One morning, I was having a conversation with a good client. He was telling me how their company’s strategy was about to change as the CEO had just read a new book and felt its premise needed to be adopted.
Later in the day, I was talking to another client, a client I hadn’t worked with for many years who now is with a new organization. I was doing my usual thing, asking questions about his current employer, what their sales philosophies and strategies were etcetera. My client’s response, “Have you read the book by so and so?”
I chuckled. My client asked, “why are you chuckling?”
The answer, I told him, was that if I had a dollar for every time a client, student or prospect said to me, “Have you read the sales book by so and so”, I would be very wealthy.
In the first instance, my client’s statement was not delivered with a positive tone. “Our CEO is very big on the such and such selling method based on the book he just read and, we are therefore changing our go to market direction”.
Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of good, even great books, blogs, and white papers, etc., that offer meaningful and insightful information on how to improve a sales force.
The problem is, most people seldom pick one alone.
I have found two types of “sales book readers”.
The first group is best represented by a CEO we’ll call John Doe. John is a prolific “book reader”. He is vocal about what he’s read, what he’s reading and about his conclusions and insights from those efforts.
John is a book of the month kind of person. John lacks – but probably doesn’t know it – a true conviction or vision when it comes to building a sales team, and more importantly, enabling a sales team.
John changes strategy and tactics regularly, seldom giving any one process the time necessary to prove successful or not. At a deep down level, John doesn’t feel confident in his vision to achieve a desired goal. In this quest to find “the answer”, John is susceptible and vulnerable to outside opinion. He is quick to drink the Kool Aid from almost any source.
John is easily “sold” on why he needs to change things up, why he needs to re-organize his sales team, and/or their “go to market” strategy.
Likely due to a lack of experience, John doesn’t possess the conviction and wisdom necessary to truly believe in holding a course of action or focusing on execution.
The second group is best exemplified by a client we’ll call Robert. He has a voracious appetite for sales and management books. Robert regularly posts up-dates on what he’s read, what he’s reading or what he’s about to read.
Robert is an aggregator. He reads and absorbs and sometimes quotes, but unlike John, Robert maintains a consistent vision and ethos about how he approaches sales and managing sales people.
What it comes down to in both cases is sliced bread. Yes, sliced bread.
John constantly searches for outside influence or input, all in the hope of discovering the next “best piece of sliced bread”.
Robert knows that the old adage, “the best thing since sliced bread” is just that, an adage. Robert is resolute and stalwartly in his management convictions and rarely makes radical changes in how he directs his sales force.
What Robert does do is hone and adjust his direction and strategies based on the influence of what he’s read, or what he he’s been exposed to. His continuing education if you will, is about augmenting his skills and best practices, evolving his vision and abilities rather than executing an about face every time he is introduced to a new strategy or methodology.
Changing a sales culture is much like changing the direction of a super tanker. It takes time, space and energy, but it also takes conviction to execute. Most importantly, it takes commitment born of confidence to see it through.
There are lots of good sales books and resources and a manager should always be open and curious, but good managers should only ever be influenced by out side sources.
Really, it’s just like the old adage. “Listen to your banker, your lawyer and your accountant. Then, do what you think is best”.