Performance Driving Fundamentals – Part 1: An Interview with Joe Cantafio

90% of all sales teams around the world would make far more rapid progress if they would relentlessly focus on just these three priorities for 12 months without wavering, without distraction.

Break the too much talking habit….

After interviewing over 200 leading sales executives over the last 2 years, over 90% of them tell us the #1 most results limiting habit they observe is salespeople that simply talk too much on sales calls. Joe has noticed the same thing…

“The people that struggle are the people who talk. They have no idea what this customer actually needs and sometimes the customer themselves doesn’t know what they need, but sometimes through better questioning, the customer themselves will tell you exactly how to solve their problems. If you’re not listening and not asking great questions, you’re going to miss that point.”

Week after week, month after month, well over half of all salespeople go out on sales calls and talk too much, don’t ask the right questions, don’t listen well and miss the bigger opportunities to sell loyalty-driving solutions. This single mistakes costs companies billions and billions in lost sales but it’s remarkable how many salespeople repeat this mistake year after year. Joe explains what he sees in relation to this stubborn habit…

“A couple of things come to mind that may explain why salespeople talk too much. One, salespeople want to show everybody how smart they are as far as their product knowledge and so they feature dump. Second, they don’t prepare for the call and research that call. So they have to go in there and ask, ‘What do you do?’ and end up being one of millions of people that go in there and spew the same old stuff.”

Ideally, the company has some well thought out and organized competitive advantages and differentiating factors the salesperson can use as a starting point. We do a drill similar to this with the salespeople we coach at SalesGym and it’s remarkable how fast the too much talking habit starts to break after just 2-3 30-minute drills-based practice sessions. Joe points out…

“It’s a game of habits. I had the distinct pleasure of coaching under of Hall of Fame basketball coach Morgan Wootten. He was the first high school basketball coach in the Basketball Hall of Fame. He taught me that you have to keep it really simple, but it’s got to become a habit. When you have bad habits that you practice, those bad habits become permanent.”

Develop a culture of practice…

Good practice transforms performance… we know this. For many sales managers and their people, practice feels awkward and uncomfortable and it’s for this reason they avoid it. Great sports teams and first responder units thrive on practice because it’s built into the culture. Team members learn the practice routines and embrace them. The best sales executives create this same kind of practice culture in their sales teams.

Joe points out the impact of continuous practice of the fundamentals…

“If you read about empathy and emotional intelligence, you will find it often outperforms intelligence, by a great deal. If you don’t have that, you’re not going to be able to put freight on that truck. You’re not going to be able to solve people’s problems. They’re not going to let you solve their problems.

“You have to practice your fundamentals and rehearse them. Rehearse opening a call until it becomes a habit. Rehearse asking for that next appointment until it becomes a habit, and the same goes for practicing your diagnostic questioning and situational questions. You have to prepare and practice. I don’t think salespeople do enough practice, anywhere. When we watch the LeBron James and other great athletes of the world, we see the end product. We see these great athletes who make it look so easy, but we don’t ever go behind the closed door to see how hard they work. They still find a way to tune their games through practice.”

“Practice makes permanent. So it’s essential to have good, solid practice.”

Transform sales managers into coaches

Every sales executive we’ve ever met has told us they wish their sales managers would do more coaching. Joe explains why this often doesn’t happen…

“We used to hire some very good salespeople to lead and then we found out that we lose because they really didn’t have leadership qualities. They were really good salespeople who couldn’t manage or coach.”

It’s critical to promote people into sales management that have a burning desire to help others learn and grow. Coaching is about teaching, practicing and reinforcing and it’s a form of servant leadership. Often, the best salespeople have strong egos and crave recognition and find it difficult to step into the role of the servant leader as Joe explains…

“Even with great, great athletes, just because they can play does not mean they can coach. Larry Bird comes to mind. I read that when he went into coaching, he was so frustrated because he couldn’t understand why people couldn’t do what he did. It’s like sales, we have taken a lot of really good salespeople and made them really crappy leaders.”

“I wish people would stop using the word manager and start using the word Coach. In the end it all gets back to the simplicity of the fundamentals of treating people with tremendous respect, researching, getting interested, but being excited to be here in sales.”

The SalesGym is a research, consulting, and training company that works with and learns from sales teams all over the world and has refined a coaching and training process that trains sales teams the way elite athletes are trained. More insights and articles from us can be found on our RESOURCES PAGE.