Episode #162: Salesperson Bitchiness

Sales is a tough enough job without having additional complications. Clients can be very demanding, often we depend on logistics departments and production divisions, to get the purchase to the buyer. We can’t control the quality, but we have total responsibility, as far as the client is concerned. There is the constant pressure of producing revenue results, with bosses always pushing hard on the numbers.

If we are successful and we are doing well, you would think that life would be good. Fat chance of that. We know the emotional roller coaster that is the sales life and you are only ever as good as your last deal. Perhaps with a little bit of success should come some respite from the turmoil of hitting the numbers. I hate to break this to you, but no such luck!

Our sales colleagues, by definition, cannot all be equally successful. The Pareto Principle says that the top 20% of salespeople will account for 80% of the revenue numbers and commissions. So that means the other 80% of the team are scrambling around for the remaining 20% of the sales. People come into sales from different backgrounds, with different levels of experience, with degrees of motivation and they join at different points in the annual results cycle. This means that some will be in the top group, a chunk will be in the middle and the rest are at the bottom.

In the West, the usual way sales teams are managed is based on the Darwinian theory of the survival of the fittest. Those who can’t cut it are cut loose. Those who can continue to produce get to stay. If they can survive a couple of recessions, they may even be moved up into management positions. This means that those at the bottom are basically on their own. This should spur them on to greater efforts to move up the sales ranks and to strike for the top position in the sales results table. Yet often this doesn’t happen.

In Japan, most salespeople are on a salary and bonus structure, rather than salary and commission. Almost nobody is on 100% commission arrangements and nobody wants that type of sales structure. This means the financial ambition or necessity to get ahead in sales is not as strong as we see in the West. Often the base salaries are large by foreign standards and so people can live on the base.

In some cases, there can be pushback against the top salespeople, by those failing, because the successful are making everyone else look bad. Snide comments can be made, negative inferences drawn and a host of other petty signals that says “we don’t like you”. This is driven by spite, jealousy and envy. This is their “the way to build the tallest building in town is to tear down all the taller buildings” approach to greatness.

In a small sales team this can be very uncomfortable. There is a degree of mutual cooperation involved in sales teams and this is usually where the disputes arise. Who owns the client, who owns the deal, and how is the revenue commission going to be split up?

If the sales politicians in the firm get going, they can really do damage to the morale of the organisation. These people are usually excellent at whining, gathering whiners together and hosting whine parties. They use their energy to pull down those who are successful, instead of trying to become a success themselves.

When you are the top performer or if you are in the top ranks, you can feel you have become a target. Instead of just worrying about getting sales done, you now have to waste precious energy walking around on egg shells, to avoid criticism from your colleagues. This is all kept below the radar, so the boss is often unaware of what is really going on. However, in many cases they don’t care anyway. They are looking for numbers and they don’t want to have to deal with personalities and sales soap operas in the office.

If the bosses are any good, they would be sorting out the toxic few, but often they don’t. The top salespeople are razor focused on serving clients and doing all the hard yards needed to get the sale, so they are not politically minded. The whole mess gets made worse because in a declining demographic, many organisations are looking at their salesperson retain strategies. They do this because they know they cannot easily recruit enough salespeople replacements. This means the internal war goes on for much longer that it should. We lose sight of the external competition and fight amongst ourselves.

Bosses, hear me, sack the toxic! If you don’t, you will find the whole organisation will start failing as the wrong culture takes command. If you are one of the top salespeople, insulate and isolate yourself from the whiners. They don’t work as hard or as long, so there is plenty of opportunity to get to the work, without having to engage with them much. Winners start early and concentrate on their Golden Time between 9.00am-5.00pm on speaking with clients, not idiots in the office.

This Golden Time is reserved for client meetings and to create more business. All of the administrivia needs to be fitted in around those hours. Writing proposals, holding sales meetings, collecting data, putting together sales information, recording activities in the CRM, etc., are what happens outside of Golden Time. These days, thanks to technology, this can be done remotely.

Keep the time in the office with losers to an absolute minimum and protect yourself from their influence. Remember, you are superman or superwoman and they are kryptonite.