Sales Reps Are Lazy
"We're Not Closing Deals Because Our Sales Reps Are Lazy!"
I’ve heard this so many times. And you know what? It’s true. Sometimes sales reps are lazy. But guess what?
Programmers are lazy.
Designers are lazy.
Executives are lazy.
The only people who are never lazy are Spartan racers and UFC fighters, and most of them are clinically insane.
It’s human nature. People expect to crush it in a new job for six months to a year, then ease off a little. Maybe they want to take a long lunch or go for a walk in the park. Maybe they’ve earned it.
And sales is stressful.
It’s one of the only jobs where you can be smart, hardworking, and still underperform. You can spend six months working a huge deal, only to lose it because the company got acquired or a new CTO comes in with a different agenda.
It can be brutal, even soul-crushing. But when you have a big year in sales? It’s incredibly fun.
Two Lessons
$ = Excitement
Don't think: "My reps aren’t selling because they’re lazy."
Think: "My reps are getting lazy because they’re not selling."
Or more accurately: "Doing something repetitive that rarely works is difficult and demoralizing."
When reps feel like their work isn’t paying off, they get frustrated — and then they get lazy. The cure for laziness isn’t being yelled at by a manager or thrown on a Performance Improvement Plan. The only cure for laziness is excitement. You know what excites salespeople? Commissions.
When reps find a behavior that actually earns them commissions, they’ll do it ‘til the cows come home.
Good Lazy vs. Bad Lazy
The best reps? They’re good lazy.
They sell so much Monday through Thursday that they barely work Fridays. They sell so much January through November that they take December off. That’s good lazy.
Now ask yourself, would you rather have a rep who hits 200% of quota and calls in her annual review from the hottest fashion boutique in Paris?
or
A rep who’s making eight hours of cold calls on Christmas Eve because he’s about to get fired?
Like it or not, it’s your problem, not theirs.
It’s your job, as leadership, to excite your salespeople:
Show them how they can win.
Prove that their effort pays off.
Reward them by letting them be a little lazy once they’ve crushed it.
This is what we do at Antimatter Consulting.
We do six things:
Product Marketing - create a simple and clear product catalog
Competitive Intelligence - differentiate through market research
Content & Collateral - establish subject-matter expertise
Prospecting & Lead Gen - automate systems for leads & opportunities
Sales Rep Mentoring - prep your team to close deals
Sales Metrics & Forecasting - set and measure realistic targets
It’s all designed to create a framework for success. So that your reps aren’t out there on their own. They have a repeatable system to differentiate your products, find leads, and close deals. We’ll show your team how it’s done, so that they can see results and get excited again. It’s not that complicated, and it doesn’t take months to accomplish. Set up a free consult and let’s get started…