I was reading an excellent TechCrunch post today written by Mark Suster called Improving Sales: The Excuse Department Is Closed.

Mark, with his sales coach Kai Krickel, refined his sales approach using TEDIC – or “The Excuse Department is Closed”.

You should read Marks original post to get his perspective regarding the value, and challenges, of working with sales people from the executive level, it’s very interesting! There is no doubt he truly recognizes the value of sales and sales people but he also speaks frankly regarding their motivations and biases.

I love this perspective as one of the keys to improving as a sales professional is recognizing your own biases and motivations. Making sure they are helping you achieve success rather than working against you. With that in mind, in Part 1 we’ll look at some of the key sales people generalizations from Mark’s articles with my thoughts below. And I have to say that honestly these are all thing’s Ive experienced in my career and knowing how to handle them are keys to sales success.

And I can’t say strongly enough how much I agree with TEDIC! No excuses needs to always be the rule.

Here are some of the sale people generalizations from his post:

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Sales people:

• Are motivated by cash. None of this namby pamby options stuff or “do it for the team – we’re all in this together” crap. Cash, cash, cash.
• Are more mercenaries than missionaries. That doesn’t make them bad – it just means that they know that they are “hired guns” and they act accordingly
• Many great ones don’t thrive in the early phase of a company where the sales is more consultative or evangelical. They like a solid product, well defined pricing, good references to sell against, a clear quota and well defined competitors.
• They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers. That means if you don’t understand the way they work you’re susceptible to being blind sided.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I would say, with a some revision, that these are pretty spot on.

• Motivated by cash
  • Yes they are. This is the power of a well designed sales person compensation plan. The onus definitely is on management to design a plan that rewards sales people when they sell what the company wants them to sell.
  • All too often I see poorly designed compensation plans that reward sales teams for the wrong sales – and the company doesn’t understand why the sales team is not selling as anticipated or what they wanted.
• Are more mercenaries than missionaries.
  • I’ll say it differently – sales people are realists.
  • When we come to an organization we believe what we are told (“we have more leads than we know what to do with”, “we’re the technical leader in this space”, “we have the team to take the company to the next level”, “our customers are #1″)
  • If the original statements turn out to be untrue then sales people cannot sell as expected. Since our compensation is directly tied to success we’re more inclined to look for the next opportunity than to help a company sort out it’s problems, especially when they were not honest at the beginning.
  • Either the company was actively misleading or unaware, either are red flags and good cause to look for new opportunities.
    
• Many great ones don’t thrive in the early phase of a company where the sales is more consultative or evangelical. They like a solid product, well defined pricing, good references to sell against, a clear quota and well defined competitors.
  • I do disagree with this one slightly – I think to be considered “great” in sales you must be able to achieve success in early phase companies as well as later stage organizations.
  • It’s definitely easier to manage a sales team when you have the product, the price model, and traction in place and proven. However in my experience helping companies in early stages is where you can have the most impact and the most fun.
  • There is nothing more exciting and rewarding then creating the initial sales process, refining the value proposition, developing competitor strategies, and turning it into a repeatable process as you build an effective sales team.
• They are as good at selling you as they are at selling your product to customers
  • This one is a fact! And while you should make sure you are not being overtly manipulated I would strongly never recommend hiring a sales person who cannot “sell” you!
  • If they cannot convince you then how will they convince your customers?

  Part I is focusing on these sales person generalizations – Part II will focus on the specific excuses that sales people tend to use and how to avoid them to make sure The Excuse Department is Closed!

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