Keith Rosen’s Executive Sales Coaching Blog on Selling, Leadership, Management » Communication

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Our new marketplace requires new strategies and a new way of thinking in order to achieve more and thrive. Here, you can access these new resources I developed specifically for salespeople and sales managers to attract more prospects, boost your sales faster and coach your sales team into sales champions so they can close more sales today.

Here’s the second in a series of new resources and ebooks I’m giving away.

The Seven Types of Prospectors

What kind of prospector are you? Although developing a unique, personalized approach to prospecting is encouraged, there are some pitfalls to be aware of and some communication styles to abandon that you may not even be aware of which will sabotage your prospecting efforts. Use this guide to uncover which of the seven types of prospectors you most closely resemble and what you can do to adjust your prospecting approach and communication style for maximum impact.

Download this ebook for free here.

“I know how to interview. I’ve been doing it for years.” I hear this from practically every manager or HR executive I’ve ever had the privilege of coaching or training. And today, when speaking to one of my favorite clients, a VP of HR, this statement was echoed once again.

And it’s not like these managers or those responsible for making a hiring decision are doing it all wrong. Many are quite good at interviewing people, finding the right candidates and screening out the ones that just don’t fit. I’ve just observed over the years some key areas that many people are missing the mark on when conducting an interview and determining who the best candidate for the position truly is.

Especially when it comes to topgrading and rebuilding your sales team, getting the right candidate in the right position in the most expedient way possible is more critical than ever. The cost of not doing so can be severe. And this cost is compounded when companies onboard the wrong person. Just pick up any newspaper and read about another company closing their doors or missing their sales goals to exemplify how much of a priority this is today for any organization.

Below, I’ve listed some very key questions in order to reduce mis-hires and bring on the right people. If asked and asked correctly, these questions will reduce mis-hires by about 80% or more. Yes, that’s how powerful these questions can be. I would strongly suggest weaving these questions into your interviewing process. And keep in mind, most of these questions will apply to any position. Notice that I’ve also broken down these questions by category, as well as some additional categories that you can use to build out further interviewing questions.

Granted, you may already be using some of these questions during an interview. And keep in mind, this list can be built out even further. However, it’s the collective use of all the questions that are going to have the deeper, more positive impact when choosing the right hire.

Moving beyond simply the questions that you could ask, what other things are you doing to ensure you make the best hiring decision? Keep in mind, the interviewing process is multi-dimensional. To build off this, lets look at how you manage or facilitate a simulation or a role play. Many interviewers ask questions like, “How would you handle this if you were in this situation” or “Tell me what steps you would take before calling on a key account” or even “Walk me through a strategy you would use to build your pipeline.”

While these are all great questions, they are still falling short of one critical element. That is, the language this candidate would be using to facilitate the type of conversation described in these simulations. To go deeper in determining this person’s acumen or ability, it’s critical you’re able to evaluate how they communicate, as well as their overall communication strategy that would be embedded in each of these situations I’ve described in the prior questions.

The most successful salespeople realize that sales, just like leadership and coaching, is truly a language and a way of communicating. Therefore, it’s imperative you uncover not only how they think strategically and the processes they may use but how effective this person could be when you send them out to connect with your new and existing customers. Anyone can talk a good game regarding processes and approach from the hundred foot viewpoint. But how they deliver the message in a variety of different situations is something that can’t be faked during an interview.

When these questions and the simulation exercise are used correctly, you’ll find that the need to topgrade your sales team will diminish because you’ve fixed the breakdown in your overall hiring and retention strategy; the broken component that exists in your system and where it all starts, your interviewing process.

Interviewing Questions:

Work History:
1. What were your responsibilities in your last position?
2. We all make mistakes. What would you say were a couple of the mistakes or failures you experienced in your last job?
3. If you could go back in time and fix that, what would you do differently?
4. What would you prior supervisor say if asked what your strengths and weaknesses were?
5. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced and were able to overcome?
6. What were your successes? What are you most proud of? How did you achieve that?
7. What circumstances contributed to your leaving?
8. What was your supervisors name and title? Where is that person now?
9. Would your boss hire you back? Why?
10. What were his or her strengths and weaker points from your perspective?
11. Would you be willing to arrange for us to talk with him or her?

Next Position:
1. What criteria are most important to you in your next job?
2. Describe your ideal position?
3. How close does this opportunity fit your ideal position?

