Hope for Results

Hope is a tough concept to define and is thought of as either a noun or a verb and either passive or active. As a passive noun, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, hope means, “a positive expectation and desire for something to happen,” As an active verb, its definition is, “to intend, if possible, to do something.” “Hope is about how leaders use hope to make things happen,” says leadership consultant and speaker Andrew Razeghi, author of Hope – How Triumphant Leaders Create The Future (Jossey Banks, 2006) (see sidebar). Says Razeghi, “To outrageously successful people, hope is more than a state of mind; it is a belief system – a plan for getting to a desired future. It is a methodology that can be learned.”

Leland Nichols, chief operating officer of Smith & Wesson, and Christopher Eastwood, field sales manager for QSP, Inc., a fundraising company that helps schools and youth groups raise money, agree with Razeghi. Nichols, who has more than 20 years of experience in sales management for such companies as Black and Decker, Stanley Tools, and Kohler, defines himself as a pragmatic guy and believes that the key to hope is all in the execution. “It’s
all about executing and planning for improvement,” says Nichols. “Every time you use the word ‘plan’ you’ve come out of the conceptual part and entered into the analytical/executional area. It’s important to help salespeople understand that hope is more than a state of mind and not just a belief system. It is part of an executable set of steps that eliminates the need for perfection and ensures that managers and salespeople will reach their commitments.”

Eastwood feels that there are “hopers,” “doers,” and “hopeful doers.” “My dad told me that there are hopers and doers in life and the hopers, who are passive, stand by hoping that things will work out, while the doers actually go out and take action,” says Eastwood. “But I also think that there are ‘hopeful doers,’ who have hope, which fosters desire and results in action and success.”

Eastwood feels that the key to sales managers creating a hopeful sales environment is honesty, responsiveness, and making it easy. “Selling is hard enough with rejection, long hours, and dealing with difficult people in tough situations, so it’s important to create a consistent place of trust, a safe haven, for salespeople,” says Eastwood “It’s important to have structure, to have a plan in place, to do everything in your power to properly execute that plan, and to support your people in action…and to have hope that your plan, strategy, and execution will work.”

Nichols has identified six key areas for managers to consider. The first is commitment. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a salesperson with one week on the job right out of college or a seasoned professional, the very first thing that they have to do is commit themselves to succeed and achieve the plan,” says Nichols. “Don’t hire fatalists. Hire people who are willing to make a commitment and hit their targets, no matter what it takes.”

Nichols’ second key area is for managers to deploy or empower the employee sales plan. This targets all levels of the organization. “The plan, whether it is based on annual, monthly, or weekly parameters, has to be deployed from the general manager to the sales leader to the channel directors to regional sales managers and to the salespeople…anyone who interfaces with the customers,” says Nichols. “They need to make sure that each individual within the organizational structure understands their piece of the week, of the month, and of the year. Of course, the company needs to support them by letting them know how they are doing all the time.”

The third point is creating a funnel of activities and opportunities. “Create a funnel of activities and initiatives that exceeds the gap between what a salesperson knows he has sold by a specific date and the monthly goal by twice as much,” says Nichols. “Let’s say that a salesperson has a commitment of $1,000,000 a month and the commitments and orders in hand equal $500,000, so they have a $500,000 gap. That means that the salesperson, who isn’t perfect and can’t close every deal, needs to have at least $1,000,000 in his funnel.

“The fourth key is to connect the dots,” says Nichols. “A salesperson is never just a salesperson or just a marketing person or resource. He needs to be a mini-general manager and realize that their jobs can’t be successfully completed unless other functions are tied into what they need to do.” Nichols adds, “For example, if you find somebody who wants to buy something, are you guaranteed that manufacturing has built it or is going to build it? Does finance like what you have in your pipeline at the margin you’re offering it for?”

The fifth key is to refuse to be a victim. “There are always excuses for losing, but there are no excuses needed for winning, only reasons,” says Nichols. “If a salesperson says, ‘I can get this product in my funnel, but we don’t have the product to sell,’ he becomes a victim. If he can complete the sentence by saying, ‘instead of doing this I’m going to do that,’ then he is a catalyst for success.

“The final key is, as a manager, to recognize that it’s important to celebrate, share, and recognize successes and accomplishments,” says Nichols. “Success normally doesn’t happen by accident and by promoting that success and the individuals who make it happen, you are creating hope that by following a well-planned and well-executed strategy, the only outcome is success.”

Eastwood believes that while hope is an integral part of a well-thought-out action plan, there are times when a manager needs to tailor the message of hope to individual personal situations. “Hope is more than just optimism, and you have to paint a story of success, provide the tools for success, and make sure that the person you’re dealing with understands that you understand their situation and may have been in the same trenches they’re in,” says Eastwood.

“We placed a new salesperson in a territory where two of our salespeople went over to the competition. It was a tough fight to regain some of that business, and he did well and emerged as a leader,” says Eastwood. “We expanded his territory and gave him more responsibility. The result was he felt like the weight of the world was on him and started to feel overwhelmed and fearful of success. His optimism and hopefulness level wasn’t very high.

“It was really a matter of changing the way he was looking at things. I told him that his appointment book could only hold so many appointments and as long as his calendar is full of sales meetings and he takes care of the customers he has, he will be fine,” says Eastwood. “Then, instead of viewing his territory as impossible to cover, he started looking at it as an open field of opportunity and all the resources and the tools of the company are here for him. Now he’s empowered, energized, and expecting success – and hope has a lot to do with it,” says Eastwood.

According to Eastwood, we all have stories playing in our heads and the things that you’re telling yourself will come out. “I believe that we have an internal dialogue that we play over and over in our heads and that these stories are ultimately manifested in our actions,” says Eastwood. “And those positive, optimistic messages are, in essence, creating hope that gives you the will to overcome obstacles and push through when times get tough.”