Sales Success: It’s Hard Work

Sales Managers need talented teams that can consistently deliver sales results. One way the sales manager can achieve this is to ensure the sales team receive regular sales training. But in selling, talent, however well developed by training, is no substitute for hard work. This article discusses a survey on the factors that make salespeople successful.

The reasons behind success or failure for those in a sales position have been investigated many times. As a rule, these surveys ask questions about factors like motivation, understanding of the sales job, closeness to the company, the amount of sales training received and the quality of the leadership provided by management. Until now, no one has answered the closely associated question as to whether the sales person who works harder than his or her colleagues is also more successful than them. This was the back ground to an American research project, which studied 380 salespeople in the durable consumer goods line. The study assessed five factors in sales success, namely:

1. Competitiveness. A successful salesperson derives pleasure from competition with others and wants to win.
2. Self motivation. A successful salesperson works completely independently and has the ability to constantly motivate himself afresh.
3. The conflicts of a career in selling. It is only human to have doubts sometimes about the purpose of one’s chosen career. For the salesperson it is a question of how moral it is to convince or persuade the client to buy the product or service they are selling.
4. The conflict of roles. Every sales person has negative experiences almost every day. A pronounced conflict of roles leads to fewer customers being visited in order to have fewer negative experiences.
5. The effort made by the salesperson.The amount of hard work and tenacity exhibited.

In each of the factors surveyed positive and negative factors work together and influence each other.For example, competitiveness and self motivations correlate or influence each other by 65%, the conflicts of a career in sales and conflict of roles, by 51%. Thus, both the desirable and undesirable factors usually occur together in any sales person.

The first conclusion from the survey was that motivated sales people who are competitive have fewer problems than their colleagues. In the survey there was a clear negative correlation between competitiveness / self motivation and the conflicts of a career in selling (-22% and –29%). This means that motivated salespeople who take a pleasure in competing have fewer problems in their sales careers.

Whether a sales person puts more effort into their job than their colleagues depends on their ability to motivate themselves. In the end the success of a sales person is determined by two factors.The first factor is the effort the sales person makes (62%), the second success factor is their competitiveness (15%).

It is interesting to note that there is no direct connection between a sales person’s success and their satisfaction. Whether a field salesperson is satisfied with their career is entirely dependent on them not being plagued by too many problems of conflicting roles and on them making an effort.

From these results we can make two recommendations for sales managers:

1. When recruiting new sales people, pay particular attention to their competitiveness. People with a “fighting mentality” will be more successful in a sales role.
2. Be strict about the way your salespeople work by, for example, setting them a certain number of customer visits each month. Salespeople who put effort into doing the right things regularly generate sales and will be more successful. In selling there is a simple truth, which is that “nothing will come of nothing!” Salespeople and Sales Managers who really put themselves out will be successful. As a Sales Manager you can provide sales training to enhance your salespeoples selling skills and manage your people so that they put effort into putting these techniques into practice.

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