Do you expect to win every sale?
Your sales team is a DIRECT REFLECTION of your mindset - the way you think.
Do you play to win or not to lose? You either expect to win every sale or you don't and there are no shades of grey.
If you don't expect to win every sale then neither will your sales team.
If you don't expect to win every sale then you will hire the kind of salespeople who find it perfectly acceptable to lose.
If you don't expect to win every sale and you have a few sales superstars who do, they will leave for a sales team that expects to win.
After being in sales for over 30 years and in sales management for pushing 20, I have experienced a wide variety of management mindsets when it comes to sales hiring. I can engage a CEO and / or sales VP and pretty much immediately identify their mindset about winning and losing.
Nothing influences the quality of a sales team more than management's desire to win.
Those who expect to win every sale do whatever it takes to win.
Those who expect to win every sale hire the kind of salespeople who can win every sale. They carefully build their sales team over time - one precious salesperson at a time. Those who expect to win every sale do not rush sales hiring decisions just to fill open positions. Those who expect to win hire top sales talent and quickly remove low performers.
Those who expect to win build fast feedback data loops to identify sales talent and performance correlations. They use this information to incrementally improve their sales team.
Those who expect to win do not believe in guessing when it comes to sales hiring, onboarding, coaching, and retaining top sales talent. Those who expect to win treat the salespeople they have carefully chosen like the champions they have the potential to become.
If you expect to win every sale, you hire the kind of salespeople necessary to win every sale.
Are you hiring to win or hiring not to lose?
NOTHING impacts the sales hiring outcome more than the mindset of sales management and particularly the mindset of the CEO.
There are eight key sales management mindsets that separate those who hire to win from those who hire not to lose.
- Hope Not to Lose vs. Expect to Win - Those who expect to win do so by aligning everything to ensure they win. Those who expect to win play to win. Those who hope not to lose believe winning is based more on luck than preparation and as a result focus on minimizing losses rather than winning.
- Time to Hire vs. Quality of Sales Hire - Those who hire to win focus on quality of sales hire over time to hire. They put the necessary effort regardless of how long it takes to identify and hire the best sales talent possible. Those who hire not to lose focus on right now rather than right later.
- Turnover Costs vs. Lost Sales - Hiring to win focuses on hiring salespeople who get every sale. They know lost sales due to poor sales hires dwarfs turnover costs. Hiring not to lose focuses on reducing turnover costs.
- Gut Intuition vs Data Driven Sales Hiring - Hiring to win focuses on incremental improvement in sales hiring through data analysis while those who hire not to lose "save money" by using gut intuition.
- Low Compensation vs. Fair Compensation - Hiring to win focuses on hiring the best salespeople and compensating them fairly while those who hire not to lose use low sales compensation to weed out low performers that shouldn't have been hired in the first place.
- Low Accountability vs. Strong Accountability - Hiring to win focuses on taking responsibility for good and poor sales hires alike while hiring not to lose blames others and makes excuses for bad sales hires.
- Status Quo vs. Continuous Improvement - Hiring to win focuses on continuous improvement rather than protecting the status quo.
- Only Hire When Necessary vs. Always Hiring Quality Sales Talent - Hiring to win focuses on not just sales hiring needs in two weeks but more importantly sales hiring needs in one, three, and five years. You can't go broke selling at a profit with top quality sales talent.
Which mindset(s) do you and your sales team model?
Which mindset(s) require improvement?
Decide.
Your future is absolutely in your hands. Carefully consider your mindset. Where is your mindset getting in the way of success?
Inject objectivity into your sales hiring process. Learn from your sales hiring mistakes. Iteratively improve.
