5 Rules For Building A Successful Sales Team

At the risk of offending many people, let me offer my 5 rules for selling and building a selling environment:

1) "Everyone Sells"

You need to realize that, in your organization, everyone represents your company in the many touch points you have with your market. This goes well beyond business development and deal closing. An organization that doesn't realize this immediately, turns great sales people into good sales people. This is because the company can work against them without intending to or even realizing it. You can't stop a great sales person from being successful, but you can prevent them from being great.

2) Ignore "Proven" Sales Methodologies

Stop reading and practicing "proven" sales methodologies. There is no silver bullet. Sales is about relationships and relationships are highly personalized (not generic). You can't just follow a bunch of steps or check off a bunch of boxes and expect sales to just happen. It doesn't work like that. The only sales people getting rich in that scenario are the ones selling you the methodologies and books.

3) More People Suck At Sales, Than Don't.

There are a lot more sales people out there than there should be. Unfortunately that has skewed our expectations. A lot of people go into sales because they think it's easy. It's not. You can't "wing it". Many sales people do just that and this is why there are a lot of mediocre and bad sales people. Mostly, they go into sales for the wrong reason and it shows.

The economy is proving this, although we haven't "come to Jesus" on the topic yet. Any idiot can sell in a booming economy - as a matter of fact, many have. This leads to a false sense of talent and skill. If demand is great or the product "sells itself", then you are not selling. You are order taking and calling it sales. Great sales people can sell in every economy. In rough economies, only the great sales people survive. Right now, we are going through a much needed cleansing. It's the universe's way of telling you whether or not you should be in sales.

4) Get Non-Sales People Out Of The Hiring Process

If you don't have a sales background (and have been successful at it), then you have no business interviewing or hiring sale people. You won't be able to tell the difference between good and bad sales people and you will wind up hiring all of the bad ones.

If you don't have a sales background, you probably know and trust someone who does. Have them interview the first candidate or too for you. Once you have someone on staff that you know is good and can trust, you'll be fine.

5) Great Sales People Are Born.

Anyone can become a sales person and even become a good sales person. However, great sales people are born with certain natural talents that set them apart. Success in sales requires certain talents and skills.

Talents are things that you are born with and skills are things that you learn (I'll credit Marcus Buckingham with that). Different selling environments have different talent and skill requirements. So, once again, there is not one recipe for success (sorry for the inconvenience!).

The main difference is that the things that make a sales person great are typically things that they do naturally. They didn't have to learn them. It's in their nature (again: Buckingham). Sure you can emulate a great sales person and learn what it is that they do, however, you will have to work at those things a lot harder than they do (again, because to them it comes naturally). Therefore, they will have an easier time, enjoy their work more, and ultimately see greater success in what seems to be less of an effort.

All of these points are debatable, and I realize that some are politically incorrect. However, nature knows no such correctness (and for good reason) and these are merely my opinion.

Thanks for reading.