As a result of the Integrity Selling course, advertising sales increased 14%—and that was during a slow period. In the last of our series, Mike Kelly reviews the reasons why.
Results With
Integrity
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ooking back over the sales training course from Integrity Systems we rolled out this summer, the results we’ve gained fall into three distinct areas: practical, emotional, and financial. The Integrity Selling course has a practical feeling from start to finish. The company is run by seasoned salespeople who have devoted their working lives to sales and sales training. From the first contact with the company, you know you’re dealing with a professional organization. Right from the start, I was impressed by the setup of the “train the trainer” seminar I attended. From the venue to the technology used and, most importantly, the quality of the facilitators, Integrity Systems made a very strong statement that we were important to them and would be treated accordingly. The course is based on a customer-focused, needs-driven system and is rife with practical, no-nonsense ways to improve sales efficiency. The Aid, Inc process developed by Integrity Systems’ founder, Ron Willingham, is a simple, step-by-step route to making a sale. By following the six-stage process, you reach a win-win situation by creating mutual value for you and your customer. Positioned throughout the course are useful methods for handling objections and difficult questions, time management problems, behavior styles, and planning issues. In short, it delivers exactly what I’d expect from any good sales training course. But at the center of the course is a fundamental question. In a group of salespeople with similar backgrounds and education levels, why would the results vary wildly from person to person? I started my working life as an engineer, and it soon became clear to me that you could take two skilled craftsmen and get a vastly different finished product, even though they used the same tools. Obviously, the tools they use are less important than the way they are used. Why would it be different in sales?
large emphasis on the person using them.
It’s in the congruity The corner piece of the “emotional” side of this course was also developed by Ron Willingham; he calls it the Sales Congruence model. Willingham believes that an individual’s view of selling, belief in their own abilities, personal values, commitment to activities, and belief in product has much more to do with their level of success than product or industry knowledge. This makes a great deal of sense—yet most sales training is industry- or product-focused. You have no doubt worked with someone whose skill or education level was below that of their peers, but their results were above average because of their grit and determination. A salesperson like this succeeds because they are is prepared to do the hard parts of the job in addition to the easy parts. They believe that the product they’re selling benefits their customers, they know they have the ability to succeed, they refuse to act in a way that contradicts their own personal values, and they believe selling is a noble profession. This is Willingham’s Sales Congruence model at work.
MANAGEMENT
Because it’s quantifiable, sales managers typically hone in on commitment to activities as the route to making salespeople hit their targets. But the truth is, if any of these five dimensions are out of alignment, it will have a significant impact on results.
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Every team has people within it who, on paper, are as good as anyone else but do not deliver the consistent results of others. The biggest improvements I have seen as a result of this program have come from bringing these dimensions into alignment (a.k.a. congruence) in the members of my team who were underperforming.
Not just for superstars Pareto’s 80/20 law says that 80% of my revenue will be generated by 20% of my people. What this course has done is raise the bar for the average as well as the superstar salesperson. Pareto’s law may still apply, but the sales figures are higher overall. In fact, eight out of 10 of my sales staff have a better average performance for the last three months than for the year to date. During the summer—including the sales graveyard shift that is August—we had a 14% average increase in sales revenue from the people who participated in the course. Top-line increases are always good to see, but there are numerous underlying benefits. Just meeting for an hour a week and discussing mutual problems has made us a more cohesive team. The course has given each team member the tools to consistently beat their targets and, more importantly, the belief they can do just that.
Sports commentators talk about needing a winner’s mentality to become great, and I can see that in my team. They now have a confidence that wasn’t there before. Even if you are simply interested in bottom-line results, Integrity Selling can have a major impact on your company. The 14% sales increase over the three months of the course meant instant ROI for our company. Because the learning continues long after the course ends, it’s a reasonable expectation that we’ll see an even higher increase in sales. But the aspect that’s affected me the most is the emotional dimension. Rather than a flash of inspiration, I’ve seen a slow dawning on my team that they are the biggest obstacle to their own success. The program’s approach involves understanding other people’s behaviors, but in doing so, it’s hard not to learn about yourself. I use the lessons from this course in my every day life—and not just the business portion of it. It’s tempting to dismiss this segment of the course as too emotional for the business world, but being involved in this program has had a major impact on my life and the lives of my sales team. And that can’t be a bad thing.
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