Let's talk a little bit today about some of the corporate buzz words that you probably hear flying around in corporate America today. Most of the people that listen to the show are sales managers and/or general managers of large and small organizations. The corporate buzz words have been going around for a quite some time. One of my personal favorites is the:

"We need to set the bar high"

It's right up there with:

"We need to give it 110%"

And

"We need to start thinking outside of the box"

"We need to take a deeper dive into that"

"Let's take that one off line"

"At the end of the day"

All this kind of stuff.

I once heard an expression that stuck with me on the use of profanity in speech. I might not have it exactly right, but it goes something like this:

"The use of profanity is the work of the feeble mind trying desperately to express itself".

I've got to admit, I swear a lot. Not as much as I used to now I have a couple of kids. I have held it in check, and hopefully I won't swear on the show today. I never used a lot of the corporate buzz words because they just always sound so cliché to me. I never used them in front of the sales teams that I led due to the fact that sales people have such a high BS filter. They are just way too smart for that. I think a lot of employees have high BS filters, but sales people in general hate corporate crap. They hate things that don't sound real and that don't sound realistic. Because they are out in the trenches, fighting everyone single day, hopefully. Trying to gain new business, which isn't an easy thing to do, it's a challenging position, as we all know. They have little time for this BS.

The only time that I used these corporate buzz words was maybe in front of my boss, or my bosses boss, because you do have to play the game a little bit to survive in the corporate world after all; drinking from the Kool-Aid so to speak, which I was never a fan of. Just like the use of profanity, the use of corporate buzz words in front of your sales team specifically, really is to rephrase the quote from before, is the work of an uninformed mind trying to express itself above the din of the corporate world?

This goes back to our first couple of shows, which is establishing trust with your sales people is important, that's an underlying theme that you will hear a lot. But, by and large corporate buzz words and buzz speak aren't very effective and not recommended. If you like to use the buzz words, your sales executives are going to notice this and you are going to risk losing that trust that you have worked so hard to gain. Hopefully you have started to take those initial steps to put deposits in that trust account, and hopefully you aren't taken to too many out, especially early on.

Corporate buzz words do not do very much for you because really you are after one thing, and a corporate buzz word isn't going to help give you explosive sales results.

When it comes to sales management, and you are setting expectations, we use a little bit of an off shoot of the corporate buzz work

If you say setting the bar high, if that's something that you've been saying over and over, there's nothing wrong with it, per say, when it comes to sales performance. Performance of any endeavor when you are setting the bar high as opposed to shooting low is obviously a good thing. Here's the problem, with the way the world works now, here we are just coming out of a recession, and everyone is trying to set the bar high. And if everyone is trying to set the bar high, does that necessarily mean that should you as well? I would submit to you that you shouldn't. In fact, you absolutely should not.

One of the pivotal themes that you will hear through the Sales Mastery show is to not do the things that everyone else is doing. Superior sales performance comes as an outgrowth of doing things differently. And maybe being unconventional, when everyone else is being conventional. Whatever you do, don't go along with the crowd just because everyone else is doing. You are probably a former sales person, maybe you were promoted into sales management from marketing and you probably like to think of yourself as an individual. Don't' do stuff because everyone else is doing it. I would submit to you, don't do stuff just because everyone else is doing it. Just like in the stock market, when everyone else buying, you should be selling, and when everyone else is selling you should be buying. This is a contrarian way of doing things.

As soon as Jon Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems showed up on the cover of Fortune magazine, that was the peak of the market for the NASDEQ in 2000.

Just when everyone else is doing the popular thing that is when you should be thinking differently. So when you are listening to the show, you are going to see this theme of when people are zigging, you should be zagging. As you'll see in Sales Management Mastery, it is all about your sales managers continually challenging their sales people of reaching higher than they think they are capable of reaching. And because of the overuse of the aforementioned sales buzz words waters, it waters things down the actual meaning of these expressions. And the expression, set the bar high, really no longer has the punch that it once did.

So in this kind of hyperactive world of getting top results in a shorter and shorter period of time with information flying at you at light speed of all hours of the day and night, The corporate sales objectives are getting more aggressive. Your goals are more aggressive every year. You've got to look at things differently and not necessarily change you whole management style, but look at ways in which you can slightly tweak your message. And that's what we are going to talk about.

Instead of setting the bar high, we preach setting the bar higher and higher than anyone else. Notice the little "er" at the end of the word. By doing things this way, you have a base formula of producing superior sales results, while separating yourself from the competition at the very same time as well as from your peers. And you are separating yourself very far from those nasty corporate buzz words.

What does it mean to set the bar higher?

Whether or not you like it, your sales people really do look at you as the barometer. You are the measuring stick. What happens in your district or with your sales managers is a direct reflection of you.

