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The Critical Factor In Consistent Sales Success! By Virden J. Thornton
- Abraham Lincoln - I have recognized for years that I could teach and then drill selling skills into a promising sales representative and could help my client to create a climate for self-motivation and yet some representatives with extremely high potential for success still would fail at the selling process. To combat this unpredictable failure, I often have counseled clients to hire two representatives to end up with one good one or three to get two. Even though I believed that a new sales person would do well as long as he had been given the right selling and prospecting tools and the motivation to spur him into action, often I saw perfectly capable employees leave the selling profession, simply because of a missing ingredient. I couldn’t quite put my finger on the elusive success component, but I did feel it had something to do with an individual’s achievement drive. That’s why I initially created the Getting An Edge workshop and self-administered reinforcement series of the same name (Please see http://thesellingedge.com/manual2.htm)
After
watching good people fail, I
sensed that there was a
missing factor in our sales
training. Now research by Dr.
Kevin Celuch, professor of
Marketing at Illinois State
University, has not only
identified and clarified the critical
ingredient to sales
success, but he has made some
vital suggestions on how to
instill this factor into
individual sales
representatives.
Dr. Celuch’s has analyzed*
166 previous studies that had
been completed on selling
success. In his research he
found that even with all of
the vital selling skills in
place and a motivational
climate within a given
company, a sales
representative or service
professional will often fail
due to what Celuch refers to
as “a vital mediating
factor” between a sales
person’s selling skills and
motivation. This mediating
factor, is a
sales person’s own
self-esteem. Celuch’s
study shows an extremely low
correlation between sales
success on one hand and a
sales representative’s
aptitude, sales techniques, organizational skill and
motivation factors on the
other. Across a long list of
diverse selling activities
and abilities, the
real indicator of selling
success found in the Celuch
study was a sales
professional’s perceived
self-efficacy. A “belief
in oneself” was Dr. Celuch’s
explanation for a salesperson’s
behavior and performance
levels. He found that self-belief
was the
critical
intermediary
between
a sales representative’s
knowledge and the
professional’s behavior. It is interesting that a gut feeling that I have had about sales success for the past 17 years has finally been proven by research. Achievement drive, the self-esteem that drives achievement, is critical to your company’s overall selling success. Those of you that use testing before hiring new sales associates should make certain that this critical factor is assessed by your tests and weighted heavily as you make decisions regarding those that you hire. For those sales representatives already in place, you need to assess your programs for helping the employees crucial to the overall success of your organization to maintain and consistently improve their feelings of self-worth. The manual listed in the first paragraph can help anyone to alter negative feelings and attain a personal belief levels that will produce consistent sales success. * Source: Kevin Celuch, Illinois Stale University. Based on "Perceived Self-Efficacy and Salesperson Performance," presented to Pi Sigma Epsilon research fraternity convention.
VIRDEN THORNTON is the founder and President of The $elling Edge®, Inc. a firm specializing in sales, customer relations, and management training and development. Clients have included Sears Optical, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Deloitte & Touché, Bank One, Jefferson Pilot, and Wal-Mart to name a few. Virden is the author of Prospecting: The Key To Sales Success and the best selling Building & Closing the Sale, Fifty-Minute series books and Close That Sale, a video/audio tape series published by Crisp Publications, Inc. Menlo Park, California. He has also authored a Self-Directed Learning series of sales, coaching & team development, telemarketing, and personal productivity training guides. To obtain a substantial discount on two of Virden's new manuals, 101 Sales Myths and Organizing For Sales Success, just click on either of the titles above.
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