120: Get Your Hustle On

<p>Smart people in sales are a problem.  They have expansive brains, intellectual curiousity and strategic depth.  They are quick to spot the big picture solutions for clients.  Internally they are a system police, fantastic on urging the fixing of the sales structures and suggesting necessary improvements.  With Excel macro skills to burn, they can transform a simple spreadsheet information capture into a formidable machine.  They are not what we need in the sale’s team.</p> <p>We need “good hustle” from our salespeople.  Not “hustle” in the sense of tricking clients into arrangements to secure a big commission or a fat bonus.  “Good hustle” is about focus on getting commitments from buyers to proceed, that will benefit the buyer, because it will improve their business.  This is usually not about long-term massive interventions but about the practical improvements that can be executed quickly, that produce an immediate outcome.  Getting the client to that point of agreement requires energy, lots of energy.</p> <p>That energy is needed to make the phone calls to follow up on leads which come through to the website, from advertising, ad word campaigns, social media outreach etc.  Also, contacting potential clients we have met at networking events, seeking referral clients and selecting prospective clients to be contacted through cold calling.  This is not exciting work.  It is less thrilling than working at the 30,000 foot level, overviewing vast swaths of client territory.  What is needed is the exact opposite – meet, propose, meet, follow up, meet, gain commitment, follow up, follow up and further follow up.  This is down and dirty in the trenches, just digging, digging, and more digging.</p> <p>Dull “grunts” in the sales army are not much help either.  Clients need more consulting skills from salespeople than ever before and that requires intelligence, analytic ability and clarity.  Smart people have these attributes in full, but they tend to become bored with the “grunt” aspect of sales.  Digging the trench is