Leave Them Alone and Let Them Sell? Are You Out of Your Mind?
Your Mind?
An angry man's rant
By Frank Hurtte
Over the past couple of weeks,
I’ve masochistically subjected myself (voluntarily, mind you) to a greasy,
day-old buffet of podcasts, think-pieces, and smug online lectures from sales
"experts" who believe the solution to all of life’s problems is to
just leave salespeople alone.
“Let them do what feels best,”
they coo, or maybe spew, like back-alley dope pushers. If it feels good, do it.
“No need to manage them. Don’t you dare ask what they’re doing. And for the
love of God, don’t mention CRM.”
It’s an exhaustingly
long-winded sermon of anti-accountability. And like the Jonestown cult, the
Kool-Aid line is long. Looking back, I wish I’d made a list of those slobbering
all over themselves in the amen corner of the comment section. Note to self: deprogram
them before even reading their resume, much less hiring them.
Rather than yelling at my
screen or punching drywall like an internet troll with rage issues, I decided
to listen. Not agree, just listen. Their arguments, if you can call them that,
boil down to five tidy little delusions:
1. Selling is a human-to-human interaction
that resists measurement.
2. Salespeople are professionals who don’t
need management.
3. Measuring activity is pointless.
4. Salespeople are too busy to be bothered
with additional (management-driven) tasks.
5. CRM is just a glorified box-checking
system.
Cute, right? Now, stand back as
we burn these straw men to the ground.
Point One: Selling Is
Human-To-Human
Sure, Sparky. Selling is human-to-human. So is combat. And brain surgery. And
most crimes. Just because people are involved doesn’t mean you throw out every
tool invented since the abacus.
If you’ve sold anything more
complicated than a tube of toothpaste, you know emotion can blind you faster
than a Mason jar of corn liquor. You start believing every "maybe"
means "yes" and every "I'll think about it" is a done deal.
That’s why measurement matters. You want to know what works, what doesn’t, and
which of your charming sales calls are about as effective as singing sea
shanties to an Iowa fencepost.
I tracked my activities early
on, not because I was told to, but because I wanted to improve. You want
emotion? Great. But don’t let it drive the car blindfolded. Data is the
steering wheel. Put at least one hand on it.
Point Two: Salespeople
Are Professionals
Professional UFC fighters still need coaches. Airline pilots follow checklists.
Surgeons have scrub nurses to remind them which organ is which.
The notion that salespeople
naturally operate at peak performance is a hallucination brought on by either
too much Kool-Aid or too many motivational seminars. One top-tier guy I know
still can’t keep a calendar straight. If his manager hadn’t stepped in, he’d
have missed half his appointments and maybe his kid’s graduation.
And don’t get me started on the
rookies. New salespeople are like puppies: enthusiastic, clueless, and
convinced they’re naturals. As I outlined in The
New Sales Guy Project, they need structure, not a pat on the head
and a “go get ’em, tiger.”
Point Three: Measuring
Activity Is Useless
Only if you're okay with hemorrhaging money like a hemophiliac in a knife
fight.
People cost money. Salespeople
cost a lot of
money. In most distributor organizations, they’re eating up more than half your
gross margin. If you’re not measuring where their time goes, you’re basically
tossing cash into a woodchipper and calling it strategy.
Tracking activity isn’t
micromanagement—it’s business self-preservation. If your job is to make the
business profitable and you don’t care where the labor dollars go, please turn
in your keys. HR is expecting you.
Point Four: Salespeople
Are Too Busy
Yeah, I saw that Salesforce study too. Reps only spend 30% of their time
actually selling. You know what that tells me? Something is broken.
But instead of fixing it, the
“let ’em be” crowd says, “Welp, guess we better stop tracking things.” That’s
like looking at a house fire and deciding to throw your smoke detector away.
If you thought a bit about
where that time is going, you’d find black holes like:
·
Chasing
down botched shipments.
·
Babysitting
slow suppliers.
·
Manually
punching in orders like it’s 1985.
·
Building
PowerPoints for tire-kickers.
·
Driving
an hour to drop off donuts to someone who never buys anything. (And yes, we’ll
ignore the half-hour spent at Dotty’s Donuts for those daily affirmations.)
How do you fix that if you
don’t even know it’s happening? You don’t. You sit there blissfully ignorant
while your pipeline withers like a houseplant in a broom closet.
Point Five: CRM Is Just
Box-Checking
Yeah, it was. At first.
Early CRMs were digital trash
cans full of misspelled names, half-baked notes, and “Call Joe back next week”
reminders no one followed. But the tech evolved. It’s not 2000 anymore,
Grandpa.
Modern CRM is your sales map.
It shows where the gold’s buried and where the sinkholes are. Without it,
you’re flying blind. And if you’re a distributor or rep agency working with
manufacturers, that map needs to be shared. It drives production schedules. It
aligns forecasts. It gets you more support because your partners know where
you’re working.
I said it before in Industrial Supply, and I’ll
say it again:
“Tracking opportunities is like using a hammer. Without a good handle, it’s just dead weight. For distributors, the handle is your CRM. Don’t have one? Or worse, have one and barely use it? That’s amateur hour.”
Final Thought
Sorry, not sorry, but I don’t buy your worn-out kumbaya theory of “just let them
sell.” That’s not a strategy; it’s abdication. It’s what you do when you’re
afraid to lead, allergic to accountability, or too lazy to fix what’s broken.
Selling is messy. It’s human.
But it’s also measurable. If you’ve got the guts to face the data. Otherwise,
you’re not running a sales team. You’re herding cats. And sooner or later,
those cats disappear.
Frank Zappa was a strange musician with an even stranger outlook on life. Most of my younger readers probably don’t know who he was, but this experience with self-proclaimed experts reminded me of one of his lyrics:
“But I said, look here, brother. Who you jivin’ with that Cosmik Debris?! Look here, brother, don’t you waste your time on me.”
This whole school of thought is
just that: Cosmik Debris.
If you want to argue, call me. Convince me. Just don’t ask me to drink the Kool-Aid.
If this rant struck a chord, you’re going to want The New Sales Guy Project in your
corner. This book, course, and companion workbook show you exactly how to blend process, discipline, and expertise to take your sales team from chaos to consistent profits.
Don’t leave your future up to wishful thinking. Grab your copy of The New Sales Guy Project today and start turning your sales chaos into a well-oiled machine.
Frank Hurtte is a veteran of the distribution
industry, a champion of commonsense sales
leadership, and the founder of River
Heights Consulting. With a career spanning both sales trenches and executive
boardrooms, Frank blends real-world experience with a relentless passion for
process, accountability, and results. He doesn’t just consult, he challenges.
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