Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Finding the Sales Genii for Your Sales Team Finding the Sales Genii for Your Sales Team I'd like to talk with you about a good book I had read titled, "Uncommon Genius." I'd like to talk about the book in light of what we are doing together -- hiring salespeople. And, as well, in light of a conversation I had with a new client last week. The author, Denise Shekerjian, a former trial attorney, has interviewed 40 recipients of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award. Very smart, accomplished people win this award. Shekerjian has set out to find the common thread among the award recipients: What is it that these people do with their minds that has enabled them to be so accomplished? She does, in fact, identify specific characteristics in the way they think. I'm not going to go through them now. I'll save that for next week's letter to you... Understand, though, that brainy, super-accomplished people tend to have certain thinking strategies. That said, I had an interesting conversation with  a new client last week. Their company sells an enterprise level software solution. He said something that has been whirling around in my brain... This guy is very smart. (Aside from the fact that he is a client which means in itself he's smart), he happens to be a brainy guy. In our conversation he said to me he needs intelligent salespeople -- as in High IQ. I found this puzzling. In 15 years of looking at salespeople I never really thought there was a relationship between IQ and sales ability. Not that salespeople are dumb, but I never thought of them as super smart, like PhD smart. Where I think salespeople are smart and know how to use their brains is in being  Motivated, Focused, Persuasive and Money and Power-motivated. I think salespeople are good at doing THIS with their brains, not necessarily IQ smart. Salespeople are able to push themselves to do sales work well because of their ability to master themselves in these areas of Motivation, Focus and Persuasion. In having looked at salespeople who succeed for 15 years now, I think that good salespeople are Genii. They are Genii in the way they do these specific things. I don't think this is necessarily IQ. Many of you have managed salespeople for years. I'd be interested to hear your feedback on this. 10:01:00 AM    comment []

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