Hey Southwestern recruiters! Here’s an article I ran across in The BNet Report. What do you think? Have you found
this to be true? Do smart people on a team interfere with team production and dynamics? Here is Kimberly Weisul’s article in its near-entirety:
“…we’ve all seen groups of supposedly smart people who just can’t work well together. That’s because, according to recent research from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon, and Union College, raw smarts doesn’t have much to do with team performance.
The researchers placed nearly 700 people into groups of between two and five, then gave them problems to solve, such as visual puzzles, games, negotiations, and logical analysis. Here’s what they found:
- Individual smarts doesn’t affect performance. The average intelligence of team members wasn’t related to team performance. So if you’ve got a team that’s struggling, putting a couple of really smart people on it isn’t going to help.
- EQ–emotional intelligence– is more important than IQ. Good communication and good coordination make teams function well. To get that, you need people who are good at reading and responding to other peoples’ emotions. Teams that included even one person with superior skills in this regard had better performance.
- A ’strong’ personality hurts performance. Groups where one person dominated the conversation or the decision-making, or where people didn’t do as well taking turns, had worse performance. This correlates well with other research that shows ’stronger’ leaders are often less effective than those who perceive themselves to be less powerful.
The Key to Creating “Emotionally Intelligent” Teams
The researchers found one fairly simple answer: Add women.
Women are often perceived to be more socially sensitive, and more communally-minded, than men. To the extent that’s true, it’s easy to see how it could be helpful in a team context. And in the experiments, the researchers found that teams that included women were more socially-sensitive, and better performing, than then all-male teams. (No word on the performance of all-female teams. I’ve reached out to the researchers about that, and will update if I hear back.)
In business, it’s not always easy to change the composition of a team, and just because a team is all-male shouldn’t give it license to be socially inept. Writing for Psychology Today, Heidi Grant Halvorson suggests a number of ways any team can become more socially aware, and therefore, higher performing:
Create opportunities for team members to express their feelings, and for others to respond to them. Encourage face-time whenever possible (emotions are difficult to read on the phone, and nearly impossible over email). Cultivating a work environment where team members experiences are acknowledged and understood will create teams that are smarter, happier, and far more successful.”
Wow. Do you have a number of smart, high I.Q. people on your sales team? Is it 100% male? Hmmm. Let me know your thoughts or experiences on this. We all want productive, high-functioning Southwestern teams–this is something to think about!
As we are in the midst of spring recruiting with Southwestern, I was pondering a newsletter called Selling Essentials, from the Rapid Learning Center. The author said there were six emotional reasons why people made purchase decisions. It made me think of Southwestern and our offering. Here are the six reasons people buy stuff:
- Desire for gain (usually financial)
- Fear of loss (money, power, respect)
- Comfort and/or convenience
- Security and protection
- Pride of ownership
- Ego satisfaction
Now think about recruiting people to Southwestern. Which of the above emotional triggers do you employ? Probably the first two play a big role in whether or not someone you know joins your team or not. Think about it: desire for gain, in terms of money, personal growth, experience, resume, college credit—all play a big part of our offering.
Now look at #2, fear of loss. This may be key to your friend NOT joining Southwestern! His or her friends or parents may be employing fear of losing money or respect against you. (“I can’t believe you’re thinking of selling door-to-door!”) How can you sell them on the desire for gain outweighing the fear of loss? Perhaps you can even discuss how NOT selling books might hurt them later in a career interview by having nothing notable on their resume (fear of loss). You could paint a picture of what it might be like without Southwestern experience to draw from in an interview setting.
You could also sell #4—security and protection to your advantage. Southwestern provides future security if they’re willing to suck it up now and work with you. If they work with you now, their future ability to have a job and excel are almost guaranteed. If your friend pays the price now, his/her earning potential and future career trajectory increase dramatically, leading to future comfort and options (see #3).
There’s nothing manipulative about using these emotional triggers in making a sale. It is simply a matter of understanding how people make decisions. Customers will buy using emotion whether or not you sell this way or not. You can bomb them with logic, but their emotional undercurrent is the guiding factor in their decision.
