If you are going to be successful in this new era of enterprise sales, you are going to have to challenge traditional thinking. Old school thinking just doesn’t cut it in IT. Specifically, you are going to have to think in a new way about the employee-employer relationship. Traditional HR departments aren’t going to like this. Don’t worry about them - they won’t get it.

Sadly most HR departments in technology still haven’t earned their place at the table and should stick to filling out benefit forms and writing job descriptions. The mechanics of the relationship between employer and employee will still exist - don’t get me wrong. However, YOU are going to have to think about the way you operate from a different perspective if you are truly going to be successful over the long term. In this industry, you really don’t work for anyone but yourself.

The basic idea that a product or service needs a skilled sales force to sell it, is still the same. Nothing has changed there. Unless you’re an independent contractor, you will still technically be an ‘employee’ of a company. However, the shift in thinking that I am suggesting you adopt comes from the perspective that you must treat your territory and accounts as is they are truly your own - like you had to pay for them when you began with the company you sell for. You have to believe that you literally own them as if you have a right to sell them.

What I mean here is that we need to start thinking about territories or account lists almost like a franchise before we can make one phone call or send even one letter to them. To ensure that you take this perspective seriously, I would like to suggest the following exercise for you. At the beginning of each quarter, figure out what you want to earn. Calculate your commissions as exactly as possible. Then, write yourself a check for that amount and put it in your wallet, day timer or tack it up somewhere that you’ll see it everyday.

Think of this as having to make payroll every month for your own ‘personal selling services corporation’. I promise you will take your daily activities much more seriously. Knowing that you have an outstanding check out there (even if it is only to yourself) will help ensure increased focus and reinforce that you work for yourself. I do this at the beginning of each quarter and find it a terrific exercise for affirming my commitment to this profession as that of a ‘business owner’.

Now I realize that you might be uncomfortable thinking like this. Maybe this ‘business ownership’ model is too extreme for you. I understand that. Don’t worry; at first I felt that way too, until I realized that I needed a better way to increase the intensity of my efforts.

What I am trying to promote here is a kind of ownership and commitment to your sales territory as if it was a business that could one day sell - just like a real business with its own payroll! I want you to imagine that 2 -3 years from now you have squeezed every bit of new revenue from all the accounts in your territory and now the referrals and upgrade business is starting to happen consistently. This would be the result of your professional sales and account management activities.

Don’t you think somebody would want a well-developed territory (read: ‘business’) like that? God forbid you should one day leave the company you work for. Surely, other sales people in your company would be fighting for your territory (which has happened many times in my career). If your region really was an independent business, it would be worth significantly more than when you started working it. Now, every year those happy customers upgrade their installations to your company’s current offerings, add a few more users and purchase more services and add-on products from you and the company you sell for. Talk about a great investment! This is how some of the best sales managers I work with manage their teams.

I’m going to finish this train of thought in a second post… stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Marketing, Sales Managers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.