A scientific proven actions that drives high sales performance
Recently, I had the opportunity to speak at the Citi Business Festival’s Sales Revolution programme. One of the significant discoveries among the more than 100 sales professionals was the challenge in achieving their sales goals.
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Whereas majority of them believed that their sales targets were UNREALISTIC, others were of the opinion that their management did not provide adequate logistics, as well as motivation to support them in achieving the targets.
And here is the big thing: less than 10 per cent of them said they had been able to achieve their sales targets in the last quarter.
Shocked? I’m not at all. As a sales leader, I’m sure you are also not surprised at these reasons for not achieving targets. Particularly, there are some salespeople on your team who appear to complain about everything and anything.
Apart from complaining about the UNREALISTIC sales target, they complain their basic or commission rate is low. They blame their non-performance on the bad economy, the depreciation of the cedi is killing businesses and customers don’t know us so we need to advertise etc. And the list never ends.
The importance of growth mindset
The importance of the right mindset of salespeople should not be underestimated by sales leaders. As a matter of fact, 80 per cent of the performance of your salespeople is attributed to mindset and 20 per cent to sales skills.
Your salespeople believing that the sales target is UNREALISTIC, is a function of their mindset. One of the critical mindsets required by sales organisation is to mitigate this threat and grow is what is called the growth mindset.
Propounded by Carol S. Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University through several studies, the theory of growth mindset provides a scientific evidence on how an individual’s mindset control their performance.Her studies concluded that people tend to adapt one of two common outlooks in life and your salespeople are no different.
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1. Fixed mindset – salespeople who believe they can do little to change their natural abilities and therefore not be able to achieve the UNREALISTIC sales target. To them intelligence is static and leads to a desire to LOOK SMART.
They have the tendency to avoid the challenges which arise in their selling activities, give up easily dues to obstacles such as objections and rejections, see effort such as embarking on training and/or working prospects through the sales pipeline as fruitless, ignore useful feedback from both prospects/customers and managers, and are threatened by other sales people’s success on the team.
2. Growth mindset – salespeople who believe that through effort they can improve their abilities and achieve the UNREALISTIC sales targets. To them intelligence can be developed which leads to a desire to LEARN everything they have to know in the sales profession to become masters.
They have the tendency to embrace challenges in their sales activities and in the market, persist despite obstacles such as customer objections and rejections, see effort as a path to mastery, learn from criticism and are inspired by others’ success.
In other words, salespeople with a growth mindset believe their skills can be developed through working hard and, therefore, much more likely to belong to the top 20 per cent of highly successful sales professionals. These findings debunk the commonly held myths in sales organisations that successful salespeople are ‘born’ and not ‘made’.
Implications for sales organisations
As evident, the two different mindsets can have tremendous impact on sales results of sales organisations because the results delivered by each are fundamentally different.Your salespeople with a growth mindset are more likely not to see the sales target as UNREALISTIC hence the higher probability in achieving it than those with a fixed mindset.
According to experts, one of the main reasons a growth mindset drives high achievement is because it alters how the brain perceives failure. Those with fixed mindsets are more prone to see failure as a judgment on themselves.If they fail, they feel like failures.In contrast, people with a growth mindset view failure as the feedback that shows them how to adapt and take their abilities to the next level.
Conclusion
Salespeople on our sales team who have a fixed mindset can be very detrimental to team engagement and organisational performance. They create a negative environment—full of complaints and stress. They are known for their ability to persuade other team members to sympathise with their negativity and helpless approach. On the contrary, salespeople with a growth mindset will help you build a culture of excellence and performance to ensure that sales revenue targets are achieved. — GB