For the past 15 years we have helped companies hire stronger sales staff. Inside, outside, techies, specialist, marketing coordinators, professional, low tech, B2B, in home, financial experts, channel directors, vertical liaisons, and just about every thing else you might think of. What we’ve learned is that most companies (most means more than half) seem to believe the sales department is the same animal as the rest of the departments that make up a company. Therefore they use the same paradigms, processes and systems to hire sales as they do the rest of the company.
Let’s look at the big picture and first define the ‘Traditional Hiring Model”. Step 1 - Place an ad. Step 2 – Wade through piles of resumes. Step 3 – Interview the top candidates. Step 4 – Sell the offer to the top candidate, and Step 5 – Hope and pray.
As you can guess there are many many challenges with this process and that is why the average tenure of a sales pro is 18 months at one company. Sure the numbers are skewed a bit because that stat includes all the knuckle-heads that should never be in sales to begin with. However, this doesn’t change the fact that hiring mistakes in your sales department cost 3 times the annual average compensation of your average sales person.
Here are a couple of trade secrets to assist in improving your hiring process. Step 1 – First decide what exactly you are looking for. Skill sets, what markets the salesperson will be calling on, the position of the company in which the sales person will be calling on, the length of your average sales cycle, the pressure and accountability you will put on the sales person, the dollar amount of your average sale, just to name a few of the categories that can help to define your criteria. Additionally, it would be good to know is this a pure hunter role, a farmer, an ambassador, or a fisherman. Which means how much time is the salesperson required to spend developing new business verses growing and maintaining accounts. And are they required to go find the business or are potential customer knocking down your door. In short – Define the attributes of your successful candidate.
Resumes are a problem. They point is I review hundreds every week and I’ve never seen a bad one. They are usually written by a third party who has had very little real world experience with the candidate. Resumes tell you two things; A) the work history and industries the candidate should be familiar with. Which if read into a little further can give you insight to the parallels they may share with your markets. And B) A pattern to determine the natural up and down cycle of your potential candidate. If you see the person has changed jobs in the past typically in the first quarter then you should expect that every year about that time they will be a bit antsy. Therefore, you can head off the problem at the pass and spend ‘motivation’ time in the previous quarter.
The interview; Salespeople are typically pretty good at first impressions. That is what they do remember. Don’t judge your interview by this. Stop trying to sell your company and start making the sales person sell you. I don’t mean, ‘Here, sell me this pencil’. I mean turn the interview into an audition! Provide the same hardnosed environment that your prospects will give your new salesperson. It’s a busy world out there. Give the a few stalls and put offs! Tell them you not sure they can make it. Listen for questions, watch for uneasiness, see how early you can get them to start talking about themselves and see how they perform. This will give you great insight to their secret selling styles and you will find out what excuses you will expect to hear 90 days later if you hire them.
After the offer: So you have a new hire now what? Do you send them out to the field with your ‘best people’? Is it your sales manager’s job to do OTJ training? Have a prepared training program. If they need specific product knowledge give them time lines and test. Don’t send them into the field with any other sales person. One, it’s distracting to the current salesperson. Two they will pick up the bad habits of the good salespeople. And three they will not ramp up as fast. Do measure their activity and hold them accountable to every goal you set and they agreed to when they accepted the job. DO NOT accept any excesses!
Here’s what we do; Identify, Attract, Interview, Screen, Interview, Test the Test, Interview, Screen, Test, Interview and then we provide Success Conditioning with tracking tools for accountability. If you don’t have time to do all of this please contact us.
For more information about sales development goto www.thetrainingroup.com
Monday, August 22, 2005
Wha'd you say?
In the profession of sales, a razor sharp mind is a definite advantage. A main component of a razor sharp mind is memory. Names, events, places, and contact information certainly top the list of things to remember.
Do you know the business model of your prospective client or customer? What about the process of how invoices are paid? Communication style and conversations are also key in penetrating the account.
There are four basic memory techniques. I’ll do my best to outline them for you here.
Pegging – is an effective technique that will assist in remembering a list of things of one word items or concepts. We frequently think of a peg as something to hang objects on, like a coat hook. Your place of residence holds many pegs. Most rooms have at least five easy pegs. Let’s build an imaginary kitchen. Stand in the kitchen and pan right ‘till you complete a circle. In front of you is the sink, to the right is the dishwasher, then the kitchen table, and around the room we go. Next we find the refrigerator and then the microwave. As you need to remember items for a presentation or main points of a sales meeting agenda, use your kitchen pegs. You can also attach the agenda items in the order of your kitchen appliances. Then while in the meeting, you can stick to the agenda by mentally turning around in your kitchen. You can use each room of your residence as a checklist to create more pegs for a longer list.
