Ways to fall in-love with the customer

• Learn from the Customers: Be a good listener.
• Make yourself accessible: Always be there.
• Be proactive: Avoid break up.
• value your customers: Treat them they are your first
• Strive for moments of Awesome: Become unforgettable.

Champions Made in Kenya

Lessons for Sales People from World Conquering Athletes

Are Kenyan runners born or made? This is a question that intrigues those who follow Kenya’s dominance in long distance running. Kenya has produced more world champions and Olympic medalists in mid to long distance running than any other nation on face of earth. Most of these athletes come from the Rift Valley Province of the country. There has been a raging debate where the people of Rift Valley are genetically designed to be world beaters or it is the environment that has made them world beaters or maybe something to do with their diet.

But regardless of where you come from in Rift Valley to beat the world at the biggest stage you need to practice at a place called Iten. It is a place that athletes spend weeks and months preparing to compete with Kenyans. Why are they coming here? Altitude? Diet ? What is the secret  magic  of Iten ?

One of the most important aspects of Iten is its concentration of world beaters. It is a place where even the Kenya greats who don’t come from Rift Valley Camp in their pursuit of a dream to beat the world. Some of the non Kenyan World Stars who have trained here are Mo Farah and Paula Radcliffe from United Kingdom, Uganda’s Stephen Kiprotich among others.

Iten is the Silicon Valley for mid to long distance runners. 

Why would I write about this region in a sales article? Because there is a lot we can learn about sales from long distance running. The main reason is that to become a super star in whichever field you need to spend time with super stars. If you want to fly high then you need to spend time with eagles not chicken.

1.          The first step of winning  is spending time with those seeking to be winners

The reason many foreign athletes come to Iten is to practice with the Kenyan super stars. They want to do what they see Kenyans do. But most importantly they want to be consumed by that passion for winning that burns in the Kenyan runners. When this passion consumes you, you will want to pursue the goals that champions want to pursue. You will want to do whatever they do to win.

When you spend time with people aiming to exceed their quotas, break records and win trophies you are likely to start desiring the same.

 If you want to become a sales super star you need to have the passion and drive of those who consistently win.  You need to care about things they care about; you need to start feeling how enjoyable winning is. For ordinary runners they won’t be bothered to reduce their time by a second. For champions a fraction of a second becomes an obsession. They know records are set and broken not by minutes by fractions of a second.

2.       Practicing with Champions Stretches you out of the Comfort Zone

If you ran with those who have consistently beaten the world, even if you don’t become a world beater, you are likely to perform beyond what you thought your physical abilities and skills could allow. You will be pushed to endure more than what ordinary people would care about.

You will be forced to run longer distances. Your muscles will be stretched to points they are sore. You will wake up earlier. You will not be allowed to enjoy pizzas and fries. This ultimately sets you at a higher level than you were before you started practicing with the champions.

As a sales person you need the same. You need to spend time with those who put you in a position where you can stretch yourself beyond what is comfortable.

3.       Spending time with world beaters shapes our beliefs

Those who have grown seeing champions practicing and bringing troves of medals year in year out have had beliefs about what is possible. Those who go to Iten believe that if you can beat Iten you can beat the world.

In Iten you meet many people who believe they can set new records, beat the world finest and achieve greatness in the world athletics. You meet young men and women practicing without shoes with a belief that they will shine at the world’s biggest stage and pull themselves out of poverty. They have seen hundreds of others do that and therefore it is not hard for them to believe the same.

Ordinary people have ordinary beliefs, champions have beliefs of champions. Sales Super stars have beliefs of super stars while ordinary sales people have beliefs of ordinary mortals. When you spend time with super stars your ordinary beliefs are altered sometimes forever.

Being there seeing champions practicing, feeling pain, being human demystify the champion as a super being. When you discover that the champions are beings like you then you start believing you can become like them. If you keep pace with them in the practice then you believe you can do the same in the real race. That is how many pace setters from Kenya upstage the stars they were supposed to set pace for.

4.       Spending time with champions allows you to model their behaviors

Sometimes you don’t need to read books on what the successful people do and the philosophy behind their success, you just need to watch them go about their journey of success. Watch what they do and do it exactly as they do it and you are likely to achieve the same results they achieve.

As a sales person you need to watch and model the behaviors of the super stars and you are more likely to get the same results they get. Wake up the same time they wake up, prepare for a call the same way they do, plan your route the same way, build rapport as they do, show care for customer as they do, follow the same steps in making the presentation, eat the same meal etc and you will get the same results.

Iten is a great place for long distance runners to spend time and prepare to become champions, but not necessarily a place where sales super stars are made but form its story we can learn a lot on how to become sale superstars.  But you don’t need to travel to Iten to be at Iten. Iten can be a place in your organization or city where you can meet the sales champions. It can be a biography that you read, or a grouping of super achievers you spend time with. 

Sam Kariuki is a sales trainer and strategist based in Kenya. He is theauthor of The Guy Who Fired His Boss, a business novel on how to turn an idea into a business.

You Do Not Plough With A Peacock

Mercy was employed as an accountant by one of our clients. She had been good at her work but over time her performance has been deteriorating. She was put on performance notice. She had given up on her fate in the organization until one time her boss gave me a call. She asked me to administer our psychometric tests on her.

It is through our two tests that we had helped the organization hire it's 3 top sales people in the last 2 years. Mercy was not impressed by the fact that she was being asked to take some tests that she knew her sales colleagues had taken. She had been a trained accountant. She did not have anything to lose except some 45 minutes to do the test.

Once the tests were completed we sent the report to her boss. Mercy was a lion. Among the three sales people we had hired one of them was a lion while the other two were horses. (We have 21 animals that represent different personalities). The boss was not shocked. She was also a lion and that is what frustrated her so much about Mercy. She knew she could work and get the results.

We had a meeting where we presented the report to Mercy and her boss and made a suggestion that probably it would be good idea if Mercy moved from accounts into account relations management role. In accounts she worked a lot with paper work and was expected to stick to a routine. As a lion this was not easy. She got motivated by tangible achievements and pursuing goals. She enjoyed taking leadership roles and taking up challenging roles. All these were available in the account management role.

Within a month Mercy had started bringing in orders from previously dormant accounts. She was the employee of the month. She was not yet the top sales person but she was so committed to becoming one within the next six months.

Mercy is like many other employees. People who could be easily described as role pegs fitted into square holes. They hold onto a job because of the paycheck. There performance is ok due to sheer commitment but in many cases they will never be spectacular in the job. Their position or role does not utilize their strengths. If you have a hunting position you don’t use a sheep for it, get a lion.

There are other employees who never get to know themselves and as a result try to fit into a mold they suppose is expected of them. They are copies of others rather than the best original of themselves. Self awareness is probably the most important element in emotional intelligence. When we are aware of our qualities we are able to turn them into strengths and be aware of them when they are our blind spots in the roles that we have. We get to know why we do things the way we do them and how that impacts the results we get as well as how we relate with others either as colleagues subordinates and bosses.

When filling a role it is sometimes to try creating the profile of the candidate that will best in a position and pursue that candidate. Other times it has been found that candidates of a particular personality type fit in a certain organization while another might struggle. This is because built in an organizations culture is its personality. That is one reason why an employee who was a super star performer in an organization struggles in a similar role in another organization and vice versa. It is synonymous in having a peacock amongst plough bulls or a hare among German Shepherds.

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