How many times have you read or somebody told you that you only achieve mastery in your field until you’ve done it for 10,000 hours? It’s not true. And if you’re hoping that I’m going to share five secret ways you can shortcut it, sorry, I’m not.
10,000 hours is actually a good baseline number of hours to mastery. But as Daniel Goleman discusses in his book Focus, The Hidden Driver of Excellence (order it here, I highly recommend it Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence) it’s not good enough to do something for 10,000 hours. If you study the research behind that 10,000 hour number you’ll find that it is 10,000 hours of doing it with coaching. Doing something badly for hours upon hours will only lead to more poor performance. Doing something badly with a coach there to monitor and correct: that’s what leads to growth. Practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect.
The implications for sales leaders are profound. As a sales leader it's not just your responsibility, it's an occupational imperative that you ride (or Zoom) along with your salespeople on sales calls. And more than just jump in the car or on the Zoom call and watch (or even worse, take over) sales calls, the feedback you provide is critical. Three simple questions to ask yourself as you ride along (okay, each question has questions, shoot me):
1) How did the salesperson open the call? Were they succinct in stating their goal for the meeting, or did they wander around for five minutes in small talk?
2) Did they show genuine curiosity with a plan? Were their CNA questions well researched and well asked? Did they listen filterlessly?(more on that weird word in a different blog post) Did they take good notes?
3) When they presented did fill the room with their confidence? Did they know their material? Were they able to reset the situation analysis for the client well? Did they identify a SMART objective for their campaign or solution? Was their solution compelling? Did they ask for the order? If the answer wasn’t yes or no, did they contract for next steps with the client?
Your industry is counting on you to lead your salespeople to mastery. They can’t get there on their own. I only single out these client facing functions because I think this is where we fail our salespeople the most. But it happens in 1:1s, too. If you find yourself clicking boxes on your CRM with your AE and calling it good, you’re not leading. 1:1s need to be interrogations about their clients, their funnels, where they get stuck in the process. Sales is an iterative learning process. You only learn by doing in sales. So 1:1s need to be full-contacts practices.
Now get out there and do it!
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