When you're talking about sales performance, you really need to make your expectations very clear from the start. And not just set the bar high, but set it higher than anyone else.

In doing so you are making a powerful statement of performance to them

So you are matching this building of trust, but you are also saying, here is our benchmark, and our benchmark is higher than anyone else and that's what I expect of you.

Here's what we mean by setting the bar higher. It means that your expectations of them are higher than both the expectations that they have for themselves as well as the expectations that the company has for them. And be clear with this from the start. In fact you should really underscore that fact

The expectations that you have for your sales people should be higher than those both the company sets for them as well as those that they set for themselves. This sends a very powerful message from the start.

How do you fight mediocrity? You just don't tolerate it. You don't accept it. And that is the first way to start thinking as a top performing sales manager.

The universal measuring stick is always quota, or goal, or whatever minimum expectations are. Or how far above or below quota a sales person is, gives the company a measuring stick for its sales people.

So after all, sales people are direct reflections of their sales numbers. It's a very much, what have you done for me lately world in sales. It doesn't really matter what you did a year ago. It probably only matters what you did this past day, week, quarter. And maybe not even in the quarter, it probably has a shorter time frame than that.

So if we accept the fact that quota is a great measuring stick when it comes to performance. As a top sales manager it's helpful to determine what minimum expectations are, and in doing so, you are setting expectations and you are also setting goals at the very same time.

So quota, in the idea of quota, let's say that you're at 100% quote, to the top performing sales manager is NOT the goal to shoot for. Rather quota is a minimum expectation. Quota is not the goal. That is setting the bar high. Make this point abundantly clear to your sales people as soon as you can. Even during the interview process. During the 6 step interview process, you go through a very specific process to higher someone and setting expectations is actually part of that, even before they are on board with your organization.

How do you fight mediocrity? You fight mediocrity by saying that the minimum expectation is quota. Quota is the floor, and it is not the ceiling. Reinforce this whenever you can. Scream it from the roof tops if you have to. If you're a screamer, scream it. If you are more subtle, then whisper it. You need to set this right from the get go. Quota is the minimum expectation, and not the goal.

For a lot of you that are listening right now, you as sales manager are trying to get your sales people to achieve goal. If you could only achieve goal. Everything is a benchmark versus quota.

They way to really achieve astronomical sales results is to take the quotas that are given to you at the company and to make the individual goals of your sales people even higher than your quota goals. This does a couple of different things, and we'll talk to you in our future shows.

If you shoot for a goal, chances are you might not hit it, you might come up a little bit short but if you set the goal just a little bit higher than where you want to be, chances are, you may over shoot it. Plus, even if you miss it, you're still going to be right around the sub-goal, in this case where quota would be.

The goal that you have been setting for all your sales reps has been 100% goal attainment. The way to set the goal higher, is to make the goal for the sales organization, and for your sales team, at slightly higher than quota, that way if they miss the goal, they still make quota.

If you could get 50 to 60% of your sales team achieving goal, then the other half exceeding goal, you're going to be in a very good position as a sales manager and as a business manager.

Is this standard rigorous? Yes, it is. This is why it's called setting the bar higher.

Is it ruthless? I don't think it is. What you are doing is creating a culture of discipline in the sales district as well as in the sales organizations. A key trait of all highly performing organizations they always set stretch goals. Just look at GE, or other high performing corporations over the course of the last 20 years, they always set stretch goals and the shoot above what the feel is possible in order to achieve at least excellence.

And that leads us to our parting quote from Vince Lombardi

"We will pursue perfection, we most likely will not achieve it, but in the process we will achieve excellence."

Perfection isn't attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence. That is really the take home message.

This is the essence of setting the bar higher.

As ambitious sales managers who deeply desire to unleash the very best from their sales reps and accomplish the sales revenue goals that you have for your organization, this is one of the very first steps in doing so. It comes from you setting the bar earlier and establishing what your expectations are.

If you set the bar higher, and make your standards incredibly high, than you'll achieve more than you even thought possible.

If you look at Vince Lombardi, he won 5 championships in 7 years. The Green Bay Packers were possible the worst of the worst prior to his first couple of years coming on as their coach. So that's what we talk about when we seek perfection.

Think about the Boston Celtics is the 1960's, 11 World Championships. Think about the New York Yankees, which I can't stand them as a Red Sox fan, if you're from New York, I apologize, but I deeply respect them because they are such a tremendous organization. They're organization shoots for perfection every single year. The goal is not to win the American League East; the goal is to win the World Series. That is it.

That should be the goal of your organization. How you can reconfigure your expectations? Are you pushing for your sales managers to hit quota? I submit to you that that is not high enough. Set the bar higher and you will achieve astronomically higher sales results for you and your sales organization.