Quit Talking and Start Doing!

Part 2 of “Knowing” how to sell is not enough!

Most of us remember the lovable, know-it-all character of Cliff Claven from the sitcom “Cheers”.  If not, Cliff was the local postman who frequented the Cheers bar and knew something about everything.  His famous opening line was, “A little-known fact, …..” and he would share some insight.  Well, we’ve all known someone like Cliff and unfortunately, we’ve all been a little like Cliff ourselves at times.  While Cliff knew a lot and talked a lot, he didn’t actually do anything with all this information.

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I’m reminded of Cliff when either I or a salesperson I’m coaching behaves the same way.

                We know what we should do.

                We know how we should do it.

                We even know how important it is that we do it.

Yet, we never actually get to the Doing part.  We just keep talking about it, planning it, thinking about it, determining what could go wrong, imagining what would happen if we tried and failed, etc.  Just like Cliff, we never leave the bar stool.  We just keep telling people how much we know.

Last week, I touched briefly on the five most common causes of the knowing-doing gap.  To read it, go to Knowing how to sell is not enough

Cause #1:  Talk is cheap.  The first cause of not doing is talking too much.

In the next several blog posts, we will dig deeper into each of these five reasons.  More importantly, we will address how to overcome them in your selling skills and territory management.

3 strategies to quit talking and start doing:

1. Baby Steps and Get rid of your To-Do List: In the hit movie “What about Bob” Dr. Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfus) writes a book titled “Baby Steps”.  It’s about taking small steps toward overcoming big problems.  This is great advice for bridging the Knowing-Doing Gap.  Often, the reason we don’t act on our knowledge is the size of the journey.  We look at our To-Do list or we think of a goal and it just seems so far away and so much work to get there.  So, we leave it on the To-Do list and put it off until another day.

Some common To-Do list items:

• Grow my territory by 10,000 cows or 10,000 acres
• Capture 20% market share in Johnson County
• Launch the new company product in my territory

       What a great list.  Certainly, great goals.  Here’s the problem, you can’t “grow by 10,000 cows nor acres”.  But, you can call on 4 prospects today or attend a networking event tomorrow.  “You can’t capture a 20% market share of Johnson County” today.  But, you can call on five of your current customers and ask for more business.  “Launching a new product” is just too big of a task for an effective To-Do list.  The only To-Do list I recommend is the Daily To-Do list.  At the end of the day, write down those things you want to get done the next day.  Or, first thing in the morning, write it out.  Those are things you can actually get done.  For those big items like capture market share or grow by 10,000 cows, break them into smaller steps and put them on your calendar.

2. Focus on how it will work, not on all the ways it won’t: I prided myself on knowing how my business worked.  I mean every aspect of it:  feed manufacturing, accounting functions, administration details, selling strategies and of course nutrition details.  I wanted to know as much as possible and certainly more than my competitor.  While that was good to a point, the downside was also pride in shooting holes in everything.  Whenever an idea popped up, my first thoughts went to all the ways it might fail.  Not that I was a negative person, I just had this desire to show people how much I knew.  Luckily my manager recognized this and just turned the discussion around.  He’d let me finish with all the ways it wouldn’t work and then ask how we could overcome those hurdles.

Learn how to do this for yourself.  If you find yourself or someone on your team that is constantly shooting holes in plans, let them finish and then ask them for ways to overcome those obstacles.  This is not a half full or half empty glass discussion.  If that person knows what they are talking about, they can prevent some big mistakes.  Just don’t let them get away without offering a solution.

3. Simplify: We love to add complexity to the simple.  Recently, I was part of an extended family trip to a state park for an afternoon outing to celebrate several family birthdays.  Easy, right?  Just get in the car and go.  Not so easy when there are 25 people in 8 cars.  Pretty soon the discussion started.  “Who knows the way?  Which is the fastest way?  What’s the temperature? What’s the weather supposed to do?  What if it rains?  Do they have bathrooms there?  Should we bring snacks?”  Being a person that likes to get things done, my frustration level built over time.  I asked, “What if we used GPS on our smartphones to find the park?”  The same phones that 23 people were now using to look up the weather. If you’re prone to over-analyzing like my family group did, first be aware of it.  Then, overcome it by taking the first step.  You can’t possibly prepare for all the eventual outcomes.  So, just take the first step.  Then another and another step.  My final question to the group that day was, “Hey, let’s build the plane while we’re in the air folks!”  With that, everyone picked up on the sarcasm and we started slowly heading towards our cars.

          As salespeople, we do the same thing.  A new idea or suggestion comes up and we leap into our complication mode:

• How would we get the product made?
• Who would deliver it? Service it? Sell it?
• How seasonal is this product? What would we do with old inventory?
• We tried that 1983 and it didn’t sell. Four of my customers quit over us doing that.

Please understand that I am not saying you shouldn’t plan, analyze and discuss future plans.  However, there is a balance.  If you find yourself or your team continuously talking and never doing, look to these three strategies to help you get started.

I’ll leave you with one final strategy that I learned from my wife.  When the kids were growing up, we had the typical struggle of getting them to go to bed every night.  I handled this conflict head-on with, “you kids go to bed because you need a good night’s sleep, because I said so and on and on…”  With much arguing and struggling, they went to bed.  When my wife handled this chore, she didn’t argue or demand.  She simply said, “you don’t have to go to sleep, just lay down and close your eyes for a few minutes.”  No argument and kids were asleep in no time.  I think she even used this on me when I complained I didn’t have time to rake the leaves one year.  After she said, “It should only take you about twenty minutes,” I stopped complaining and jumped right in.  Finishing two hours later, I was so glad I stopped complaining and started when I did.

Please join me next time as we discuss Cause #2 Routine versus Thinking.  We’ll dig deeper into each area and give a fresh look at an age-old problem of knowing but not doing!

 Cause #2:  Routine versus thinking.

Cause #3:  Fear.

Cause #4:  Ineffective Measuring.

Cause #5:  Misplaced competition.

If you found this to be helpful, forward on to someone you know who might also appreciate it.

For more Ag Sales Training, Ag Sales Coaching and Leading Ag Sales Teams, go to http://www.GregMartinelli.net/