CHAPTER

10

Twelve Habits of Highly Successful SDRs

As a result of the many books the two of us have read on selling, we have come to the conclusion that there is little new under the sun concerning the habits of highly successful salespeople. However, that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate a reminder now and again to revisit what we do know, should do, and don’t always practice. Our guidance falls into three broad categories: time management, communication, and professional effectiveness.

Time Management

1. Focus

Focus operates at both the macro- and the microlevels. At the macrolevel, focus is about setting specific, measurable, achievable and/or attainable, realistic and/or relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. At the microlevel, focus is about removing distractions in order to concentrate on results-driven activities.

In our experience, people struggle more with microlevel focus than they do with macrolevel focus. This mirrors the well-known social science finding that average people rate themselves as above average, and based on our observations, most people are under the assumption that they multitask well while others do not. This type of thinking is especially common among millennials who argue that they were raised in a multitasking environment and are therefore better at it. We haven’t seen that to be the case, and many rigorous academic studies have not only backed that up but have dispelled that myth. Consider a recent study of 145 college students recruited from a second-year research methods and statistics course.¹ Although all of the students attended a sequence of three lectures together, the researchers assigned each student to one of seven groups as follows: (1) paper-and-pencil note-taking only, (2) word processing note-taking only, (3) natural use of technology (that is, the control group in which participants were allowed to use technology as they normally would during lectures), (4) multitasking on Facebook, (5) multitasking on e-mail, (6) multitasking on MSN Instant Messenger, and (7) multitasking on a texting application. The average scores across three 15-question multiple-choice tests, each conducted following a lecture, are provided in Figure 10-1.

  FIGURE 10-1   Multiple-Choice Test Percentage Scores for Multitasking Study

The results suggested that immersive social networking and e-mailing lead to cognitive impairment, even in millennials. Salespeople, be they millennials or not, are prone to all of these same distractions. To conquer this, we turn to the next habit, schedule.

2. Schedule

Distractions are contextual—e-mail qualifies as a distraction only when you are supposed to be doing something else. To maximize productivity, we recommend that sales professionals batch tasks into time blocks scheduled on their calendars. Aaron Ross’s sage advice in the foreword of this book is that prospecting must be done in blocks lasting a minimum of two hours. This means that prospecting activity blocks need to be scheduled for the most productive time of each day (that usually means first thing in the morning) so that this behavior becomes a habit.

Moreover, stay on task religiously either through force of will or with digital distraction-blocking technologies such as Freedom or Anti-Social. If you have not already done so, turn off all but the most critical notifications on your phone and computing devices.

3. Plan

Trim often unwieldy longer-term goals into shorter, smaller, more manageable pieces, and make it easier to measure success. It’s not uncommon for many sales development representatives to have a goal of setting 20 qualified appointments per month, but break this down into a weekly goal of 5 appointments, or, even better, a daily goal of 1 appointment, and you’ll actually see success on an ongoing basis and be more motivated.

4. Delegate

To maintain (the illusion of) total control, salespeople tend to underdelegate. Instead, when possible, leverage the services available to you from the product team, marketing, and sales operations. Even when you don’t have such services available, virtual assistants can take care of many administrative tasks.

We are big fans of David Allen’s book Getting Things Done, and we have slightly adapted his efficient framework for delegation as follows.

First, delegate a task only when completing it will not help you achieve your focus goals.

Second, delegate an important task only when you are not uniquely qualified to complete it yourself.

Third, don’t delegate an important task if you are uniquely qualified to complete it in a trivial amount of time, usually not more than five minutes.

Fourth, schedule a task on your calendar only if you expect it to take a meaningful length of time to complete.

Communication

5. Smile

We would have loved to provide support for the facial-feedback hypothesis, which posits, according to none other than Charles Darwin and William James, that the mere act of smiling can cause happiness, but research² has failed to confirm it. Instead, it has been proven that highly authentic emotional displays by employees “can trigger changes in a customer’s affective state.” Specifically, “the authenticity of the employee’s emotional labor display, rather than the extent of smiling, influences the customer’s emotions and perceptions.”

However, another study³ of male and female participants buying stereos from male and female salespeople had more ambiguous results. This time, researchers found that male prospects were slightly more likely to buy from a smiling versus neutral female sales clerk but slightly less likely to buy from a smiling versus neutral male sales clerk. Female prospects, on the other hand, remained unaffected by smiles, regardless of the salesperson’s gender.

If the research indicates that smiling does not matter, or at least matters only under select conditions, then you’re probably wondering why “smile” is one of our 12 habits. Smiling projects a positive attitude that you feel on the inside and people see on the outside. Selling is hard work filled with a few shining moments in an otherwise vast ocean of rejection. Our best advice is to project a positive outlook and view the journey as the reward. Smiling is also code for rapport building. Our research, including the two studies discussed above, was conducted in synthetic, high-transactional, business-to-consumer settings. In the business-to-business world, it is generally accepted (though not scientifically proven, to our knowledge) that there is a strong relationship between trust and the propensity to purchase and renew.

