Learning from “Lazy” Salespeople

“Lazy” sales people are among my favorites—let me qualify that. “Lazy” sales people who always make their goals are among my favorites.

“Lazy” sales people, or at least those who seem to accomplish a lot with minimum effort, have broken the code. They’ve understood exactly what they need to do to achieve their goals. They don’t waste time on things that don’t achieve their goals.

“Lazy” sales people have figured out the things that too many “busy” sales people may not have.

They don’t chase bad deals.

They don’t engage in wishful thinking.

They quickly identify the most critical issues facing the customer and those people critical to the buying process.

They execute sale calls very well, they seek to minimize the number of calls to close.

They don’t waste their time in meaningless meetings, whether they are meaningless customer meetings, meaningless prospecting meetings, meaningless internal meetings. Likewise, they are impatient with people who waste their time.

They recognize the importance of establishing regular habits and cadences, because those enable them to use their time most efficiently.

They block time for prospecting, they know just how much they need because they understand just how much they need in their pipelines, and how to maximize the results they produce from every deal.

They may not appear as impressive as the “busy” sales people. Busy sales people are, too often, consumed by their busyness. They confuse activity with outcomes. Lazy sales people aren’t deceived by this. They know the critical activities required to produce results.

Lazy sales people take short cuts. We need to pay attention to the shortcuts they take, we can learn from them as we simplify our approaches to selling. We do have to make sure those short cuts don’t compromise our commitments to customers or the customer experience we need to create. Likewise, they can’t compromise things that are important to our business.

Ironically, the best “Lazy” sales people seldom do this. They recognize that it’s easier to keep current customers happy than to regain their trust and rebuild a relationship. Plus they know happy customers are more likely to both do repeat business and give them referrals for new opportunities.

Likewise, they are unlikely to compromise things important to our business, because they know doing so, just creates hassle and work for them. Lazy sales people are allergic to “hassle” and unnecessary work.

Lazy sales people don’t win by discounting. They realize the more they discount, the more work they have to do to make their numbers.

Lazy sales people who always achieve their goals are very special. We need to study them and learn from them.

Don’t confuse the best lazy sales people with bad sales people—they are completely different.

Some of you may be wondering, “How do I get a ‘lazy’ sales person to do more?” That’s pretty simple, just increase their goals. They’ll figure the easiest way to achieve them.