Excellence and Development:
1. How to you better your best?
2. How do you raise the bar on yourself and others around you?
3. How do you develop yourself and your skills?
4. How important is it to you to be the best at what you do?
5. How do you assure that happens?
6. How do/did you keep your edge in such a competitive environment/marketplace?

Accountability:
1. What does personal accountability mean to you?
2. What areas in your life/career are you most accountable? Least?
3. Give me an example of how becoming more accountable has contributed to your success?
4. Where do you feel you need to become more accountable (in an area in your life or career)?

Decision Making and Problem Solving:
1. How do you solve problems?
2. How do you go about making decisions?
3. Give me one problem or challenge you had and walk me through how you solved it using that model.
4. How do you go about making a career decision? What factors do you measure? Your approach?
5. What were a couple of the most difficult or challenging decisions you’ve made recently?
6. What are a couple of the best and worst decisions you’ve made over the last year or so?

Creativity and Solution Development:
1. How creative are you?
2. How important is creativity in relation to your overall selling approach and strategy?
3. Can you provide an example how you were creative in your last position that led to solving a problem or closing a sale?

Integrity:
1. What are some of the values you have that you refuse to compromise?
2. Describe a situation where you were pressured or challenged to compromise your integrity and what you felt was best and right? How did you handle it?

Self Discipline, Time Management and Organization:
1. How do you go about organizing your schedule and your day?
2. Do you live by a set of best practices? How? What are they? (in selling, organization, etc.)
3. When was the last time you missed a significant deadline? What happened?
4. Everyone procrastinates at one point or another. Can you share the kind of things that you have a tendency to procrastinate?
5. How much guidance and supervision do you feel you need?

Self Management/State/Stress:
1. What stresses you out?
2. What do you when that happens?
3. How do you eliminate it? How do you handle it?

Openness and Self Awareness:
1. What were the most difficult criticisms for you to hear and accept?

Resourcefulness:
1. What actions would you feel you would need to take during the first few weeks here in your new position if you were to join our organization?
2. What obstacles did you face during your present/last position and how did you handle those?
3. What would you be mindful of needing to do and the resources and training you would need to secure your success here?

Tactical Sales Oriented Questions to Recruit at a Deeper Level:
You can find these questions and more on my prior blog post here:

1. What was the average size of each sale? (Dollar amount, cost of goods/services sold.)


2. What type of appointments were you scheduling when prospecting or cold calling? What was the goal here?


3. Where the appointments on site/face to face with each prospect or via the phone?


4. When actually closing a sale, did you actually sell over the phone or did you have to meet each prospect in person?


5. Did you sell a product, a service or both? (Describe how you sold each product and why there was a different approach.)


6. Did you handle the entire sales process from start to finish, including the deliverable? (Was there an account executive who you worked with, was it a team oriented approach to selling, were you only responsible for certain aspects of the sale?)


7. Describe to me the products or services you’ve sold? (Complicated or simple?)


8. Did you sell something that had an online component? Was it strictly a service? (Where they selling the tangible or the intangible?)


9. Was your product/service a “nice to have,” a “want to have” (luxury, added benefit) or a
   need to have?” (Was it a necessity, i.e. gasoline, telecom, office supplies, utilities, mobile phones, insurance, etc.)


10. What do you consider ‘prospecting’ and ‘cold calling’ to be? How do you feel about having to engage in this activity? (We’re looking to uncover how they think and feel about prospecting; their perception of it.)


11. What type of prospecting and cold calling did you do? How much cold calling did you do each day/week? (Number of calls made.) How many calls did you have to make to (get an appointment, close a sale, uncover a new prospect, etc.)?


12. Please share with me what your typical approach would be when cold calling. (Describe not only your process but exactly what you said when you were making a cold call.)


13. Who was your target audience/prospect? (B2b, b2c, C level executives, business owners, sole practitioners, were you dealing with only one decision maker or did you have to coordinate with several decision makers, influencers, committees, board members, etc.)


14. When were you calling on them? (Time, day, frequency of calls, etc.)


15. What was the average size of the company you called on?


16. What markets did you focus on? (Type of company, industry, vertical, etc.)


17. How did you get your leads/uncover your prospects? Where the cold calls you made totally cold or were you getting them from another source and then following up with them? (These would be warmer leads from trade shows, web inquiries, referrals, call-ins, direct mail and marketing efforts, etc.)


18. What were the concerns or objections that you typically encountered with your prospects? (What stalled your sales efforts?)


19. How long was your average sales cycle? (From the time you connected with a qualified prospect up until the time when you converted that prospect into a client.)


