Build your sales teams resiliency skills and you will build consistent sales. And one of the best ways to build resiliency is teaching your team how to handle hard better. This great advice comes from Kara Lawson, head coach of the Duke Blue Devils women’s basketball team. The message to her team:
A GREAT MESSAGE FOR ATHLETIC TEAMS AND SALES TEAMS.
Sales organizations that instill the “handle hard better” philosophy grow revenues, in good economic times and bad economic times. Salespeople that handle hard better are resilient and as a result they:
- Do the hard work required to be successful.
- Don’t give up during hard times.
- Focus on winning NOT whining.
IMPROVE YOUR SALES TEAMS RESILIENCY AND THE ABILITY TO HANDLE HARD BETTER.
#1 Way To Improve Your Sales Teams Resiliency
Recruit and hire salespeople that have dealt with adversity. Build relationships with community colleges. Start filling your people pipeline with students that are doing the hard stuff. Many people attending community colleges pay for their own tuition. They attend classes and work full-time. They’ve learned how to handle hard better and they are resilient.
#2 Way To Improve Your Sales Teams Resiliency
Stop the habit of self-absorption. Complaining is becoming a national past time. The irony is that the more absorbed a person is on their problems, the more stressed and less resilient they become.
Resilient people are not self-absorbed. They are “other absorbed” and as a result, tend to be happier and more productive.
Sales leaders, set, track and measure “other absorption” sales metrics.
- Track and measure how often a salesperson helps another member of the team.
- Volunteer at a non-profit. Serve meals to the homeless. These activities quickly change anyone’s perspective on what is really hard in life.
- Ask the consistent coaching question. What did we do this week to make our customers lives better, outside of what we are hired to do?
Get absorbed in helping others.
#3 Way To Improve Your Sales Teams Resiliency
Celebrate failures and the lessons learned. Build sales resiliency by sharing stories of setbacks and failures during group sales meetings. Identify the valuable lessons learned.
THEN, encourage your team to focus on those lessons because they will set your team up for future success.
Resilient salespeople look forward, not backwards.
Thank you, Kara Lawson, for your great message that inspired this blog. Handle hard better.
Good Selling!
