The #1 Success Myth That’s Wrecking Your Sales Organization

Talent. Ambition. Hustle. Hard work. These key attributes are among the top qualities that leaders usually look for when hiring salespeople. They want someone who’s really hungry for it, has that competitive gene and they believe them to be motivated by external factors, such as money and public praise.

But what if I were to tell you that none of those things matter nearly as much as you think they do if you’re in a complex selling environment? That, in fact, your faith in them is based in a dangerous myth, and your reliance on them is preventing your sales team from reaching its potential?

When it comes to complex B2B selling, you need salespeople who can see the big picture, question your clients’ assumptions, focus on creating customer value and stay in it for the long haul.

The myth: hiring raw talent is the key to top sales performance

In his 2008 book, Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell examines the stories of outlying superstars in a wide variety of fields including hockey, technology, music, invention, and law, looking for shared characteristics. From The Beatles to Bill Gates, he looks at everything from when they were born to how they got their start, to find the common threads that run through all the stories.

His conclusion from the study: “The biggest misconception about success is that we do it solely on our smarts, ambition, hustle, and hard work.”

In other words, raw talent is not the determining factor we think it is.

Instead, Gladwell posits what has famously come to be known as the “10,000-Hour Rule.” The 10,000-Hour Rule says that the key to achieving world-class expertise, in any skill, relies primarily on “deliberate practice” for a total of around 10,000 hours.

The 10,000-Hour Rule has received criticism on a number of fronts, including the accusation that Gladwell cherry-picked data to support his hypothesis. Nevertheless, the concept itself has stood up well under scrutiny. Paul McCartney, a founding member of The Beatles, fired criticism at Gladwell’s assertion that practice is the only determining factor, but nevertheless conceded that, “when you look at a group who has been successful… you always will find that amount of work in the background.”

How our obsession with talent is wrecking sales

There’s nothing wrong with smarts, ambition, hustle, or hard work. In fact, as Paul McCartney’s criticism demonstrates, these attributes may well be important to success in any field, including sales. There’s nothing wrong with sales leaders looking for them in their sales team hires.

The problem comes when we buy into the myth that these characteristics alone will drive high performance. When this happens, companies become hyper-focused on identifying and recruiting superstar sales people, at the expense of focusing internally on the systems and processes that help them practice the skill of sales, in a systematic way, toward achieving greatness.

Companies that buy into the myth of the superstar salesperson may fail to onboard, equip, train, coach, and develop their sales team members. This mistake leads to high sales turnover and poor overall results. While the team may see occasional big wins from a particular salesperson who really does excel in this environment, the average result will be lagging performance.

But if we buy the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to get good at something, does that mean sales teams will do well to hire the most experienced people they can get their hands on? Not necessarily. It comes down to one often-overlooked word in the 10,000-Hour Rule: deliberate practice. 10,000 hours isn’t enough—those hours have to be spent on the right kind of practice. Some salespeople who claim to have 10 years of experience might just have one year of experience, repeated 10 times… And their sales experience might not be relevant when selling what your company is offering.

The right kind of practice

In Outliers, Gladwell discusses how The Beatles got their start with over 1,200 performances in three years. During that time, they weren’t simply sitting in a garage banging out tunes—they were performing in front of demanding audiences, surrounded by other, (at that time) more-famous groups. Through every performance, they not only practiced their art, but did so with constant real-time feedback from an engaged and discerning audience.

Recent research from the RAIN Group, which studied over 450 sales organizations, validates that the same systematic and real-time practice is necessary for salespeople to reach their potential. The study categorized organizations based on performance (from top performers to lagging performers), then tracked indicators across those categories, looking for correlations. Tellingly, top organizations were much more likely to engage in systematic training, reinforcement, and accountability, and to use good technology tools to support the system. In other words, they invest in reinforcing the type of practice necessary for sales teams to achieve mastery.

For companies who reject the myth of raw talent and want to build a system that reinforces the right kind of practice, it can be challenging to find the right partners and tools to help. You can read about how our Partner Prima Ressource does this with clients, or learn how to build an actionable and informative sales process here. We also have a sales process tool that you can download for free.