Sales Iten- Where Sales Stars are Made

Of the top ten fastest marathon runners in recorded history Kenya have eight of them. Ethiopians take the other two spots. Of the major marathons Kenyans have dominated top positions for years. Kenya is the country with the most world record holders in mid to long distance races. It is so common for Kenyans to win that it is hardly news if a Kenyan wins a big race somewhere in the world.

Are Kenyan runners born or made? This is a question that intrigues people 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.

Why would I write about this region in a sales blog? 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 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.

How to Hire Sales People….. With no Regrets

Most bad hiring decisions are made when you have to hire.

Recruiting sales people is one of the most difficult of all sales management tasks. Whether you are a business owner, human resource manager, sales manager or a recruitment agent you have tales of how you hired a seemingly great candidate who never performed. Many of us blame the candidate for deceiving us and will rarely take the responsibility of having erred in the choice we made.

But for every bad sales person you hired, you are likely to have overlooked a great one who would have delivered the results you badly wanted. If you think you are alone in this, you are wrong. Every day organizations are finding themselves in this same situation. This may be consoling , but my intention is not to suit you, but to highlight some of the mistakes made in the process of hiring sales people.

Conventional Recruitment

Hiring sales people is not same as hiring other employees. Unfortunately, many employers follow the same script for hiring sales people as for hiring accountants, receptionists, technicians, etc. The conventional method of selecting employment candidates relies on the attractiveness of resume, academic qualifications, work experience and performance in the interviewing session.

Although experience has shown that these factors cannot predict a candidate’s performance in a sales position many managers continue to rely on them for lack of an alternative. Others have given up on ever being able to pick a good candidate from a bad one. That may be the reason why many managers have concluded that hiring is a numbers game. They believe that you improve your chances of getting a good sales person by hiring anyone and everyone who comes your way and natural selection will get yet rid of the bad ones and you are left with the right ones.

This may seem a logical solution, but only if you don’t consider the cost of making the wrong hire. Think of the time and financial investments you have to make before the natural selection process is over.

You need to come up with an alternative to the conventional hiring approaches.

Alternative Approach

The first step in this alternative is a definition of an ideal candidate that goes beyond the conventional candidate profiling. The qualities that you need to look for in an ideal candidate should be specific to your organization. For a firm that has been in business for a while, you can define an ideal candidate as one who has attributes matching those that the best salesperson you have ever hired had. These qualities include mental, social, physical and behavioral traits. Once you have compiled these attributes you have a candidate selection criteria. You would want the candidate to poses most of these traits before you consider hiring them.

You need also to define the qualities of a bad hire. Look at all the bad hires you made and identify the qualities that they have in common. This will help you not make the same mistake again.

The next step is developing a methodology that you will use to select a candidate who matches this criterion. Most of the qualities that define the ideal candidate cannot be singled out in a fifteen minute oral interview whether by one interviewer or several. You need to have a rigorous process that you take the candidates through to judge whether the candidate possesses the qualities you are looking for. Some of these qualities can be evaluated through observation, others by asking questions, others through specialized testing tools while some can only be picked from working with the candidate. But make sure you don’t overlook any attribute that is critical to sales performance.

Hire when it is not too late

In traditional recruitment the process of filling a position starts when the position becomes vacant or is about to. In sales that is too late. Most bad hiring decisions are made when you have to hire. The best time to meet a sales candidate is when you don’t have to fill a position. That is the time you will be more objective in the decision you make and there is no pressure to pick a candidate you have doubts about.

Too much too soon is not a strategy

Many employers make the assumption that once they hire a candidate the person should start to produce immediately with minimal support. When you hire on basis of experience you are more likely to make this assumption. However, every salesperson regardless of their work experience will take time to settle in a new environment, develop a pipeline and build relationships with customers.

Once you hire when you have too you also tend to expect too much too soon from your new sales person. When you do this you put the person under much pressure without developing and equipping them to produce. To address this challenge you need to have a structured on-boarding programme for new sales people that will ensure the people are well prepared to produce but also places realistic performance milestones in the new people.

Poaching: Hiring the tried and proven to be useless

In most positions you are better of hiring people who have been proven in your industry. In sales this is not necessarily good. Hiring from competition seems to be the easiest solution to the sales recruitment difficulties you experience as it is often the easiest solution to problem is the wrong solution.

‘Poaching’ from competition is based on two assumptions. The first one is that your competition is better at hiring and developing their sales people. The second is that you are better placed to attract the best talent from your competition.

These assumptions are wrong on two grounds. First your competitors are not necessarily better at identifying great sales talent and secondly once they do they are unlikely to let it go easily. Then you need to accept that no employer will let go their best sales people without a fight. This means that the people you get from the competition are likely to be the ones that their past employers were happy to let go. My advice to most organizations is that they either hire fresh people or from other industries. The laziness to develop your own talent is a cancer that is hurting too many sales organizations that expect to get miracle workers developed by others.

If you are in doubt of your capacity to adopt a hiring approach then you need to engage the professionals who have the expertise and tools to do so.

Sam Kariuki on NTV AM Live Show. Story behind The Guy Who Fired His Boss