We could be forgiven that everything about business revolves often seen as a challenge to reduce everything to a single number or series of numbers to explain all there is to know about business – good and bad.
Selling or business development is no different. There are numbers based on all sort of things – new opportunities in the pipeline, the number of deals closed, prospecting and client meetings had, conversion rates, the size of deals, the share of wallet and so on.
The finding and securing of new business opportunities in new and existing accounts is relentless in sales and business development.
It is little wonder, then, that many people in revenue-generating roles – sales people, rainmakers and the like – find themselves feeling distressed every now again, especially when times or markets are tougher than usual. It is hard enough to maintain your own momentum, let alone deal with a sales manager, partner or boss breathing down your numbers.
With productivity improvement always high on the agenda, it would make for a nice change that someone would enquire about you for once. You as a person. You as a human being. And not just you as a salesperson, business development manager, rainmaker, partner or associate. But this is not common. We seem to forget that our salespeople, business development managers, rainmakers, partners and associates are humans, too.
A few years ago, I was asked to come into one of the larger professional services firms (in accounting) to speak with a highly prized junior partner who had, in the words of a senior partner “gone off the boil”. In the senior partner’s eyes, the person was not normal.
When I asked the person in question about his current situation and how he was feeling, he replied that no one seemed to care about people in the business. He told me everyone was treated as a number and expected to leave their feelings and emotions at home.
It turned out that this person was highly capable but lately had not felt interested or engaged with the business, because no one seemed to care about the person. Not just him but everyone. It was, in his words, “a heartless and soulless place best suited to robots”.
This person was not weird. He was, in fact, normal and looked to work as a place of self-development, team cohesion, unity and purpose. He wanted to belong somewhere and count for something.
Daniel Pink, in his bestselling book Drive – the surprising truth about what motivates us, highlights the three core areas that motivate and drive people:
. autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives;
. mastery – the urge to get better and better at something that matters;
. purpose – the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.
In the case of the junior partner’s firm, the real issue lay in the culture and leadership of the business; specifically, its failure to acknowledge the person.
People, especially those in accountable client-facing roles, go through a wide range of emotions, including self doubt, worry and concern. This is often related to job security and the pressure of hitting targets and delivering quality work – not to mention family and other personal matters that feature in their daily lives.
Sometimes salespeople, BDMs, rainmakers, partners, associates and support people just want their boss to give them a call or seek them out in person to check if they are okay. How are things going? Is everything all right? Something different from the usual “where are you with your targets/numbers?” conversation.
As leaders, we can be overzealous, thinking we must always talk about the job and not the person.
A number of sales managers I am coaching at the moment are finding that making it personal has really opened up the relationships they have with their salespeople. Their field visits are much more open, enjoyable and richer for the experience, And the salespeople are responding in kind.
Let’s aim for a balance of work and personal, and let’s not ever forget that people with sales targets are humans, too.
