The Life Cycle of a Salesperson
Way back in 1974, a guy called Marvin A. Jolson wrote an article called ‘The Salesman’s Career Cycle’ for a US publication called The Journal of Marketing.
It starts like this, “The Product Life Cycle (PLC) has been found to be a fundamental key to successful and profitable product management, from the introduction of new products to the phasing out of obsolescent ones. An analogous continuum that ranges from the recruitment of a new salesman to his termination suggests that appropriateness of the salesman’s career cycle (SCC) as a general model for assisting sales executives.”
And then he faffs on for another eight pages about the four phases of a salesman’s career, time intervals and environmental variables in a way that makes you feel very glad you’ll never be trapped talking to this guy at a party. Not just because he’s probably a hundred years old by now, but who would invite this guy to a party in the first place? Unless it was a party of people they didn’t like and never wanted to see again, in which case Marvin A. Jolson would be the perfect guest.
Question: Why have I spent my first three paragraphs dumping on Marvin A. Jolson?
Answer: Because, when I was doing some research in preparation for this article and came across Marvin A. Jolson’s novella, it struck me as ironic that someone could write about salespeople (yep, Marvin, salespeople, a lot has changed for the better since 1974) in a way that, if he was a salesperson, I’d never buy anything from him. Or even read further than the less-than-riveting opening I just quoted.
There’s much to the life cycle of a salesperson than ‘variables’, ‘time intervals’ and dodgy acronyms (or DA, as I’ve now decided to call them). The salespeople I’ve met are, on the whole, focused, enthusiastic, engaging, and have excellent communication and negotiation skills. It’s a rewarding career they’ve chosen and if they do it well they’ll never stop growing, learning, and achieving. On the flip side, it’s also a tough job that can be repetitive, demotivating, and not for the faint hearted.
Let’s start from there. Let’s say I’m hiring a new salesperson and someone with all those positive attributes walks into my office and asks me what a salesperson’s life cycle really looks like.
Here’s what I’d tell them:
A Salesperson’s Life Cycle Stage 1
Most people want to hit the ground running when they start a new job. Because of the types of personality they are, salespeople want to hit the ground sprinting. So, for the first few months of a salesperson’s career, there’s a mix of excitement, enthusiasm and frustration as the new salesperson absorbs everything they need to know about the job, the product, their customers, and the people they’re working with. They’ll go above and beyond to try and make their mark, they’ll make mistakes but it won’t set them back, and their motivation and coachability will usually be 150%.
As a leader working with salespeople, this is the stage where you can get a fairly good idea of who’s going to excel, who’s going to find it harder but will keep pushing until it works, who’s going to do their best but may not have what it takes, and who’s overestimating their abilities and has an abrupt wake-up call coming.
A Salesperson’s Life Cycle Stage 2
Now they’ve bedded themselves in, they know the routine, and they’ve started to realise how hard their work can be with, often, little or no pay-off.
New clients are impossible to find.
Current clients are being trickier or more demanding than they’d anticipated.
If they’re selling on a commission, the commissions aren’t happening.
This is sometimes described as a salesperson’s wake-up call stage, when doubts start creeping in, morale slumps, and their productivity takes a thumping. It's a stage that pretty much every salesperson I’ve known, unless they’re exceptionally lucky (note that I said lucky, not talented), has had to go through. Then, almost always when they’re at their lowest point and questioning everything they do, the sales start coming in and everything begins to flow.
For a leader or sales team manager, this is the stage where your initial assessment of your salespeople’s personalities will either turn out to be right or you’ll get some welcome and unwelcome surprises. The people you thought would excel might start to struggle while the people who were already finding it hard might rise to the challenge or have their confidence destroyed completely. The same thing goes for the people who are trying hard but still might not have what it takes. As for the abrupt wake-up call people, this is the stage where they’ll start realising they’re not as flash as they’d like to believe.
It takes time, patience, and common-sense psychology to lead or manage salespeople at this stage. You’ve hopefully spent the first few months observing them closely and getting to know them so now it’s time to draw on that knowledge to keep them motivated, keep pushing them outside their comfort zone, and also know when to give them space to ease down on the brakes and reassess. The wake-up call people are usually the hardest of everyone to lead or manage at this stage because they’ll either a) accept the reality check and work harder (aka the best case scenario), b) give up and walk away because they had a completely unrealistic idea of what this sales thing involves, or c) get bolshy and defensive and look for anyone to blame for their failure except themselves.
