Apr 10, 2015 By Tibor Shanto

Execution – Everything Else is Just Talk!

in Sales, Leadership

There is a lot of talk in sales, sales people talking, buyers talking, sales people talking over the buyers. One can easily get the impression that there are a lot of words in sales that count. But the reality is that only one word that counts Execution — everything else is just talk!

The great thing about execution is that unlike other words which apply to, and in sales, execution does not need to be said to matter. In fact the Zen of it is that the more and better you do it, the less you need to say. But in many cases, people talk about it rather than doing it.

There are numerous impediments to execution, some are almost real. But when all is said and done, there usually two barriers to execution sales people tend face, the first are self-imposed; the second are systemic or organizational.

At the risk of over simplifying things, many, if not all of the self-imposed barriers have more to do with will and attitude, not my forte, a bit too Freudian. Frankly, these self-imposed issues are most easily resolved by helping individuals transition to a different career path, I hear hospitality is ripe with opportunities.

The systemic or organizational are much more important as they stay with you regardless who the players are. Based on the above, the first of the systemic issues is how they choose to deal with reps who refuse to execute even when they can. While I am a firm believer in development, it involves two willing parties. If one is not holding their own, it needs to be dealt with the same way as any other asset or resource that stops delivering. At what percentage of underperformance would you replace a core piece of manufacturing equipment? If you don't get rid of the non-performers, what are you saying to the rest of the team, if not the whole company. When sales people don't execute, there are a lot of people impacted.

One way to take the emotion and subjectivity out of it, is to centralize around a sound and evolving process. This will set out a stage by stage set of activities to execute. Managers have something to coach to and help the willing, and dispense with those not willing. Your process can be present everywhere the sales person needs to be to succeed. In being coached by their manager, in salesforce.com, in their call plans, and in their client interactions. In fact, the more visible the process to you buyer, the greater their confidence will be in dealing with your rep vs. one without.

The other systemic barrier to execution is the front-line manager. Bad leadership at the front-line is common especially in those organization that have a habit of promoting their “best reps”, or using promotion as a means of reward for tenure. While I get the intent, and applaud the loyalty, the transition is often not lacking. Without guidance, and the message being “we promoted you because we like how you do things”, most new managers interpret that as a green light to recreate themselves. Rather than leveraging the process to help people execute, they set out to tell people what they would have done, what the rep should have done, making everyone involved a victim, and most importantly, a lack of execution.