20. Were you selling based on a bidding process, RFP’s, etc.?

Simulations and Role Plays:
1. If you had to make a call to a prospect who you have never spoken to, what would be the steps you would take before making that call?
2. What would that cold call sound like?
3. If you were following up with a customer to explore and uncover additional selling opportunities, what would your approach sound like?
4. Lets say you just delivered the final product/service to your new customer. They called you the next day with a major problem. They were frustrated and irate. Lets say I’m the customer in this situation. How would you facilitate that conversation? What would that dialogue sound like?
5. There’s a prospect you’ve been calling on for months. They’re finally ready to make a decision to buy and you just found out that there are two more venders now involved in this bid for their business. What would be your strategy to position yourself as the vender of choice? (What would you say, questions asked, etc.)
6. How many times do you call on a prospect before putting them on your do not call list? How do you determine that? What would your approach be? Why?
7. You’re about to visit a new potential client for the first time. What preliminary work would you do? How would you craft your presentation and set the expectations of the meeting? (What would your presentation sound like?)
8. You’ve been handed a client list of approximately 100 accounts to call on. You’ve noticed after several months, their monthly spending with you has slowly diminished. How would you handle this? What would you say?

Additional Topics That Require Further Questioning:

• Persuasion
• Communication
• Presentation
• Assertiveness
• Team player
• Conflict management
• Motivation and passion
• Tenacity, commitment, perseverance
• Education

Did you know that the concept of brainstorming as we know it today was invented nearly 70 years ago? This was right around the time when Roosevelt was President and gas cost 10-cents a gallon. Interestingly, while technology has advanced dramatically, the brainstorming process hasn’t changed much since then.

Invite most 21st-century professionals to participate in a brainstorming session, and they’re likely to run for the door. And it’s no wonder. The typical brainstorm is long, tedious, poorly facilitated, often intimidating and even contentious. And the results are often disappointing, as well. Even when a few decent ideas are generated, they rarely end up seeing the light of day.

Two marketing communications professionals from New York City are changing all that, with a totally new approach to brainstorming they call SmartStorming: Advanced Training in Innovative Thinking. I’ve had the opportunity to connect with the creators of SmartStorming and talk to them about this cutting edge technology in how we think and create new ideas. They’ve reinvented the concept of brainstorming so that it can be done in a more of a systematic, organized process that yields are measurable R.O.I.

“We all know innovative thinking is critical for success, today more than ever. We call it the ‘Innovation Imperative,’” says Mitchell Rigie, co-creator of SmartStorming. “The difference between surviving and thriving, today and in the foreseeable future, is going to depend on how fresh and unique a company’s thinking will be.”

Traditional brainstorming is still one of the most widely-used tools for generating ideas. Every day tens of thousands of brainstorms are held around the world.

It seems that the technology behind brainstorming has now evolved into something more powerful. “Brainstorming is a fundamentally flawed process,” says Keith Harmeyer, Rigie’s partner and co-creator of SmartStorming. “For years we sat through hundreds, maybe thousands of unproductive brainstorms. And finally we asked ourselves, ‘How can we do this better?’“

Based on their own experience and extensive research, Rigie and Harmeyer developed a turnkey system that addresses each of the key weaknesses of traditional brainstorming. The result is a thorough six-step process that takes users from pre-planning, through the idea-generation phase to follow-through and next steps.

“Consider the cost to an organization of a typical brainstorm session. Six or eight or even more people, sitting in a room for an hour or more. Then multiply that by the number of sessions held over the course of a year. And with what return? It’s staggering. Plus the negative impact on employee morale is enormous. SmartStorming delivers tangible benefits to the organization, managers and participants,” said Harmeyer.

At the core of SmartStorming is 3-D Ideationsm, a proprietary technique that breaks idea-generation into three parts, resulting in a significantly great yield of fresh, innovative ideas.

“3-D Ideation makes it possible for groups to think beyond their limiting assumptions about a challenge; what most people refer to as ‘thinking outside the box.’ They then view the challenge from a number of different viewpoints, to gain a broader perspective. And finally, they free associate, using a variety of ideation techniques we provide,” said Rigie.

Several leading creative services and consumer products companies have already benefitted from SmartStorming and many more are jumping on the bandwagon. To learn more about SmartStorming training, visit SmartStorming.com.

Listen to the podcast here

Got your mojo?

Are you born with it or can you develop it? Here’s a recent podcast I did with Salesopedia that explains what makes up your sales mojo, which defines who you are and how you come across to others.

