Working With Integrity

As the rollout of Integrity Selling continues, Mike Kelly describes the benefits his team is already seeing from removing their self-imposed limitations.

Workingwith

Integrity 46 W W W . A M E R I C A N E X E C U T I V E . C O M

S E P T E M B E R

2 0 0 4

P

revailing wisdom says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. If that were true, it would mean there’s no point spending time trying to improve the skills of my experienced sales staff—surely they must have reached their full potential by now.

That’s ridiculous, of course, but in rolling out the Integrity Systems sales training course, I discovered that some people truly believed they couldn’t improve past a certain point. I don’t know if I was saddened more to find that some people had a they-haven’t-set-the world-alight-so-far-andthis-course-isn’t-going-to-help-them attitude about their colleagues, or that some privately held that belief about themselves.

Sure, the idea that an employee can’t improve is ludicrous, but when a salesperson’s results are at a consistent level, it can be hard to visualize doubling or tripling those results. If you’re that salesperson, the figures you see month-in and monthout (good or bad) become your reality. You begin to believe that is the only level you can work at.

MANAGEMENT

You’re in control These issues, and many others, have come to the forefront as a direct result of the course I’ve been facilitating for my team over the past seven weeks. When I entered into this program, I knew we needed a sales training program and wanted a simple process that would compliment our style. With Integrity Systems, I instead found a course that has a major impact on people’s personal and professional lives. The two are, of course, intimately connected.

Integrity Selling’s power is in its ability to put control back into people’s hands. They have the sense of ownership required to consistently hit targets. This is something they can do. My staff now sets goals—lots of goals. Goals related to their work, income, family, and spiritual needs.

Long-term goals and short-term goals. Most importantly, they set goals they’ll have to stretch to achieve.

Ron Willingham, founder of Integrity Systems, talks about the Mental Area of the Possible we all have inside us. He refers to the little voice that tells us, rightly or wrongly (mostly wrongly), what we are able to achieve. That voice is formed by our previous successes and failures, our

47 W W W . A M E R I C A N E X E C U T I V E . C O M

S E P T E M B E R

2 0 0 4

background, and our upbringing, and it has a major impact in limiting the goals we set.

Setting ambitious goals has been a difficult task, and we’ll no doubt continue to struggle with it. But taking the simple step of discussing these issues in a safe environment makes an immense difference.

48

In The Dreamgiver, Bruce Wilkinson talks about the courage needed to fight the giants we meet and how that courage is often diminished by the people who care for us the most because they don’t want to see us getting hurt. They give us subtle “reminders” that we are not good enough to tackle that giant because they don’t want to see us fail.

Releasing themselves from this self-limiting mindset has been a challenge for my team.

Setting ambitious goals has been a difficult task, and we’ll no doubt continue to struggle with it.

But taking the simple step of discussing these issues in a safe environment makes an immense difference.

We spend a little over an hour each week discussing goals and other issues. The personal growth aspect is wrapped inside the more traditional themes of the course, but I think people are seeing that overcoming our self limitations is what the course is really about.

Incredible confidence We’re seven weeks into an eight-week course.

After the last session, there is a monthly onehour meeting to keep us on track, but most of the learning has already taken place. My job, with the help of Integrity Systems, is to reinforce that learning. Although it’s still early days, I’d like to share some of the feedback I’ve been getting.

One member of my team said, “Now that I’m focusing on what we can provide to our customers, and how I can understand their needs, my confidence level is sky high. I’m not worried about picking up the phone since I’m simply trying to help people, not sell stuff to them.”

Another team member said that before the course, he did not have any real goals—just a wish list of what he’d like to happen. “Now, every day, I look at my goals, both work and family, and it feeds my desire to work harder.”

Still another person told me she is using Integrity methods every day, and not just in sales. “I’m an honest person, and I’ve always tried to work this way, but the Integrity course has put structure to what I already did. This course is huge. I’m so much more aware of what’s really happening in a sales call.”

Having a warts-and-all look at your sales practices can be a frightening experience, but doing it with the whole sales team is unbelievably valuable. Prior to running the course, I believed we were doing a good job, but the course has shown us there are many things we can do to make ours a truly customer-centered sales process. It’s a bit like starting a diet or fitness program: once you start, you realize how much you need to do. It won’t be easy, but there may be life in this old dog yet.

In the next article in this series, we’ll look at the results from the full rollout of this program.

W W W . A M E R I C A N E X E C U T I V E . C O M

S E P T E M B E R

2 0 0 4