How can you use these emotional reasons more effectively in your presentations? Are there new and different ways you can present your product or service? Comments are welcome–even from non-Southwestern readers!
Southwestern Company Sales Talk: Building Confidence
In earlier blogs, we’ve established the fact that fear is what keeps many a potential Southwestern team member from joining you on the bookfield. What do you do to build a team member’s confidence? I’d suggest there are a few ways to build rookie confidence and solidify your team.
- Remind them they should have confidence in Southwestern’s longevity. Southwestern is an established company; we are no longer looking for guinea pigs to test out the
program. The training program works!
- Remind them they should have confidence in the product. Redemo the books!
- Remind them they should have confidence in you, their manager. Remind them of your feats on the field.
- Remind them they should have confidence in themselves! Then review their past accomplishments.
Be sure to tie your confidence to their past results, and be specific. It’s not effective to make broad, bland statements, like, “John, you’ll do really well this summer because you’re a great guy.” A more specific confidence-builder might be: “John, your playing football in high school gives me confidence you’ll be successful with Southwestern. You have self-discipline and you understand and thrive on competition. Also, this tells me you’re a team player. Your background in sports is a great foundation for working with Southwestern. There are a lot of parallels.”
Another way to build confidence is to have other people reinforce their decision to work with Southwestern.
Many of you have other student managers call new first years and congratulate them on their decision. Smart. They are usually getting plenty of negative feedback from friends and parents–why not give them a dose of positive influence from fellow student managers? A quick phone call goes a long way.
Finally, let me reinforce the idea of having your new team members sit through additional info session(s). I know they’ve already been selected, but people forget the facts–the facts are what excited them initially about Southwestern! Encourage them to attend your info session again (the more the merrier: we used to see who could sit through the most infos on campus–they showed up in Sales School BTW). One additional info session = 3 PCs! You can either sit and talk to them for hours about why this is great or get them to attend what got them fired up in the first place! Your call.
This last idea is big. I’ve been on many campuses where this is not a practice–be sure you have everyone sit through additional info sessions and you’ll be a more successful student manager. I know many of you have ideas about building someone’s confidence. Share them here. I’ll blog on this Southwestern recruiting topic some more; stay tuned.
Southwestern Company Sales Talk
Continuing in my “worst ever” series….
As the gatekeeper for Southwestern Company, I get lots of random sales pitches and marketing promotions at work. This may be a bit of a stretch for a sales blog, but here is a real email promotion we received recently at The Southwestern Company. I include the sales pitch in its entirety for full effect:
“how are you? we are in Shanghai, China. We are a printing company and can print the following:
gift box
stickers
catalogue
leaflets
…”
That was it. Not a very good intro or catchy attention-getting opener; not a huge finish or action step–heck, not even a “thank you for considering us…”. Just a list of what they do. Presumably. The ellipsis at the end, while dramatic, was ineffective as a closing remark. The gripping subject line of the marketing promo? “glad to write to you” Really?
While I’ll assume there may have been some language barrier/translation issues, here are a few tips to making a better first impression.
- Know your prospect and tailor the message a bit.
- Make your offering interesting–the best close is a great demo.
- Provide contact information. People who want business should make it easy for buyers to find them!
- Avoid spamming as a prospecting method. You won’t have any friends, and even fewer customers.
Just thought I’d share. Now I’ll go adjust my spam filter. Have you seen anything as impactful as this? Comments/experiences welcome.
Great Testimonials the Southwestern Company Way
Hey Southwestern Company Recruiters! Ever had one of those info sessions when the energy in the room just fizzled? You full-timers, have you called on Southwestern Company Student Managers at the conclusion of your info session who delivered gripping testimonials, like: “I really learned a ton. About people.”
Wow. That makes me want to join!
Most student manager responses to ”What did you gain from the program?” Or, “what did you appreciate most about your experience?”, are lame. “Uh…I learned a lot about communication skills…”. Open a window! These kind of bland statements don’t deliver the kind of message you want as you wrap your explanation of the program.