Listen in as I describe in detail how your confidence, attitude, mindset, relationship with fear, and your ability to be engaged in the moment, all combine to determine how powerful your sales mojo can be. During these times, you need every advantage to be successful in your career, especially in sales. So make sure you tune in to get your sales mojo and develop your unique, winning edge.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Keith Rosen’s Free Seminar Series
-The Art of Enrollment – Turn More Conversations into Clients

Mark your Calendar! January 28. 2009
Participant dial in number and access code below. Attend this event as our guest for free.

“People don’t want to be sold. They want to be enrolled.”

If you’re a coach, trainer, consultant, or non-selling professional, this is one tele-workshop you can’t afford to miss on the evolution of selling.

How effective are you at converting conversations into clients? Do you find yourself struggling to find more clients? What do you do to be unique and make an impact in the very first conversation you have with a prospect? Masterful coaches and speakers leave not only a lasting impression – they also create one.

It’s no secret that most coaches, speakers and non-selling professionals don’t like to sell. The income of most coaches reflects that. As such, they unknowingly use ineffective selling strategies rather than develop healthy, winning relationships with clients. Relying on price as a competitive differentiator dilutes your true value offering.

Coaching and training is not something you “pitch and sell.” The next evolution in how you engage clients is through the Art of Enrollment. What has been initially perceived as an inherent ability in certain leaders, coaches and top achievers is now a documented, step by step process that allows anyone, especially non-selling professionals, to convert more prospects into clients. You can do so in a natural, conversational way that honors your personal strengths, talents, integrity, values and style of communicating.

In this program, I’ve taken my twenty years of coaching and million dollar enrollment process that enabled me to develop one of the most successful coaching practices in the country and I’m now sharing my system with you in this program, The Art of Enrollment; a proven process to build a highly profitable, rewarding and sustainable business.

Specifically designed for coaches, consultants and trainers to learn how to:

Date: January 28. 2009
Duration: 90 Minutes
Time: 12pm EST
Location: Your Phone
Cost: Free! Please attend as our guest.

Sponsored by: The International Coach Federation

Below is the access number and code to participate:

Approximately 5 minutes before the session begins, start to dial this U.S. based phone number: 212.457.9879
When prompted, enter their Participant Access Code: 124866#

For more information visit the course description page here. I look forward to ‘seeing’ your there!

Sure there are those things we want for ourselves and then there are the things we want for other people as well; our friends, our children, family and of course our co-workers and salespeople. We want them to be happy, fulfilled, successful and satisfied in their career.

The “Wanting for” statement is an independent, self containing strategy you can use at any time during normal conversation. A wanting for statement can be used in a variety of situations.

Once you start using the wanting for statement more consistently in your communication, you will notice how much more open people will be to hearing and digesting your message, especially the ones they may have a natural inclination to resist. They are the perfect precursor to softening a difficult message by fist opening up the person’s listening; which starts with the authentic commitment you have to supporting them by articulating specially what it is you want most for them. Wanting for statements are a powerful tool to reinforce the stand you have chosen to take for your salespeople, while doing so in a quick and efficient way and simultaneously challenging them to bring out their best, as well as yours.

I’ve listed several different examples below where it would be appropriate to use this coaching tool.

1. You need to deliver a strong message to an underperforming salesperson about their need for a turnaround. “Kelly, what I want for you is to be able to turn your performance around to where it used to be so that you can start enjoying your job the same way you did when you first started here, along with the financial rewards that follow.”




2. You need to prepare someone or your entire sales team for some imminent changes; whether they are changes in your sales procedures, product or service, HR or administrative. “What I want for each person on my sales team is to be able to walk into the office each day feeling confident they have all the tools and resources needed to reach your goals here, both personally and professionally. And sometimes, ensuring these resources are readily available for you requires making some changes in our approach and how we do things.”




3. You want to reinforce your stand and commitment to the success of each person on your sales team. “At this point, we have all been working together for some time now. And I truly hope that each of you are fully aware of my commitment to your continued success here. What I want for all of you is to be able to come to work feeling fulfilled in your career, motivated by the value you deliver to your customers and supported by your management team. That’s why I wanted to take a few minutes going around the room to identify some other areas we can improve upon, things we can be doing better, or what I can be doing for you which would further support this ultimate objective.”




