Rid yourself of these negative tendencies and reach your full potential.

by Dave Kahle

Over the years that I’ve been involved in distribution, I’ve worked with tens of thousands of salespeople. Certain negative tendencies ­- mistakes distributor salespeople make ­- keep surfacing. Here are my top five. See to what degree you (or your sales force) may be guilty of them.

No. 1: Ruts
It is the unique nature of the distribution business that salespeople see the same customers over and over again. Regardless of how many accounts they have, they see their customers much more frequently than almost any other type of salesperson. As a result, it’s very easy to slide into the routine of seeing the same people at around the same time and talking about the same things. 

Not only is it easy to get into ruts regarding which customers to see, it is also easy to extend that “comfort zone” mentality to the other aspects of the job. They stick to selling the same products, visiting the same departments and selling in the same way.

There was a time when the “same time next week” mode was wise. Dependability was a desirable quality for a distributor salesperson. But, alas, the market has changed and most customers don’t have time for the same conversation about fishing and football they had last month. 

Even more insidious than this comfortable routine is the addiction to mental and emotional comfort zones. These comfort zones appear when a salesperson doesn’t present a new product the company just picked up because the salesperson isn’t comfortable with it. 

Or when the salesperson refuses to learn the new computer system because he or she isn’t comfortable with that. Or when the salesperson doesn’t call on a new market segment. 

These are all evidence of a salesperson addicted to mental and emotional comfort zones. The comfortable rut has become an almost insurmountable chasm, hindering the salesperson from reaching his/her potential. 

As long as we remain within our comfort zones, we’re destined to dwell in the past. We do what used to work, sell what we’re comfortable with, do our jobs the way we are used to doing them. We allow our past to determine our present and limit our future. 

This may have been OK in years gone by, but the pace of change today won’t reward the salesperson who is addicted to comfort zones built in previous days. Personal and professional growth means continually venturing into unexplored areas, meeting new people, selling new products and trying new methods, all with a mindset that understands the need for constant growth. 

No. 2: Reactive modality 
It is so easy for a salesperson to allow everyone else to dictate the course of their days. They carve out little empires of importance for themselves so they can constantly react and thereby be busy and feel needed. They train their customers to call them with routine questions when they could just as easily have called customer service. They need to be there to personally write down every order. They jump every time even the smallest customer calls. They must personally supervise every complex order, drop off every sample and expedite every problem. Why? Because they want to feel important. 

They aim to please, and they define that as reacting and responding to whatever comes their way. As a result, they develop days filled with frenzied activity. They drive this emergency shipment over to this customer, drop off a sample to that one, check on a couple of back orders for others, source some esoteric product for another. 

It’s all so unnecessary. All this because they allowed and encouraged every one else to dictate their activities. Where do they go tomorrow? Depends on who calls today. Instead of developing plans and working proactively, they let everyone else determine their days and work reactively. 

The net result? They squander their talents, time, energy and wisdom in a random distribution dictated by everyone else in the world. At the end of the day, they are exhausted. They are crabby to their spouses, irritable with their families and negative about their companies and their jobs. 

No. 3: Wasting the sales interaction by 
not learning more about the customer
Salespeople have called on some customers for years and yet don’t know any more about them today than after the second sales call. These are accounts where the salesperson cannot identify one of the account’s customers, explain whether or not they are profitable, or identify any of their strategic goals.

Distributor salespeople have this wonderful opportunity to learn about their customers in deeper and more detailed ways, and often squander it by having the same conversations with the same customers over and over. They never dig deeper. They mistake familiarity with knowledge.

What a shame. I am convinced that the ultimate sales skill ­ the part of the sales process that determines success as a salesperson ­ is the ability to know the customer in a more detailed way than our competitors do.

It’s our knowledge of the customer that allows us to position ourselves as competent, trustworthy consultants. It’s our knowledge of the customer that provides us the information we need to structure programs and proposals that distinguish us from everyone else. It’s our knowledge of the customer that allows us to proactively service that customer, to meet their needs even before they have articulated them.

In an economic environment where the distinctions between companies and products blur in the eyes of the customer, successful companies and individuals are those who outsell the rest. Outselling the rest depends on understanding the customer better than anyone else.

No. 4: Poor questioning
This is a variation of the previous mistake. I am astonished at the lack of thoughtfulness I often see on the part of distributor salespeople. Most use questions like sledgehammers, splintering the relationship and bruising the sensibility of their customers by thoughtless questions. 

Others don’t use them at all, practically ignoring the most important part of a sales call. They labor under the misconception that the more they talk, the better job of selling they do, when the opposite is true. Others are content to play about the surface of the issue. “How much of this do you use?”  “What don’t you like about your current supplier?” Their questions are superficial at best, redundant and irritating at worst. 

The result? Salespeople never really uncover the deeper issues that motivate their customers. Instead, they continually react to the common complaint of customers who have been given no reason to think otherwise: “Your price is too high.” 

Fewer sales, constant complaints about pricing, frustrated salespeople, impatient managers and unimpressed customers all result from the inability to use the salesperson’s most powerful tool with skill and sensitivity.

No. 5: No investment in themselves 
Here’s an amazing observation. No more than 5 percent to 10 percent of active, full-time professional distributor salespeople ever invest in their own growth. That means that only one of 20 salespeople has ever spent $20 of his or her own money on a book on sales, subscribed to a sales magazine, taken a sales course or attended a sales seminar of their choice on their own nickel. 

Don’t believe me? Take a poll. Ask your salespeople or your colleagues how many of them have invested more than $20 in a book, magazine, tape, etc., in the last 12 months. Ask those who venture a positive answer to substantiate it by naming their investment. Don’t be surprised if their answers get vague. You’ll quickly find out how many salespeople in your organization have invested in themselves. 

Distributor sales is the only profession I know of where the overwhelming majority of practitioners are content with their personal status quo. Why is that? 

Some mistakenly think their jobs are so unique that they cannot possibly learn anything from anyone else. Still others think they know it all. They have, therefore, no interest in taking time from some seemingly valuable thing they are doing to attend a seminar or read a book. Some don’t care. Their focus is hanging onto their jobs, not necessarily getting better at them.

How do you compare?
The overwhelming majority of distributor salespeople do not view themselves as professionals and, therefore, do not have professional expectations for themselves. They worked their way up from the customer service desk or the warehouse, and they view their work as a job to be done, not a profession to grow within. 

They are content to let their companies arrange for their training or development. Between you and me, they would prefer that their companies really didn’t do anything that would require them to actually change what they do. 

These are the most common negative tendencies that I see. It may be that you and your colleagues are immune to these dampers on success. Good for you. But if you are not immune, and if you spot some of your own tendencies in this list, then you are not reaching your potential for success. You have tremendous potential for success ­ for contentment, confidence and competence ­ that is being hindered by these negative behaviors. Rid yourself of these negative tendencies, and you’ll begin to reach your potential.

Dave Kahle, called the guru of distributor sales, helps his clients increase their sales and improve their sales productivity. For more information, or to contact the author, e-mail info@davekahle.com, phone (800) 331-1287 or visit www.davekahle.com.

This article originally appeared in the January 2003 issue of Progressive Distributor. Copyright 2003.

back to top                                    back to selling skills archives