6. Ask

It is written that great salespeople are great listeners, and we have no reason to doubt this. In fact, it makes perfect sense. We were curious, however, if academic studies actually supported this, so we did some research.

In the first study⁴ we found, researchers sent a mail survey to 500 new car buyers and received 173 usable responses. The questionnaire explored 13 components of listening in addition to 4 that assessed trust, 3 that assessed customer satisfaction, and 4 that assessed future willingness to interact with the salesperson. That study found that listening was positively related to both trusting in and to willingness to interact with that salesperson in the future. Listening was not significantly correlated with satisfaction as measured by three understandably unrelated factors: “amount of contact,” “level of service,” and “dealings with this salesperson.”

Although that first study convinced us of the link between listening and trust in transactional B2C environments, we went deeper because we needed to know the connection between listening and performance in a relational B2B environment. So we kept digging.

We found a second study⁵ in which researchers asked for and received 79 self-assessments from the salespeople of a Fortune 100 international electronics manufacturer while they were attending a company-sponsored training program. The questionnaire had 16 items measuring adaptive selling behaviors, 8 items measuring job satisfaction, and 8 items measuring job performance. One additional item, “My customers probably consider me to be a good listener,” was also positively correlated with all three categories. In particular, the correlation between listening and performance was 0.337, indicating that 11.4 percent (r squared) of the variation in self-assessed performance was explained by variation in self-assessed listening ability.

In case you are worried that the self-assessment was biased, other studies⁶ have shown that the technique is accurate when conducted carefully. Nevertheless, we turned to a third study,⁷ so as not to have even a lingering shadow of doubt. This final study consisted of examining pairs of financial advisors and clients. Ultimately, there was a total of 778 usable responses from clients and 418 from advisors working for 10 different financial institutions. Though nominally B2C, this study took into consideration almost everything we had hoped for: (1) it used quantitative performance data supplied by employers, (2) it was based on customer assessment rather than self-assessment of listening ability, and (3) it was based on a sales process that was highly relationship oriented. Even after adjusting for age, gender, education, and experience, this study found a significant “positive association between customers’ perceptions of the salesperson’s listening effectiveness and the salesperson’s quantitative sales performance.”

Most academic studies deconstruct listening into the three main areas of sensing, evaluating, and responding. These areas, along with their supporting subcomponents, show in detail how the significant drivers of performance actually work:

1. Sensing

Focus on the prospect by avoiding outside interruptions from people or machines (e-mails, phone calls, text messages, and so on).

Maintain firm and appropriate eye contact.

Exhibit and read nonverbal gestures such as head nods.

Take notes.

2. Evaluating

Understand the client’s or prospect’s point of view, concerns, and needs by asking for more details with probing, clarifying, and continuing questions.

Paraphrase and/or reformulate the client’s or prospect’s questions.

Do not interrupt the client or prospect. Answer only at appropriate times.

Stay on the subject.

3. Responding

Use full sentences instead of one-word responses like “yes” or “no.”

Offer information relevant to questions asked.

Show genuine interest and enthusiasm.

7. Respond

Follow up rapidly and efficiently on inquiries and requests from prospects and clients.

Professional Effectiveness

8. Record

Rather than viewing CRM as a necessary administrative evil, embrace it as a critical ally in growing your business (and your bank account) by building and maintaining relationships with clients and prospects. To that end, keep contacts up to date, capture detailed notes, and set tasks and reminders.

9. Persist and Personalize

Persistence pays. Whether the number of touches needed to set meetings is 8 or 10 or 20, the frequency is certainly higher than the mere 1 or 2 that most salespeople attempt. Keep touches delicate and personalized so that they do not become an annoyance. “Delicate” means not leaving a voice mail after every call or not calling an excessive number of times over too short an amount of time.

Personalize means that every e-mail, voice mail, phone conversation, and live meeting demonstrates and reflects that you did precall planning and came prepared with background and context.

10. Expand

As Aaron Ross mentioned in his foreword, salespeople routinely fall into a vicious trap. They start out as strong business developers until their book of business is large enough to slip into account management mode for ease and comfort. They renew existing business rather than finding new business.

To break that cycle, the highest-performing salespeople maintain an expansion mindset. They ask existing customers for warm referrals into other parts of their business. The best time to ask for a referral is the point at which you have concluded that the prospects are truly not interested. Finally, pay it forward by providing referrals to others; in most instances, reciprocity will kick in, and they will repay the favor; if not, you will at least have accrued some good karma.

11. Protect

Especially in today’s information age, guard your reputation as your most valuable selling asset. If you do not feel the particular sales approach that management is asking you to execute is appropriate, then speak up. If they do not listen, find another job with an employer who understands that the strength of their business is based on the reputations of their employees.

12. Learn

You have reached the end of this book, which proves you have embraced the last and most important habit of highly successful sales development representatives—continuous learning. To be successful and to stay that way, you need to constantly maintain your competitive edge by perpetually sharpening your skills in every one of the following areas:

Customer knowledge

Product knowledge

Competitive knowledge

Sales process knowledge

Interpersonal skills, especially communications