a good match for the client need with their company’s services.

Sales demands a huge amount of internal motivation and hustle energy. You cannot inject the latter into staff; they have to produce it themselves. Dilettante as a descriptor has come to have a pejorative nuance to it, but it does describe a lot of smart people in sales. They are cultivating an area of interest in sales without the real commitment. They typically seek the big transaction, the killer deal that breaks all the records. They want to start at the top and work their way up from there.

It is a dilemma – balancing the needs of smart people with the reality that unglamorous work is the core basis for sales success. If we get it wrong, we pay a double penalty – they don’t produce fast enough and when they leave in frustration, we have to start again and find their replacement.

So when selecting sales people for the team, it is absolutely necessary that we find that right balance between big strategic thinking and “good hustle”, between macro and micro skill sets and between textbook smart and street smart.