The title of this post is an age-old battle much like lions and hyenas, isn’t it? Brian Carroll has an interesting post on his B2B Lead Generation Blog – Optimizing Lead Generation – What’s the Payback?

The dilemma he addresses is where should executives invest resources – in more salespeople or into lead generation programs. I suspect many executives view salespeople as lead generation programs.

Granted, some salespeople are relentless prospectors who generate many new leads. This style usually comes at price, that is, their ability to retain customers is usually degraded. A strong hunter normally requires a back-end support team since they tend to move on to the next prospect. This fact of life seems to escape many hiring companies.

Brian references an interesting white paper:

Among other things, CSO Insights data from 1,275 companies shows that those excelling in lead generation gain the following advantages over companies that do not:

Win rates are 7 percent higher

Number of sales representatives making quota is 9.3 percent higher

Conversion rate from leads to first calls is 16.5 percent higher

More than 10 percent decrease in ramp up time for new sales people

I was surprised by the last bullet. One of our tasks is to help new salespeople ramp quickly in their new sales position. Shaving 10% from that ramp to revenue time would have an immediate impact on any company’s bottom line.

Comments(0)

We may be behind the times here at The Hire Sense, but we keep trying to catch up. I’m sure most readers are familiar with You Tube which is a fantastic site for uploading videos to share. Today I just discovered WSRadio which is internet talk radio. I was shocked at the number of business shows already on the “station” (is that what it is called?). These are completely web-based radio shows – no over-the-air versions that I could find in a cursory scan of the site.

Comments(0)

Careerbuilder.com in their Small Business Advisor Section has a great article that takes you step-by-step in posting an effective online ad. As is to be expected, the article is specifically written to CareerBuilder’s site specifications. The information is still valuable and can be used to effectively write an ad for any of the online job boards.

One tip that I would add that the author does not address is describing how the position is rewarded. One attribute that seems to appear in most ads is the desire to find a “self-starting” salesperson. This aptitude can be measured by our assessments. However, in order to maintain a self-starting aptitude, the salesperson needs to have their rewards met.

One other crucial item to self-starting ability is providing the motivated salesperson with the resources necessary to perform their job. I’ll end with an real situation.

A few years ago we found a highly motivated, self-starting business development executive for one of our customers. During the interview process, the salesperson was told that the territory was wide open. Our customer had a list of prospective companies to call and the current sales force was just managing their existing customer base.

Well, the truth was far different. The new salesperson discovered that he first had to check with an administrative person to see if any of the existing salespeople had “claimed” the prospect in their database. As you can imagine, more tenured salespeople has claimed many of the prospective companies even though they hadn’t communicated with the company for years. A weak sales manager allowed this practice to continue.

The self-starting business development salesperson lasted 6 months before resigning and we no longer work with that company.

Comments(0)

Forbes.com article – Are You Corner Office Material?
(I am not)

The article discusses techniques companies use to assess candidates for C-level positions. These techniques include a $12K, 1 day in-person assessment. Now that is pressure-packed role playing.

The quote that caught my eye:

Michael Butler, a vice president at Valtera, an HR consultancy, says companies are increasingly interested in his firm’s executive evaluations, partly because so many retiring baby boomers need to be replaced. Many firms will lose half of their senior executives in the next few years, “and they don’t even know it,” Butler says. “It’ll be a crisis in three years.”

Comments(0)

The upcoming quarter looks to maintain the strong growth in hiring that has been occurring for the past 2 years.

Some interesting statistics from the Manpower survey:

• Construction, 24%, down from 28% in the second quarter
• Durable-goods manufacturers, 23%, flat from 22% in the second quarter
• Finance, insurance and real estate, 23%, about flat from 21%
• Services, 23%, about flat from 21%
• Wholesale and retail trade, 21%, flat from 22%
• Transportation and public utilities, 20%, about flat from 17%
• Mining, 18%, down from 33%
• Non-durables manufacturers, 18%, about flat from 19%
• Education, 17% about flat from 16%
• Public administration, 16% up from 12%

Comments(0)

I’ve never heard that term before (the title of this post). This CareerJournal article discusses methods for candidates to clean up their digital dirt. I suspect the solutions offered in this article sound good but I doubt they clean up the dirt all that quickly. Google seems to cache information for some time.

Still, there are some good tips for using Google and I am a big fan of Pubsub. Now do what I just did, go Google your name!

Comments(0)

From Tough Talks on monster.com:

Generally, we recognize that open, constructive communication is crucial to business success. But many dodge these chats at all costs. Others charge right in loaded and ready. Others try to dance around the topic and not hurt feelings. None of these strategies is likely to accomplish your goal, so you end up where you started.

Let’s parse this paragraph out and look at the Selling Style for each line:
But many dodge these chats at all costs. (High S)
Others charge right in loaded and ready. (High D)
Others try to dance around the topic and not hurt feelings. (High I)

The only thing they are missing is a High C who would probably just read the data straight to the person without much emotion. Approaching each team member in their style allows the manager to cover difficult topics in the most effective manner. If you haven’t assessed your existing team yet, what are you waiting for?

Comments(0)

First things first – I’m not a Trekkie. But there is a good lesson from Mr. Spock in regards to qualifying. Basically, emotions kill good qualifying. What I mean is that salespeople who become emotionally shackled to a prospect or opportunity lose objectivity. Once objectivity is gone, the salesperson tends to abandon their selling system and rationalize reasons without pursing facts from the prospect directly.

The best salespeople we have encountered and assessed are the ones who are able to use their empathy to connect with the prospect and nothing more. They are able to build rapport yet stay emotionally detached so that stress, rejection, joy, anger and desperation do not affect their selling system. They stay on target and run their qualifying system.

Next time you are hiring a salesperson, look for these stoic qualities in their sales approach.

Ideally, contact us and we will assess the candidate for you.

Comments(0)

It’s Friday so let’s go with another anecdote. During a phone screen, I asked a candidate a fairly innocuous sales interview question, “What is the biggest contribution you made in your last job?”

He took several moments to gather his thoughts and then offered this:

Good question. I would have to say hands down that the greatest contribution thus far with my current company is the fact that I have increased RFQ’s (request for quote) by over 200%.

RFQ’s? Obviously, I was hoping to hear something about increasing sales, improving the closing ratio or turning around an underperforming territory. Nope, it was far worse. Generating a quote with his employer entailed numerous hours from several departments.

The questions that flowed from his statement:

• How many thousands of dollars are we talking about to turn out the quotes?
• How did he come upon all these RFQ€™s? Did he qualify them?
• And most importantly, did he close any sales from all of these RFQ’s?

You know, there is a reason why they call it selling and not quoting.

Comments(0)

A quick note about expiring ads that we have experienced. Expect a small bump in responses as your ad posting is about to expire. We consistently see a handful of responses that come in within the last 3 days of an ad expiring. Although risky (the position may be filled by then), it is still an interesting and some times effective approach by candidates.

Comments(0)