Book Review: The Salesperson's Secret Code: Belief Systems that Distinguish Winners

I’ve increasingly become interested in sales. As you become more senior every job becomes a sales job. You're always selling something, usually yourself.  I've summarized the book concepts below. Reading the whole book gives a much better understanding.

One of the biggest takeaways is the last on communication and that in sales it is far more effective to practice 'great communication is about developing continuous and meaningful dialogue' rather than 'great communication is about getting your message across clearly and succinctly'. Why is this so big? Because if you, like me, have been trained in finance, management consulting, or maybe product management, the importance of clear and succinct communication is drilled into you over and over. This is not to diminish the importance of clear communication but instead that it is not the mindset to be relied upon solely for the most effective sales technique.

“To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often” Winston Churchill

Notes:
This study is about beliefs. The beliefs held by our top-performing salespeople drive them to behave in certain ways; those behaviors lead to specific outcomes. Beliefs are emotionally held opinions that we assume to be fact. Beliefs provide us with the motivation to deploy certain talents or skills. They promote or inhibit certain behaviors. And they have an impact upon our sense of self, of who are, and why we do what we do.

“Beliefs shape awareness, which molds ambition, which colors motivation, which sculpts attitude, which affects behavior, which encourages learning, which informs skill, which drives actions, which determiners results.”

This study was based on 50,000 respondents grouped them into low and high performance based on sales and then surveyed them on behavioral characteristics. 

Five destination beliefs: core beliefs held by all the salespeople they interviewed who regarded their professional life as an ever-expanding journey. Destination beliefs embody a single, over-arching truth: that beliefs are matters of personal ‘faith’ and will flex and change along with one’s life experience—two journey motivations for each belief on a spectrum. The second journey motivation is much more dominant for higher performers. The ratio of importance is sometimes stronger than others.


Fulfillment: I am most fulfilled when I am successful
1.) I must win because I fear failure (fear)
2.) I want to be better than I thought I could ever be (desire)

Those who accept accountability and focus on outputs are usually more frugal in their allocation of time.

Control: Someone or something must always be accountable for the success
1.) There is only so much I can control
2.) I am ultimately responsible for my destiny.

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.” - Freud


Resilience: Facing challenges and adversity is simply a fact of life
1.) In the face of a challenge, I work even harder and go through
2.) I use moments of adversity to find new and creative ways to achieve goals

Stress is one of the most demonized and misunderstood concepts in the world. People try to avoid it. However, stress is essential to growth. Managing stress means acknowledging that something is happening and ushering in the vital forces of healing and renewal, thereby rebuilding energy reserves. If stress can be good for us, it seems that all too often, the culprit of our ills is not excessive stress, but rather an insufficient recovery. Spiritual fatigue not balanced by recovery can open the door to character lapses that conflict with your core values.

The key to building resilience is to incorporate strategic recovery in your life.

91% of low-performing salespeople said they believed they had to work harder to win their deals. Devotees of Work Hard do so because they aren’t actually in control. It’s the equivalent of throwing darts at a target and hoping something sticks.

Working in various demanding sales environments provides you with the resilience you need. You gain the ability to treat success and failure as the same - to use any failure as an inquiry of learning.

Influence: Successful salespeople are influential
1. The stronger I am, the more I can influence (gorilla)
2. The more flexible I am, the more I can influence. (Guerrilla)

At first glance, influence can look like its darker cousin, manipulation, so we need to understand what differentiates it as an ethical element for professional selling.


Communication: Successful people know best how to communicate
1.) Great communication is about getting your message across clearly and succinctly (lightening)
2.) Great communication is about developing continuous and meaningful dialogue (thunder)

Finding: 500 bottom-performing sellers thought, “I guess I didn’t communicate clearly enough,” and had a solid infliction to fix the situation by the same formula and to try harder.