4. You want to provide some well needed motivation by acknowledging and reigniting the personal power someone may have forgotten they have. “Nicole, I know you’ve been in sales for a while now. And I know this isn’t the first time you’ve felt a bit deflated when you saw your month end numbers, especially with your work ethic and all of the effort you’ve put forth. And sometimes with all of the things we have control over, there still exists those other market conditions which we can’t control. That’s why what I continually want for you is to be able to manage and honor the process you’ve put in place, which has always been proven to work well for you, but do so without the additional stress and pressure you seem to be piling on yourself lately. In other words, it looks like there’s an opportunity for you to shift back to being more process driven without pushing so hard for the result which, as you’ve seen, will come naturally by honoring your process.”




5. You would like to open up the possibility to have a conversation about coaching someone around an area they have been struggling with. “This may come as a friendly reminder to you but felt it important enough to mention. Due to the type of product we sell and the market we go after, you’re going to find that it may take a little longer for prospects to open up to you and want to foster a relationship, especially when these prospects have been working with the same vender for as long as they have been. What I want for you is to feel confident that you have the artillery and the resources you need the next time you are confronted with a hostile prospect, so that you can turn around a potentially explosive situation into a new selling opportunity; similar to the situation you found yourself in last week.”

To pick off from my last blog entitled, Motivate Through Pleasure Rather Than Consequence, I mentioned that in order to shift from consequence to pleasure it not only requires a change in your beliefs around how to motivate people but also in your communication strategy and the language you are using.

For example, if you listen to children talk, they often talk about what is present or what was pleasurable for them. If you ask a child, “How was the park?” You’ll hear things like, “It was great! It was so much fun!” Children communicate from a place of pleasure, from abundance from what is present for them. Now ask an adult how dinner or a movie was and you’ll hear, “Not bad.” If you ask someone to do something for you or for a favor, a typical response might be, “No problem” or “No worries.” Adults often communicate from the point of view of what isn’t there, what is lacking or missing, what will not be present or scarce or the consequence and fear that’s being avoided by their action rather than what will be present as a result of their efforts.

Instead of focusing on what is not present or focusing on the potential consequence, talk about what benefit will be present; that is, coming more from the mindset of abundance. For example, the following statement implies fear and consequence. “If you don’t make your quota this quarter, then you won’t have a job” or “If you can’t get this project completed within the time frame we discussed, then you won’t be able to take that vacation you wanted to at the end of the month.” These statements are consequence driven statements which focus on what will be missing or what they will not be able to do or have in their life if they don’t do what is expected of them.

Your communication style tells a lot about you, and where you are coming from. So if you’re communicating from scarcity, then where do you think your focus is when it comes to managing your mindset? Chances are driven by fear and consequence instead of your own goals and vision. And if that’s where your focus is, what exactly, do you think it is you are going to create? If there’s one universal law worth driving home it’s this: “How you think is exactly what you are going to get.”

Now, listen to this statement. “If you reach your quota this month, then you will be eligible for the quarterly bonus, or “Once you complete that project, then the only thing I want you to focus on the following week would be planning your vacation and the fun you’re going to have during the week off, especially knowing that this is a paid vacation week.” Notice how these statements imply the benefit or pleasure that will be present in their life rather than what will be missing.

Here’s another example of communicating from scarcity. “If you don’t get more organized, your stress level as well as your workload will continue to pile up to become even more unmanageable and overwhelming.”

Now, here’s the same message but this time it’s being delivered from a place of abundance. “If you keep following through and honoring your daily routine, then you will eliminate the overwhelming workload on your plate that’s been weighing you down. This way, your stress level as well as your workload will diminish and become more manageable so that you can feel in control and start enjoying your job again.”

And just to be real clear. When speaking from a place of pleasure or abundance, I am not suggesting you say things like, “If you just do your job, then you will get paid.” This statement is still implying a consequence and as we discussed, we want people to be motivated by a pleasure. (Similar to the strategy of utilizing positive, solution oriented questions rather than problem focused questions.)

Now, is it possible that some people will actually hear the consequence more and as such, change their behavior accordingly? Of course, and uncovering the pain or the cost of not making a change is a selling strategy I certainly endorse when it comes to motivating your prospects and customers to make a purchasing decision. However, it’s not the typical method of communication you want to use in the office and here’s why. Closing a sale for the most part is a one time event. And even if you are constantly selling or upselling to existing clients, it’s still not something that typically happens on a day to day basis with the same customer.

On the other hand, developing a positive atmosphere within the workplace is something that requires daily reinforcement, often more than once a day. Since we do not want to breed a negative culture from the continued reinforcement of this selling strategy, consider this instead. If a consequence needs to be driven home, then you are better off asking questions that focus on the cost or pain they will realize as a result of not changing their ways which, they, in turn can articulate. (For example, “What is it going to cost you if you don’t make any changes?”)

