In 2021, people don’t buy products — they buy experiences.
Gone are the days when customers purchased a product and carried on with their lives. Now, commitment to a sale entails a full set of relationships and features, including an expert to turn to for any questions, additional feature rollouts, help with errors and a continued promise to receive hands-on care.
Building a strong sales team works the same way. It’s no longer about training a salesperson to extend their reach to the greatest number of customers or simply managing expectations through preselected metrics and asking the employees to deliver. Successful sales reps also require honesty, determination, natural curiosity and a supportive relationship with an experienced manager.
“As a sales leader, I believe in providing transparent and consistent expectations for how my representatives can expect to be led,” said Brian Harris, regional vice president at DreamBox Learning.
Built In Seattle sat down with Harris to learn more about the most important skill set any great sales representative should possess, the biggest lessons he’s learned throughout his career and how he’s helping each member of his team sharpen their sales acumen.
In your experience, what are the traits that define a successful salesperson?
There’s a quote from business author Brian Tracy that is always at the forefront of my mind: “Successful people are simply those with successful habits.” It is no different for a salesperson. The best salesperson has uniquely woven these habits together to create an environment that promotes repeatable activities that lead to consistent and confident performance.
After several years of leading sales teams, my most successful team members have these qualities: trust with both colleagues and customers, open and honest communication, confident and intelligent risk taking, an understanding of failure as a growth opportunity and an everyday desire to wake up and exceed expectations.
Finally, the pandemic has likely taught all of us how to give grace and approach situations with empathy. In that vein, I look for individuals who are constantly learning not only academically, but emotionally. This natural curiosity enables sales representatives to approach situations from a position of “seeking to understand” and quickly earn trust with a client or prospective client.
How do you help your reps develop their own sales acumen?
As a sales leader, I believe in providing transparent and consistent expectations for how my representatives can expect to be led. Notice I do not use the word “manage.” It all begins with an operational calendar that is visible to reps and includes a cadence for one-on-one meetings, team meetings, forecast calls, pipeline updates and more. I learned how to implement an operational calendar from a previous sales SVP and found it to provide the discipline that representatives often need to develop a rhythm.
Another strategy I seek to develop in representatives is a laser focus on their path to planning. A sales goal is a number that reps must work backward from to identify the knowns and the unknowns of the road ahead. It also enables them to codify the necessary activities to double down on and introduce new plays that they may want to run in their respective territories. Staying focused on the path creates both a commitment to short-term execution while not losing sight of long-term planning that yields future results.
When your team members observe your investment in their growth, you create a strong bridge that connects leadership with talent development.”
As a manager of salespeople, what’s a lesson you’ve learned that helps you bring out the best in your direct reports?
Early on in my career, I was fortunate to have an opportunity to move from a virtual selling role to a field selling role with access to larger opportunities and face-to-face travel. With this transition, my manager at the time often accompanied me to meetings. The meeting would usually start with me providing a quick introduction and before long my manager would step in and take over the meeting, leaving me as a silent participant. While I learned a lot as a silent participant, I did not feel a sense of partnership.
Years later, a theme in my leadership style is demonstrating a desire to win — and sometimes lose — together. Despite Covid-19 and the inability to travel in person, I consistently seek to join sales presentations with my team members and position myself as a partner. With the combination of me being a second set of ears and a representative’s willingness to receive feedback, we can build the trust necessary to promote modeling, empowerment and a focus on developing a winning process. When your team members observe your investment in their growth in a live setting, you create a strong bridge that connects leadership with talent development.
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