Repetition- Repeat, repeat, repeat! For example, take a simple list of ‘things to do’ or better yet, a list of grocery items; milk, eggs bread, cheese, grits, bacon, eggs, cheese burgers, and cereal. Your visualization here is key. Repeat the objects in order and in reverse order 13 times and you will have it in your brain as long as you need it.
Association- Here we associate the item with another more memorable item. This technique is especially effective with names. Chris sounds like kiss. Roger – dodger.
Sherry is merry. Association can also be used in a visual sense. What do you see when you are introduced? How is this name or concept associated with something more familiar to you? In effect we associate something new to something old because it is easy to make the transition in our mind.
Stacking- By far the most powerful and effective technique. However, it also requires the most effort to implement. Let’s pretend we were going to ask a specific set of questions. First we need to identify the questions. Here are some that may help to find a compelling reason to do business. Can you tell me more about the situation? How long has this been a problem? What have you done to fix it? Did it work? How much has it cost you? Have you given up trying to fix it? What in the personal impact of this situation? Here we have seven solid questions that will help us determine if the prospective client is a suspect or prospect. Let’s build a stack for these questions so that we remember them in the heat of battle when we are likely to become emotional and forget the next question.
Chattering teeth represent question 1- tell me more. Spinning Clock represents question 2- how long has it been a problem. Purple and yellow-stripped pipe wrench represents question 3- what have you done to fix it. Greasy work glove represents question 4- did it work, etc. The key to using the stacking technique is the vivid colors and the action placed upon the object that represents the idea, item, or concept.
Memory is a muscle of the mind and like any muscle, the more exercise it gets, the better it functions. Try a few of these techniques and let me know how they work for you…if you remember to.
Good Selling,
Rocky LaGrone
For more information about sales development goto www.thetrainingroup.com
Do you know the business model of your prospective client or customer? What about the process of how invoices are paid? Communication style and conversations are also key in penetrating the account.
There are four basic memory techniques. I’ll do my best to outline them for you here.
Pegging – is an effective technique that will assist in remembering a list of things of one word items or concepts. We frequently think of a peg as something to hang objects on, like a coat hook. Your place of residence holds many pegs. Most rooms have at least five easy pegs. Let’s build an imaginary kitchen. Stand in the kitchen and pan right ‘till you complete a circle. In front of you is the sink, to the right is the dishwasher, then the kitchen table, and around the room we go. Next we find the refrigerator and then the microwave. As you need to remember items for a presentation or main points of a sales meeting agenda, use your kitchen pegs. You can also attach the agenda items in the order of your kitchen appliances. Then while in the meeting, you can stick to the agenda by mentally turning around in your kitchen. You can use each room of your residence as a checklist to create more pegs for a longer list.
Repetition- Repeat, repeat, repeat! For example, take a simple list of ‘things to do’ or better yet, a list of grocery items; milk, eggs bread, cheese, grits, bacon, eggs, cheese burgers, and cereal. Your visualization here is key. Repeat the objects in order and in reverse order 13 times and you will have it in your brain as long as you need it.
Association- Here we associate the item with another more memorable item. This technique is especially effective with names. Chris sounds like kiss. Roger – dodger.
Sherry is merry. Association can also be used in a visual sense. What do you see when you are introduced? How is this name or concept associated with something more familiar to you? In effect we associate something new to something old because it is easy to make the transition in our mind.
Stacking- By far the most powerful and effective technique. However, it also requires the most effort to implement. Let’s pretend we were going to ask a specific set of questions. First we need to identify the questions. Here are some that may help to find a compelling reason to do business. Can you tell me more about the situation? How long has this been a problem? What have you done to fix it? Did it work? How much has it cost you? Have you given up trying to fix it? What in the personal impact of this situation? Here we have seven solid questions that will help us determine if the prospective client is a suspect or prospect. Let’s build a stack for these questions so that we remember them in the heat of battle when we are likely to become emotional and forget the next question.
Chattering teeth represent question 1- tell me more. Spinning Clock represents question 2- how long has it been a problem. Purple and yellow-stripped pipe wrench represents question 3- what have you done to fix it. Greasy work glove represents question 4- did it work, etc. The key to using the stacking technique is the vivid colors and the action placed upon the object that represents the idea, item, or concept.
Memory is a muscle of the mind and like any muscle, the more exercise it gets, the better it functions. Try a few of these techniques and let me know how they work for you…if you remember to.
Good Selling,
Rocky LaGrone
For more information about sales development goto www.thetrainingroup.com
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