It is this subtle yet powerful change in the language you are using which can set the tone and atmosphere of not only every meeting you have but of the culture of your company. After all, think about how you feel after having a conversation with certain people. Why is it that some conversations with people leave you drained and some energize you? Because how you come across is created in the language you use. The language you use creates and reinforces the environment within your company as well as the experience people leave with from every conversation they have with you.

Motivating through fear and intimidation or pushing someone to avoid a loss, a cost or a consequence results in the other person pushing to avoid something they don’t want rather than gravitating towards something they really do want. One example of the push structure would be to motivate someone by pushing them into action through threats, such as the loss of their job or a punishment associated with a measurable cost to them if they are not performing up to your expectations.

If people are governed by a fear of being punished or losing their job if they don’t perform, how do you think this affects them, their attitude and their performance? How about the morale of your team? And ultimately, how does this affect your clients? I think it’s safe to say that there’s clearly a measurable cost associated when using these motivational tactics.

Now more than ever our society is consumed with fear and the threats from others. We are living in a period of intense fear and leadership in many organizations is fear based. Here’s a key point. You cannot inspire others when you are afraid and you can’t be inspired when your mind and your soul are full of fear and worry.

Now, imagine what it would be like if you and your staff came to work every day feeling happy, fulfilled, committed and supported? How much would your bottom line increase? I promise substantially.

The good news is that you have the power to create this environment by taking full responsibility for the moral and for the culture that you have bred within your team. After all, if we are all responsible for our communication, which also includes the message being received, then we can conclude that we are then responsible for the barriers, breakdowns and problems that are a result of faulty communication. And if we are responsible for these problems that stem from poor communication, then we must also be responsible for the culture or moral within our company because ultimately, a corporate culture is manifested through communication.

The threat of a consequence is a very effective push structure, given that we humans have been taught to fight or flee when threatened. So, consequence works, unfortunately at a great expense to our bodies, minds and hearts.

Other than using or being used by potential negative consequences to get the job done, the more effective and less costly fuel to drive performance is called pleasure.

Imagine what would your day be like if it was motivated by pleasures instead of avoiding or attempting to stay one step ahead of a consequence? We’re pulled by pleasures; we’re pushed by consequences. Pushing requires effort to continue the momentum. Being pulled towards something happens as a byproduct of natural attraction and magnetism. As I had alluded to earlier, an example of a pull structure would be to motivate employees by offering to support them in creating work they were proud of which centered around their personal vision, natural talents and goals.

In order to shift from consequence to pleasure it not only requires a change in your beliefs around how to motivate people but also in your communication strategy and the language you are using.

This is what I’m going to cover in my next blog. So tune in over the next few days!

Dr. Marvin Jolson was very dear mentor of mine and a true business leader; a trailblazing pioneer and innovator when it came to the areas of sales and marketing. Here was the guy who practically invented the way encyclopedias were sold door to door and the force and genius that enabled companies like Encyclopedia Britannica where he was Senior Vice President and, back in their hay day, MCI enjoy years double digit sales growth and greater profitability. In 1990, he received the Distinguished Doctoral Graduate Award from the University of Maryland. In 1999, Dr. Marvin Jolson was the first person ever to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the American Marketing Association to a scholar who has made a career of furthering the academic advancement of selling and sales management.

He’s written a library of books and has authored dozens of ground breaking articles, many of which have appeared in venerable publications and journals such as the Harvard Business Review, The Journal of Marketing, The New York Times and Sales and Marketing Management. Dr. Jolson was also the Editor of the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. The legacy Dr. Jolson left behind also consisted of one of the most successful home security companies in Baltimore called CRIMPCO Security, which is currently being run by his son, and his two grandsons; leaving a strong and well entrenched empire for his family to continue to grow and nurture.

Dr. Jolson’s risk-taking tendencies, assertiveness, charismatic style is what won the admiration, respect and trust of his colleagues as well as his students. I remember, driving from my house in Potomac, Maryland about 30 minutes to the University of Maryland where I would visit with Dr. J (that’s what his student’s called him) at his office. He was the Professor of Marketing at that point, still teaching a few classes even well into his seventies. Dr. J’s open door policy transcend beyond his classroom or office. Occasionally, a student would even stop over at his house to get advice or to just say a quick hello. Dr. J made everyone feel comfortable, even his students who knew very well that the door at the home on Ridge Terrace, Pikesville, Maryland was always open.