So here’s a little formula that works. When the person conducting the info session asks, “_______, what did you gain from your first summer?”, here’s how I’d suggest you answer:
1) “Well, what scared me most was…(then relate one of your fears to what the first years in the room are probably feeling). Example: “leaving home for the first time” or “not having a guaranteed salary.”
2) “But what gave me confidence was…(then relate a confidence-builder). Example: “I felt like if they could teach 2500 other college students to do this every year since the Civil War, they could teach me.” Choose your own.
3) “But what I gained/learned was…(then answer the original question–be specific and forceful!) Example: “I really came home with more self-confidence–confidence to present in class, confidence to ask someone out, even confidence to become an officer in my fraternity.” Develop your own answers, but be sure they involve some feeling and conviction! You’ll know you’re giving a good testimonial when you see the prospects nodding their heads in agreement.
Give this a try. You’ll find your closing percentage just might go up. Do you have good info session finishers? How does your org do this? Please share with us at Southwestern Company!
At the conclusion of the Highlanders Awards Banquet, I told parents, “Thanks for letting us borrow your children.” I said, “Oftentimes I hear SW students exclaim ‘Southwestern taught me this, or Southwestern made me successful!’ I believe that our successful dealers learned proper principles and perspectives from you, the parents—Southwestern just gave them a track to run on, and gave them a chance to put into practice what you taught them.”
The parents nodded.
What do you think? Does Southwestern make students great, or do great students come to Southwestern? (Ah, the chicken or the egg quandary.) Seth Godin’s blog, called “Do Elite Trappings Create Success?” explores this question. Here is a bit of it:
“Do people who are on track to become successful go to elite colleges, buy elite cars, engage in other elite behaviors… (Defining elite as something both scarce and thus expensive).
or
Do attending these colleges or engaging in these behaviors make you successful?
It matters, because if you’re buying the elite label as a shortcut to success, you might be surprised at what you get.
There are certainly exceptions (for professions that are very focused on a credential, and for the economically disadvantaged), but generally, most elite products like college are overrated as life changers.
It turns out that merely getting into Harvard is as good an indicator of future success as actually going. It turns out that being the sort of person that can invest the effort, conquer fear and/or raise the money to capture some of the elite trappings of visible success is what drives success, not the other way around.
The learning matters a great deal, and especially the focused effort behind it. The brand name of the institution, not so much.
Don’t worry so much if some overworked admissions officer or grizzled journalist fails to pick you. It might mean more that you could go, not that you do.
Does advertising on the Super Bowl make your brand successful? I think it’s more likely that successful brands advertise on the Super Bowl. ”
What are your thoughts? For those of you who sold with Southwestern Company, did the summer experience make you great, or did you bring an inherent greatness to the program?
In Part 1 on winning our summer battle before we even begin to fight it, we explored how to attack our own individual weaknesses here at Southwestern Company and came up with a tangible battle plan. In this post we are going to look at another side of the battle for many student managers: the battle against our own belief level.
One of the most common causes of average summers in the Southwestern Internship program is an average belief level. If someone views themselves as a 3.0 student who gives 3.0 effort in college, it is highly unlikely they will graduate with a GPA above a 3.0. Our own limiting view of ourselves allowed us to work less, rationalize less than our best, and settle for the results we had predetermined as our “potential”. The same happens in sales.
Going into my second summer with Southwestern I wanted to hit some pretty high goals. I came off a summer where I had sold about 2,600 units and made $13,000. In a second summer I really wanted to sell 6,000 units. (This goal would have been about 7,000 with the current unit values that have been raised on products since my second summer.) This goal scared the heck out me. In fact in the org I was in the previous summer none of the student managers had sold that many books. Why should I be able to?
This was the point in the story where I allowed the math major side of me to take over. This part may bore you, but I promise it is worth reading. There are three components that go into how many units you will sell this summer. Your total presentations for the summer, your closing %, and your average package size. I know that this is nothing new to most of you. What really helped me turn the corner on my own belief level was figuring out what I felt confident I could accomplish in each of these three areas.
