Hiring great salespeople is a priority for any business. When clients ask me what to look for I give them three key traits that I see in great salespeople – they are natural helpers, great at relating to all kinds of people and they’re addicted to winning which makes them very competitive. The problem is that it’s hard to validate these good sales traits in just a few interviews so what can we look for?
It turns out that people who choose to participate in competitive sports tend to have these good sales traits. A good friend, Lisa Hufford, sent me an edition of the Harvard Business Review with an article titled “What Separates the Strongest Salespeople from the Weakest?” One of the findings was that “over 85% of top salespeople played an individual or team sport in high school.”
I was a starter, never a star, but I chose to play sports all through school until I severed my left ACL, playing football, junior year of high school. I also played intramural sports in college and I coached my kids’ sports teams. I loved it.
I’ve observed the connection between sports and sales success for many years and now we have supporting research. What are things we learn from competitive sports that make for great salespeople?
- Learning from winning, getting beat and losing – No matter what the outcome of a competitive pursuit, we learn things that make us more unbeatable the next time. We learn by getting beat by a better team. We learn equally as much by losing when we don’t prepare well enough.
- Collaborating with a diverse set of people – Whether playing individual or team sports, you quickly learn that disagreement with teammates can’t interfere with your effort. We might have teammates we don’t like but when we take the field we have to collaborate to win. Athletes tend to be good at staying focused on the bigger picture.
- Practice – Sports teaches us how to develop great habits. In sales, the more you do the right things, the better you will get. The more you practice building and delivering compelling value propositions, the more it becomes habit. The more you successfully deal with rejection, the more it becomes habit. Turning hard things into habit is a major difference between good and bad salespeople.
- Getting on board even if you disagree – We don’t always agree with the play calls. Even so, everyone has to perform their role in order for the team to win. I was a running back and I wanted the ball to a fault. I’d get angry when my number wasn’t called. I found myself on the bench mid-season until Coach Jess Wilkins showed me film of me missing blocks. He said, “You’re the best ball carrier we have but if you don’t block you won’t play.” He helped me make blocking a habit and I became a starter again.
How do we find out if candidates played sports in high school or beyond?
- What do they do for recreation and relaxation – People who played sports tend to find ways to continue feeding that need throughout their lives.
- Look for their love of sports versus how good they were – We aren’t all created equally as it regards physical abilities. We’re looking for good teammates, relationship developers and competitive mindsets.
- Are they still playing? – I worked with great salespeople and leaders who now race cars and bicycles. Others play their chosen sports in adult leagues. They are choosing to compete.
- Can they describe the benefits and challenges of teamwork? – If they can describe both in detail they will likely know how to get on board with a team direction even when they disagree.
- Can they tell you what winning feels like? – When I ask this question I get a bonus. I get some people who will tell me about the joy of being on a team that won. Others will tell me about individual pursuits but not how they contributed to a team win. I generally want the former.
Certainly, sports is not the only indicator of future success for salespeople and sales managers, but now we have research that says it’s important. Whether they were bit players, starters or stars, the research says that they have the foundation to be successful in sales.
©2015 Rick Wong – The Five Abilities LLC
