What’s Inside Top Performing Sales People

What is it that motivates humans to take action? What is the source of their desire to become involved in or to avoid certain activities? What motivates humans to do what they do?

The answer to being effective, satisfied and personally fulfilled lies deep within a unique set of personal interests, attitudes and values.

Defining Attitudes

In 1928, Eduard Spranger wrote “Types of Men.” In it he identified six major attitudes or worldviews. These attitudes are windows through which we view the world and seek fulfillment in our lives. If we are participating in a discussion, activity or career that is in alignment with our attitudes, we will value the experience and excel. Conversely, if we are in a conversation, activity or career that is in conflict with our dominant attitudes, we will be indifferent or even negative toward the experience, possibly causing stress.

The Six Attitudes

Theoretical: The primary drive with this value is the discovery of TRUTH. In pursuit of this value, an individual takes a cognitive or intellectual attitude. Since the interests of the theoretical person are empirical, critical and rational, the person appears to be an intellectual. The chief aim of this attitude in life is to order and systematize knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

Utilitarian: The Utilitarian attitude is a characteristic interest in money and what is useful. An individual with a high Utilitarian attitude wants to have the security that money brings not only for themselves, but for their present and future family. This value includes the practical affairs of the business world - the production, marketing and consumption of goods, the use of credit, and the accumulation of tangible wealth. This type of individual is thoroughly practical and conforms well to the stereotype of the average American business person. A person with a high Utilitarian score is likely to have a high need to surpass others in wealth.

Aesthetic: A higher Aesthetic score indicates a relative interest in “form and harmony.” Each experience is judged from the standpoint of grace, symmetry or fitness. Life may be regarded as a procession of events, and each is enjoyed for its own sake. A high score here does not necessarily mean that the individual has talents in creative artistry. It indicates a primary interest in the artistic episodes of life.

Social: Those who score very high in this value have an inherent love of people. The social person prizes other people and is, therefore, kind, sympathetic and unselfish. They are likely to find the Theoretical, Utilitarian and Aesthetic attitudes cold and inhuman. Compared to the Individualistic value, the Social person regards helping others as the only suitable form for human relationships. Research into this value indicates that in its purest form, the Social interest is selfless.

Individualistic: The primary interest for this value is POWER, not necessarily politics. Research studies indicate that leaders in most fields have a high power value. Since competition and struggle play a large part in all areas of life, many philosophers have seen power as the most universal and most fundamental of motives. There are, however, certain personalities in whom the desire for direct expression of this motive is uppermost; who wish, above all, for personal power, influence and renown.

Traditional: The highest interest for this value may be called “unity,” “order,” or “tradition.” Individuals with high scores in this value seek a system for living. This system can be found in such things as religion, conservatism or any authority that has defined rules, regulations and principles for living.

In a ground breaking study Bill Bonnstetter, President of Target Training International, Ltd. in Scottsdale, Arizona and Frank Scheelen of the The Scheelen Institute, Waldshut-Tiengen, Germany confirmed that (1) top performing sales people around the world are similar and (2) that attitudes or motivations are more important than behavioral style or personality.

In this study participants were given two validated psychometric assessments: (1) the DISC - a behavioral style analysis or personality assessment and (2) the PIAV - a Personal Interest, Values and Attitude assessment.

In this study they concluded that most if not all personality types can sell. However, the most remarkable aspect of their study was the fact that seventy-one (71) percent of the top performing salespeople in 492 companies in Germany and 178 companies in the United States had Ultilitarian motivation as their top motivator. The conclusion from this study is that when it comes to top performing sales people motivation is more important than personality hands down.

According to accepted neuroscience, we have three brains: our brain stem, which controls motor function, our limbic or emotional brain and our neo cortex or rational thinking brain.

Our limbic, emotional brain, which is some 400 million years older than our neo cortex is primitive. Its purpose is to ensure survival, and all the complicated emotions and behaviors that survival implies. It is here that our basest of instincts thrive: sex, fury, fight. It is short term oriented, visual, concrete and self centered, and it is not designed to deal with abstract, complex concepts and ideas.

Ruled by the limbic brain, our ancestors were obsessed with consuming vital resources to keep them alive. They were consumption oriented not savings oriented. They were short term, immediate gratification oriented. They never thought about storing and saving because they never knew if they were going to survive from one day to the next. Consequently, they consumed not saved.

According to Robert Trivers, an evolutionary biologist at Rutgers University, “There isn’t necessarily a stop mechanism in us that says, Relax, you’ve got enough. We’ve evolved to be maximizing machines.”

For our ancestors the best way to save for the future was to consume now. Eating as much as they could, whenever they could, they were able to store extra calories in their bodies, in the hopes that this would carry them through any lean times that lay ahead.

This ancestrally dominated mindset has created many modern day problems: the tendency to spend and consume without any regard to the long term consequences, the addiction to instant gratification and the rejection of self denial and sacrifice, lack of patience and civility in society, micro term decision making by business and political leaders and on and on and on.