Looking back at my previous summer I saw at I closed 30% of my presentations in summer 1. I had an average package of around 13. My average presentations were about 10 a day. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could have my package size raise to at least 15 (really low for a student manager) and I was confident I would not get worse at selling and hopefully would get slightly better up to 33%. So if one in three families bought 15 units, every one of my presentations was worth 5 units. If I needed to sell 500 units a week to hit 6,000, I just needed to figure out how to get 16 presentations a day and 20 on Saturday to make 100 for the week.
From that point forward I dove all the way in on my approach. I practiced with managers on campus. I trained with my team. I video taped my approach to see what I was actually doing. I practiced with my DSM. I knew that 100 presentations a week was all I needed to focus on.The rest of the semester I didn’t care at all about 6,000. All I cared about was 100, 15, and 33%. I was confident I could do these three and I knew what they resulted in. I posted these numbers in my room, they were on the background of my computer, and I doodled them in class. By the time the summer rolled around these numbers were hard wired. When I left each house in the summer I said to myself, “Cool, that will be 5 units at the end of my summer.”. It made me focus on nothing but the controllables and kept me from getting too high or too low.
I ended up only have 11 1/2 weeks my second summer and I delivered 5,752 units. 2 units off from being EXACTLY 500 a week. I also sold an average of 5.02 units per presentation. I don’t think this was purely by chance.
So forget about all of your preconceived notions in regards to “what you are capable of” in terms of units. Instead sit down with your manager and figure out what you are capable of in regards to the three key components. Get their advice on how to increase in the area you most need to increase in. Once you come up with numbers you are confident in and a game plan to improve pre-summer, dive in!
The end result will be much better than you ever thought possible.
Southwestern Company: Make a Plan to win the Battle of Life!
Every one of us in our life has areas in which we want to improve. We may want to get better at patience, perseverance, emotional consistency, discipline, avoiding procrastination, staying organized, self esteem, or a whole host of other things. The most common mistake we make along this journey towards self improvement is trying to attack these problems without any battle plan. It takes focused, targeted, repeated efforts that directly attack our weakness. So what does this look like?
If you want to get better at a “skill” (basketball, pool, etc) you need practice. If you want to get better at a certain “mental skill” it becomes a
little harder, but there are four main steps to do it.
1) Identify exactly what you want to get better at
2) Identify your triggers
3) Come up with a specific plan for the moment these trigger points occur
4) Read over your plan DAILY
Triggers
So what does it mean to identify your “triggers”? Well, let me give you an example. In 2006 I discovered that I really did not like criticism. I felt attacked and instantly became defensive. I think most of us can relate to this, but it is a mental barrier that hinders growth. In this case the “trigger” is obvious, criticism. In other cases you may have to dig deeper. If you are prone to spurts of low self esteem, take a half hour to write out as many things as you can think of that have a tendency to “trigger” this initial downward slide. Identifying our triggers is a HUGE step required to understand ourselves better and grow. You can do this with any area in your life you want to improve in. What “causes” you to slip up in this area?
Make a Plan
When I first wanted to improve in taking criticism I decided that when I felt that anger boiling up inside of me I was tempted to respond defensively to take 10 seconds and not say anything. I just nodded and tried to think about it analytically. Were they right in what they were saying? Do I need to get better at what they had just brought up? The funny thing is that I often found that they were! Just by taking 10 seconds to evaluate what they were telling me instead of defending myself, I saved an argument and got lots of great advice. If I thought they were wrong after thinking about it, instead of defending myself, I simply said, “I am not sure I agree with that, but I want to be open minded. Let me think more about it tonight when I am not tempted to defend myself and I will probably realize you are right.” Often times, after thinking about it more, they were right again! And if not, I saved getting into an argument that neither of us was going to win anyway.
So come up with your plan.
Write down how you are going to deal with every “trigger” on that list. If you don’t know how to; ask for advice. Compile a plan for EVERY SINGLE TRIGGER. You will be amazed how empowering this feels. You finally have a plan!
Read it every day
You plan is worthless if you forget to execute it. By reading through your plan every morning you cement it in your brain. Then when a situation arises that used to bring out the worst in you, your plan immediately comes to the surface.