Hopefully, if you’ve done your job right, you’ll have already identified and rooted out the wake-up call people at the interview stage, so they won’t even be a factor. But, if any of them slipped past, this is the stage where they’re going to give you the biggest problems.
A word of advice: if the problems are b) and especially c) this is also the stage where, as a leader or manager, it’s time to diplomatically show them the door.
A Salesperson’s Life Cycle Stage 3
It’s usually around the second year of working for an organisation when salespeople get comfortable with the day-to-day. By now they’ve had wins, they’ve had losses, they’ve developed strong and trusted customer relationships and, when there’s a problem, they’ve hopefully got the knowledge and confidence to find the appropriate positive solution. If you’re leading or managing a sales team, this is the stage where you’ll see they’ve all found their levels. The super stars will be motivated and achieving, the people who are super stars-in-waiting are motivated and pushing themselves, and the ones who are hovering around the middle and still don’t quite have what it takes will probably have reached their own conclusion that being a salesperson isn’t for them.
This is an interesting time for a leader because when your salespeople are at this stage in the life cycle they’ll almost certainly be delivering consistent results, hitting their targets, and keeping the sales side of the business ticking over smoothly. So, it’s essential not to let them, or you, become complacent. Keep setting them challenges, develop the super stars who want to career climb, let the super stars who are happy doing what they do know that development opportunities are there if/when they’re ready, and don’t stop reminding any of them that their hard work is valued. Even the most motivated salespeople, when they fall into this comfortable stage 3 groove, can start slipping into autopilot. As a leader, it’s your job to keep everyone focused and driven and make sure that doesn’t happen.
A Salesperson’s Life Cycle Stage 4
The salespeople who make it to stage 4 are, almost without exception, the ones who genuinely love what they do, are excellent at what they do, and can’t imagine themselves doing anything else. They’ve made it through the challenging rollercoaster years and now their reputations are established, they’ve probably got key accounts they’re managing, and they’re either focused on moving higher up the sales tree or they’ve already climbed the sales tree as high as they can go and they’re extremely satisfied with the view.
For the leader or manager of this salesperson, there are still a few options to consider. 1) If the salesperson hasn’t reached the top of the sales tree yet, you need to keep developing them until they get there. Don’t take them for granted, keep reminding them there’s still more to achieve and you want to help them achieve it. If you don’t, the time will certainly come when they’ll leave and take their exceptional sales skills with them. 2) If the salesperson has reached the top of their tree and there’s genuinely nowhere else in your organisation for them to go, look for ways to keep their role interesting so their passion for what they do remains high. If they’re this good, they’re probably already running their own sub-team. If they aren’t, that’s something to consider. Also, stay on top of what your competitors are paying salespeople at the same level, so it’s not going to be so easy for a rival to lure your top people away.
Finally, always remember that the key drivers for any salesperson are 1) the challenge and the reward, and 2) having a good product to sell that’s backed up by equally good marketing and support. In fact, if you look at those key drivers closely, you’ll see they’re the wrong around. Why do I say that? It’s simple. Even though the best salespeople are driven by the challenge and the reward, they still won’t stick around if they’re saddled with a product they can’t see themselves selling.
As a leader, if you make sure those key drivers of a great product coupled with a compelling challenge and reward are met during every stage of the salesperson’s life cycle, you’ll stand a much, much better chance of keeping them motivated, keeping them achieving, and retaining them. However, please bear in mind it’s in a salesperson’s DNA to keep looking for new challenges and opportunities so there’s only ever going to be so much you can do to hold onto them. Even if they’re at the top of their game, if they decide to move on and you’ve done everything you can to retain them, don’t take it personally. Seeking out change is part of the salesperson’s life cycle too. Even the best leaders can only do so much for their people, and accepting that is part of the leadership life cycle.
Now that we’ve covered all this, you can hopefully see why I was so sarcastic about Marvin A. Jolson’s incredibly tone-deaf ‘The Salesman’s Career Cycle’ diatribe at the start of this article. You can’t reduce what a salesperson does to being (in a mash-up of Marvin’s words) “an analogous continuum of PLC’s and SCC’s” as if a salesperson is some kind of acronym-fuelled robot. Your salespeople are the front-of-house for your company. It’s a difficult role that requires a lot of different talents to pull off successfully and when you’re lucky enough to have great salespeople on your team, treat them like the super stars they are, give them the backing they need and make sure they know you value what they do.