According to some Evolutionary Psychologists, our thinking, analytical, neo cortex brain has not evolved to keep pace with our complex, break neck speed society. Consequently, we are trying to cope in a complicated, frenetic world by using a brain that was designed to deal with much more basic human needs.

If our rational, analytical, thinking neo-cortex were truly in charge of our behavior we would engage in rational, intelligent, and civilized ways, but one does not have to look far to see the consequences of a society void of rational thought and dominated by the short term, emotionally motivated limbic brain.

Next time you make a decision, any decision, ask yourself is this a thoroughly planned, rationally thought out decision or am I making a decision based on short term, emotional gratification? If you are truly self aware and honest your answer will astound you.

A sales manager can motivate and inspire salespeople in three ways. Proper compensation plans, conducting effective sales and training meetings, and helping salespeople set higher goals and objectives.

Salespeople are motivated by ambition, the need for recognition and of course compensation. To prompt salespeople to higher levels of performance it is necessary to design an effective compensation plan. An effective compensation plan is one that is going to help both the salesperson and the company achieve their goals.

Companies must incentivize the behavior and results they want. The comp plan should emphasize the desired company outcome. Be it new clients, retention of clients, new product sales or gross profits. Whatever the compensation plan is it needs to be easily understood by the salesperson. It should be so easily understood that the salesperson could figure it out in their head.

Sales meetings provide an excellent opportunity for motivating, training and inspiring salespeople. Unfortunately, most sales meetings fall short on this. Many times the sales meeting becomes a forum for the manager to rant and rave about lagging sales, lack of activity or administrative policies and details. Because of the social nature of most salespeople, sales meetings should be fun, educational and inspirational. It is also a place to publicly praise the sales team for anything positive. Salespeople get beat up constantly so use this time to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative. The salespeople should leave the sales meeting high as a kite not as low as a snake’s belly. Most managers fail miserably in this role.

Training prepares the salesperson to maximize every customer encounter. A methodical selling process incorporates specific selling techniques that are custom-tailored for each buyer they interact with.

Through proper training, salespeople better understand their customer’s wants and needs. They’re also better equipped to cope with potential difficulties with the company’s products and services.

Well-trained salespeople recognize genuine selling opportunities more readily than their untrained counterparts.

An effective training program brings new staff up to speed more quickly than when sales reps are forced to learn on their own. As a result, frustrations are minimized and people are less inclined to go elsewhere.

The third part of motivation is goal setting. The manager’s role is to help salespeople become more focused on specific, achievable personal goals that are aligned with the company’s goals. This requires spending time one-on-one with the salespeople to help them enlarge the mental picture they have of themselves and what they can achieve. Some examples of goals might include: sales and gross profits for the year, obtaining more business from existing clients, acquiring new clients, retention of existing clients, etc.

High performance starts with clear unambiguous goals. They must define what success means to the individual and to the company.

A sales manger can motivate and inspire salespeople in three ways. Proper compensation plans, conducting effective sales and training meetings and helping salespeople set higher goals and objectives.

Salespeople are motivated by ambition, the need for recognition and of course compensation. To prompt salespeople to higher levels of performance it is necessary to design an effective compensations plan. An effective compensation plan is one that is going to help both the sales person and the company achieve their goals.

Companies must incentivize the behavior and results they want. The comp plan should emphasize the desired company outcome. Be it new clients, retention of clients, new product sales or gross profits. Whatever the compensation plan is it needs to be easily understood by the sales person. It should be so easily understood that the sales person could figure it out in their head.

Sales meetings provide an excellent opportunity for motivating, training and inspiring salespeople. Unfortunately, most sales meeting fall short on this. Many times the sales meeting becomes a forum for the manager to rant and rave about lagging sales, lack of activity or administrative policies and details.

Because of the social nature of most sales people sales meeting should be fun, educational and inspirational. It is also a place to publicly praise the sales team for anything positive. Sales people get beat up constantly so use this time to accentuate the positive and minimize the negative. The sales people should leave the sales meeting high as a kite not as low as a snake’s belly. Most managers fail miserably in this role.

Training prepares the sales person to maximize every customer encounter. A methodical selling process incorporates specific selling techniques that are custom-tailored for each buyer they interact with.

Through proper training, salespeople better understand their customer’s wants and needs. They’re also better equipped to cope with potential difficulties with the company’ products and services.

Well-trained sales people recognize genuine selling opportunities more readily than their untrained counterparts.

An effective training program brings new staff up to speed more quickly than when sales reps are forced to learn on their own, As a result frustrations are minimized and people are less inclined to go elsewhere.

The third part of motivation is goal setting. The manager’s role is to help sales people become more focused on specific, achievable personal goals that are aligned with the company’s goals. This requires spending time one-on-one with the sales people to help them enlarge the mental picture they have of themselves and what they can achieve. Some examples of goals might include: sales and gross profits for the year, obtaining more business from existing clients, acquiring new clients, retention of existing clients, etc.

High performance starts with clear unambiguous goals. They must define what success means to the individual and to the company.