Following these four steps will have a dramatic impact on your weaknesses. Continue to get better day by day as a person and you will eventually be amazing at whatever you do, whether it is sales or anything else. With a plan, life becomes a lot more fun and less stressful!
Make a Plan to Win the Battle of Life
Now that I have a “real world, big kid job” I have time to think about the whole process that college students go through every spring semester. Yes, the dreaded search for meaningful summer work or an internship is a burden shared by every student in every university nationwide, but it doesn’t have to be so depressing. Here is what I learned about where to get started.
As a biological engineering major, my possible summer internships options were pretty slim. Every company I contacted wanted me to have some experience in the field before they would even consider interviewing me. Sadly my four years of lifeguarding wasn’t impressive to them, so I faced a lot of rejection whenever I applied. “How am I supposed to have experience as a freshman?” I would often ask my roommates. They too had impressive resumes built on years of dedicated work in the food service industry, so they offered little help. My assigned college counselor offered me more and more engineering firms to contact, and I applied to all of them only to hear the same response time after time. “Try again when you are a junior or senior” became a popular expression around my dorm room.
Then I made one of the best decisions a college freshman can make. I applied for internships outside of my major and a whole new world of opportunity opened up! There are lots of opportunities to students willing to try something new and different. I looked at sales internships, investment companies, entrepreneurship opportunities, and many others. I ended up getting a challenging job where I would run my own business for the summer. After completing the summer, I found that my skills I had gained during the summer were priceless. I now had engineering firms seeking me out and contacting me for jobs! They saw my engineering knowledge combined with the sales skills I had learned from my internship, to be highly sought after and worthy of their time.
So to all underclassmen who have a lack of experience, but are ambitious enough to search for an internship look outside of your major this summer. There are great jobs, even careers that have been started by students who took a chance and tried something different. But beyond all else, you only get four summers in college (or five if you are on the hard partying course plan) please make the most of them. It is never too early to start get ahead in life.
When I was in college, I recruited a number of teams over the years during my Southwestern Internship. I was usually successful selling the internship program because it had so many benefits: great financial opportunity, travel, experience, resume enhancement, personal growth, challenge, adventure, college credit (and now residual income!) So why was it that the college students I interviewed oftentimes said no to all these benefits?
Fear.
Fear of failure. Fear of the unknown. Fear of being ridiculed by friends. Fear of selling. Fear of making a bad decision.
Make no mistake: our Southwestern Internship program is not for everyone. (Read that again.) But, having said that, many students who attend an info session know the Southwestern Internship would be a great summer option. What can we do to help students do what they know they want to do?
First off, we can’t get sidetracked by answering mini-objections one-by-one. We need to address the core issue for students, and that’s fear. You can spend a lot of time comparing this opportunity to another job, convincing them that summer school won’t set them apart, trying to show them that working for their uncle on the ranch isn’t their best option…in other words, you can work on them logically until they agree with you, and they still won’t join your team.
I remember one student I was attempting to close. He was bright, a great guy. What objection did he give me? The profit margin objection! He said, “I just wouldn’t feel right making 40% commission–that’s too big a markup on the product.” I remembered he worked at Pizza Hut and asked him how much the ingredients cost to make a $15 pizza. “A couple bucks,” he replied. We looked at each other. He swallowed. Trapped. Good news: I won the debate–his profit margin was much higher on the pizzas, and somehow he justified working there. Bad news: he never sold with me.
I won the battle and lost the war.
I didn’t address the underlying issue: fear. I should’ve almost ignored his “moral” profit margin objection and talked with him about the real problem–his fear of failure. Here are a few questions that should be running in your mental background as you attempt to sell someone on joining your team:
- what can I do to give this person confidence?
- what is their frame of reference? (eg., can I use a sports analogy?)
- how can I discover their unspoken fears/reluctance?
- what objection can I answer in advance?
- how can I help them emotionally realize this is best for them?
If we put time and energy dealing with their fears, we will help them and, as a bonus, they will work with us. How do you build peoples’ confidence? What do you share with them to deal with their fears? I welcome your comments.
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