Trust what you see, not what you want to hear.
As we reflect on the year, we tend to remember the spectacular successes and the colossal failures. The successes are fun to recall, marked by flawless sales execution. The failures continue to befuddle us.
Most distressing to one sales rep I interviewed was the possibility that his coach, whom he trusted for guidance, was a “double agent” (pretending to support him, but really was helping the competitor). How could this happen? Why would his coach double cross him? How could he so badly have misread the situation?
Only after the fact did he realize that his “happy ears” allowed him to miss the signals that his coach was setting him up to fail. For example, while professing his support of the solution, his coach kept making excuses for why he couldn’t meet with the executive sponsor. He should have known then that the coach was not helping him win.
The clincher was when the coach wouldn’t let him demo last, even though he asked to go last. The coach claimed that he was already being given preferential treatment going first. When he pushed back on the schedule, he was assured that he should trust the process. Foolishly, he relented and went first (out of three) and lost the deal.
These two examples would have been mitigated if the sales rep had used the MOIC Pipeline Grader behavioral markers. In this case, he believed who he thought was his coach. That belief was subjective and let him down. The observations were objective, but he ignored what he saw and believed what he hoped was true.
While hope springs eternal, seeing is believing.
If your SaaS sales team depends on subjective hope instead of objective behavioral observations, try Pipeline Grader and ensure consistent and predictable sales success. Visit www.moicpartners.com for more detail.