I vividly recall enjoying the hours of debating the principles of selling and marketing with him. Dr. J would site his articles and case studies that appeared in the myriad of journals he was published in and I would share the most recent experience I had during the sales call I went on earlier that morning.

Dr. Jolson was the first person I reluctantly let review the very first manuscript I wrote; my first book on selling. Given the amount of red comments I received in my manuscript, in hindsight, I was probably better off giving him the manuscript on a day that either we agreed on a certain topic or philosophy or he ‘won’ the debate.

One of our favorite debates dealt with the level of accountability of a manager. We were both in agreement that in business, as in life you are fully accountable for everything that shows up in your life. It’s one of what I refer to as the universal principles I personally adhere to; one of the principles of attraction. As you can imagine, we also agreed that every person, every manager, is fully accountable for their communication, and that includes the message being heard by the other person.

Since we can control our communication and what we say, and we can’t control the other person’s communication and how they hear us, then we must learn to uncover and speak in a way that the other person listens and likes to be spoken to. Besides, who we are is created in how others hear us. Therefore, we must own the responsibility of the entire communication process and adjust our communication style accordingly.

While both of us agreed in this sound principle, there was always an interesting conversation that transpired when it came to discussing what factors determine the success and failure of a salesperson. That is, if a salesperson that you are managing fails, whose fault is it?

Whether your team consists of one thousand salespeople or just one, the simple fact stands; you are 100% accountable for the success and failure of your team.

Over the last several years, the media has focused our attention on some of the most devastating business failures of our time. People lost their life savings and were financially crippled by the fall of some of these business empires such as Enron, which was run by unethical, greed driven, sub-human, bottom feeders that thrived off the misfortune of others. In the wake of these ethical disasters of mind numbing proportion, the integrity of business leaders has been forced back in the limelight.

Yet, clearly not enough policing nor policy has been put in place to avoid these catastrophes from happening again, given the current state of our economy and the crisis that has crippled our financial institutions and again, the lives of millions of people. Which poses the question, have we actually learned anything from these lessons? We talk about them, and write about them but what changes have actually been made to prevent these disasters from happening again? What changes have you made as a result? Our society cannot be destined to continually be the victim of other people’s greed and their ability to shed accountability like a snake sheds its skin. Pointing the finger at the ones who profit the most from these crimes clearly has not served us well. The fact is, we all play a role.

Instead, we opt to stick our other hand in the fire by bailing them out with billions of dollars. And why not? After all, they’re too big to fail. According to Wikipedia.org, The “Too Big to Fail” policy is the idea that in American banking regulation the largest and most powerful banks are “too big to (let) fail.” Generally speaking, when a corporation, an organization, or an industry sector is considered by the government to be too important to the overall health of the economy, it will not be allowed to fail. This means that it might encourage recklessness since the government would pick up the pieces in the event it was about to go out of business. The phrase has also been more broadly applied to refer to a government’s policy to bail out any corporation. It raises the issue of moral hazard in business operations. (Gee, ya think?) The real definition of this policy is, “Once you get to a certain size in your business, you don’t have to be accountable anymore.”

It wasn’t too long ago when some noteworthy companies rose to the occasion or at least have made an attempt to do so, starting with taking full responsibility for their failures. Two companies that I’m referring to specifically are Jet Blue and Southwest Airlines. During the winter of 2007, devastating weather conditions combined with dreadful mismanagement and the poor deployment of resources caused the delays and cancellations of hundreds of flights, which left thousands of passengers stranded.

Here were two companies, who clearly screwed up – big time. But here’s what they didn’t do. They didn’t run and hide. They didn’t spin their story. They didn’t blame everything on the weather, as bad as it may have been. Conversely, here’s what they did do. They took responsibility, they apologized to their passengers, families and to the general public. They did their best to lay their cards on the table and let us know they made a big error. And in the spirit of good business practice and taking care of their customers, Jet blue offered their passengers refunds on their tickets, and in some cases, Southwest Airlines actually gave their passengers their flight for free. While it may not have been their entire fault, these companies still took 100% accountability for this debacle. They took full ownership of the problem even if the cause of the problem was outside of their control.

I guess the leaders of the growing list of failed banks, mortgage companies, investment houses and lending institutions didn’t get this lesson. The last time I checked, avalanches still roll down hill. It always starts from the top. (Here’s a chuckle. One of the banks that shut down operations was actually named, “First Integrity.”)

