In speaking with hundreds of people over the past few months, the universal theme among retail, business-to-business, industrial, inside and outside salespeople appears to be the same.

The theme is:

Over the long term, products drive a business—products and prices won’t!

The only thing that separates a mediocre business from a failing business, or from a highly successful, profitable business, is the people that work there. Yet business owners are constantly saying that they can’t grow their businesses because they lack the human resources. “Sales would be increasing if only we had the right people.” “The sales manager is weak and can’t train and manage the people.” “You can’t find good people anymore.” “People don’t want to work hard these days.” “People expect top pay without top performance.” “People just don’t care anymore about doing a good job.” “I won’t train my people because they will just leave and go somewhere else.” “Training is too expensive.” “I was never trained and they can learn it on their own.” “I can do all the training myself.” Any of these sound familiar? Well, all have been proven to be inaccurate. I have seen too many successful operations where the people are having fun, producing, and loving the work that they do to believe that it can’t be done. I know there are still good people who want to do a great job at what they do. Sure, they want to be rewarded—who doesn’t? They are simply much harder to find and even harder to keep. I have to put the blame soundly where it deserves to be in the majority of situations—with the owners and managers!

I suggest owners ask themselves this question before questioning their salespeople’s success: What are you doing to guarantee your people’s success, self-esteem, personal growth, pride, self-satisfaction, ability to provide, upward mobility, and future within your organization?

Author, trainer, consultant, and speaker Brad Huisken is president of IAS Training. He publishes a free weekly newsletter called Sales Insight. For a free subscription or more information on training, contact IAS Training at 800-248-7703, info@iastraining.com, fax 303-936-9581, or visit the website at iastraining.com.

JCK