Meet Marcus Buckingham

Rule-Breaking Strategies to Win

Selling is not for sissies, that’s for sure. The rules of the game are tough even in the best of times. For sales reps and managers who want to enter the winners’ circle, here’s a man who can show you how to break rules and win big. When Marcus Buckingham applied the results of a study that showed winners are more positive about everything, he discovered that it works to be upbeat. And guess what? It doesn’t cost a thing. So, rule number one about breaking the rules? When everyone around you is crying the blues, think positive.

Marcus Buckingham has always been something of a (dare we say it?) maverick. In fact, his breakthrough insight about business management can be summed up in a simple phrase: break all the rules. Although the concept may sound chancy, it is based on solid scientific data culled from 150,000 Gallup interviews. He even titled his first book First, Break All the Rules (Pocket Books, 2005). When it hit the best-seller lists, Buckingham became a hot commodity. He speaks to 250,000 people worldwide at such companies as Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Yahoo, and Disney, to help strengthen their leadership and management skills. His two subsequent books, Now, Discover Your Strengths (Free Press, 2001) and The One Thing You Need to Know…About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success (Free Press, 2005) also became best sellers.

No Matter What

When you consider his reputation for turning conventional wisdom on its head, it’s no surprise that while everyone else is panicking about the economy, Buckingham sees opportunity. The current climate, he says, reminds him of when he first came to the United States from Great Britain in 1987 to work for Gallup.

“My first assignment was to build selection tools for the sales team [more commonly called stockbrokers] at Merrill Lynch. Part of our process at Gallup was to interview a bunch of successful individuals and a bunch of average ones to see where the differences were. I was fresh off the boat, and I was surprised because I was talking to one of the average ones who said, ‘Oh, gosh, it’s terrible right now. The world is awful. It’s black Monday.’

“But then we talked to the best ones, and it was weird. Everyone was just chipper. And after talking to about five or six of them, I broke with the script that we had, and I said, ‘Why are you so upbeat?’ And this individual told me, ‘Because things are good.’ For the successful salespeople, it was a great time to focus and say, ‘This is the chance, finally, for me to actually show what I’m made of.’”

Buckingham believes that this current economic climate is a similar moment in time; he calls it a great leadership moment. “This is a great opportunity to be really clear about who you are and what you stand for. This is an opportunity for great managers and leaders to say, ‘We’re going to redefine what success is this year. It used to be sales and profits, but we’re not going to have them this year. I know that and you know that. We’re going to measure success according to market share. We’re going to measure success according to innovation, to penetration, to client service.’”

Standing Out

In fact, the companies that are going to come out ahead of the curve will put their efforts into increasing value for clients instead of pulling back. When strong winds blow, they eliminate weak relationships. For your best clients, Buckingham advises redoubling your efforts to meet their needs and overcommitting to see how much new business you can help them generate.

“From a client service standpoint, now is just a great chance for you to be different from your competitors, who are saying to your clients, ‘If you aren’t going to guarantee this revenue this year, then you’re not going to be able to get the service that you expected from us.’ The great companies do the opposite. They step up and say, ‘We know what our strengths are, we know why we’re better than our competition, we know what our values are as a company, and we know how we’re going to live out those values during this tough time.’”

We can never predict results, but the cumulative effects of layoffs, rejections, and faltering numbers can give the future a gloomy cast. In such an atmosphere, fear rises, and people take fewer and fewer risks. One of Buckingham’s key beliefs, however, is that clarity is an antidote to anxiety.

When redefining success, he urges managers to hold fast to a vivid picture of success and the strengths you can use to achieve that success. “Be clear and vivid,” he says. “Use stories, examples, vignettes, and update them regularly.”

As an example, Buckingham points to Best Buy’s Brad Anderson, who has been frank about the company’s dim prospects of hitting its numbers. On the other hand, Anderson’s also focusing on his company’s strengths.

“Brad is saying, ‘We know who we are at Best Buy. Our customers have tons of questions. Our strength as a company is our ability to listen to those questions and give great answers. I know that our strength still lies in how good our ‘blue shirts’ are, and nobody else has that.’

“He’s not ignoring the fact that the company’s in a strong economic headwind. But he’s also reaffirming for everybody at Best Buy why Best Buy is good.”

Use Knights Like Knights

Sales managers in particular need to use this time to reassess their teams. In good times, everyone does well, but in lean times the wheat separates from the chaff. To get the best results from your best people, Buckingham says managers need to identify what the top strengths are among their reps and find ways to enhance them – even if that means going against the playbook.

According to Buckingham’s Gallup research, a willingness to break the rules has always been the common denominator among great companies and managers. The traditional hiring model, for example, dictates hiring according to preset specifications and then pounding away at weaknesses. Buckingham says this is backward.

“As a general rule, people tend to do best what they enjoy doing most,” he says. “People should be hired ‘as is,’ and their managers should then help them to develop their individual strengths while completing tasks for which they have the greatest aptitude and in which they have the greatest interest.”

Think of your reps as pieces on a chessboard. “The manager should be saying, ‘Who are the people on my team? I’ve got a knight over here; I keep trying to use a knight like a bishop. That’s stupid. This person doesn’t like making a whole bunch of new sales calls. I know it says in our job description that everybody is going to make 14 new sales calls a week, but that’s because somebody was bored one day and tried to write out a job description.

‘I’ve got to drive sales in a really tough environment, so I’d better be using my knights like knights, which means that these people need to be growing our existing accounts, because that’s their thing. Then I need to be on them all the time, every week, asking what they’re doing to use their edge.’

“That is what sales management, I think, is all about. You specialize, and then you push salespeople like crazy in their area of unique advantage.”

Marcus Buckingham’s latest book is Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance (Free Press, 2007). For more information, visit his Website at www.marcusbuckingham.com. •