This is the type of mindset; one of full accountability; that a leader needs to adopt. For those ever-evolving cultures that embrace change and are strong advocates of personal development and lifelong learning, taking full accountability is a prerequisite for leadership in tomorrow’s companies, as well as for the customers that they serve. For today’s companies, how unfortunate it is that you can still survive and thrive without it. But the question is, for how much longer?

The “I’m Sensing That” Statement

When talking with someone, such as one of your employees (or customers), did you ever get the feeling that they were not being one hundred percent honest and upfront with you? I’m often told that managers really don’t have a foolproof approach to extracting the truth, the real truth out of someone without sounding either confrontational or pushy.

Instead of confronting the person about their innate concern, the manager takes what this person says and tries to do their best to work their solution around it, even though they know that their employee isn’t telling them something.

After all, what could you say to a salesperson who you feel is not being forthright? “I think you’re lying to me or not telling me everything.” This is certainly not an approach I would endorse. Aside from putting the salesperson on the defensive, there’s a good chance that this approach will destroy any chance of getting this person to open up to you any more than they already have.

How can you tell when there’s something else a salesperson may be holding back from you? Here are a several signs.

1. A sudden change in their performance.


2. A sudden change in their activity.


3. A sudden change in their attitude, disposition or work ethic.


4. A sudden change in their behavior around the office, amongst their co-workers or towards you.


5. A reluctance to doing something they’ve typically done before.


6. A failure to honor certain commitments which they historically never had a problem doing.


7. There’s a noticeable misalignment between their intentions and their actions. (For example: You schedule a meeting to provide some additional coaching and training and the salesperson keeps canceling or delaying it due to some other ‘scheduling issues’ or sales related activities.)

Or, maybe you’re in the process of screening a new candidate for the sales position that needs to be filled. It seems the person has a clear interest in the position and you have a keen interest in hiring them but there are some inconsistencies in their resume which makes you question their long term commitment.

If you have ever run into a situation like this, there is a strong chance that there’s something else the person isn’t telling you. Here’s a great way to find out what’s really going on.

Use Your Senses

If a person makes a statement (or fails to confirm or do something for you) that causes your spider senses to tingle, trust and listen to your instincts. Remember, sometimes, just like when you’re selling a prospect, the real objection is two to three questions deep. Here’s an example of how you can use the “I’m sensing that” approach when you feel there’s something else that needs to be brought out to the surface when talking with one of your employees.

You: “Rob, based on our conversation a couple of weeks ago, do you still agree that it would be to your advantage for us to meet one to one so that you can get the personalized training and attention needed to handle some of the challenges you’re running up against?”

Rob the Salesperson: “Yes. I definitely see the benefits.”

You: “Well, we’ve been attempting to get together since then but it seems that something always gets in the way of our meeting. I know you’re working hard to bring in a few more accounts before the quarter is over but I’m sensing there may be something else that’s getting in the way of scheduling this meeting so that we can begin the work we can do together. Is that true (or, Is there any truth to this/how I’m feeling)?”

Salesperson: “Well, actually.”

And now, let the truth be known! Whether he had a bad experience with another manager, is reluctant to admit he is a little intimidated by this process, has a faulty perception of what “coaching” really means (broken wing mentality/something’s wrong with you vs. delivering more value to employees/I want to invest into you because your worth it) fears his job security, is worried what other people may think, doesn’t want to hurt your feelings by saying “No,” or wasn’t motivated by a reason compelling enough that would make this a priority, these are a few of the obstacles that can fly under your radar unless you dig deeper.

Notice the question I ask doesn’t put the person on the defensive simply because I’m not accusing him of doing anything that would make him wrong. I’m not offending him by pointing my finger and playing the blame game. For example: “Every time we plan to meet, you keep rescheduling with me.” “You told me that you were going to call me but you never did.” “You said we would be able to get together for a few minutes.” “I told you I was going to call you on Friday at 9A.M. and when I did you weren’t there.”

Instead, here’s one of the very few times during a coaching relationship that you can actually make it about you; your feelings, that is. Beginning a statement with, “I’m sensing” acknowledges how you are feeling. Then, ask the person for help in determining whether your feeling is, in fact, valid.

This approach gives the other person you’re talking with the space and permission they need to share the real truth, concern, or more of what is going on without feeling pressured. Of course, there are those occasions when the person is actually telling you the truth or simply isn’t interested in speaking with you. That’s why it’s critical to tap into your intuition and trust your instincts to determine how deep you actually want to dig to uncover the truth about what is stalling your ability to create a breakthrough in one of your people.