The job market is tight and sourcing periods are extended due to the scarcity of strong candidates. Articles abound on the Internet about this topic. We have a saying we tell our clients - “If we know they are a strong salesperson, other companies with other opportunities know it too.”

In the current hiring environment, it is mission critical to keep a hiring process moving. Once a strong candidate is identified, time is of the essence. The longer you wait, the more competition you invite. We are moving on top candidates within 24 hours of the interview stage. Some of our customers are scheduling second interviews at the conclusion of the first interview.

I realize some hiring managers maintain hectic schedules, but securing a strong candidate is a quick-close necessity in this market.

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Extremely important. I bet you knew that. Yet, it seems that many companies do not realize what type of customer experience they are providing through their customer service dept. Inc.com’s article - Companies Receive Poor Grades for Customer Service - is one of these annual surveys measuring customer perceptions.

This following piece of information seems obvious, but…:

The study also found that new technology is no substitute for helpful agents. Six out of 10 respondents said automated phone services, live online chat, and other customer-service technologies had not improved service quality. In fact, automated phone services received the lowest level of satisfaction among all customer service channels, while in-person services rated highest.

60% of respondents state that technology has not helped the experience. I personally use the online chat features fairly often and hold them in high regard. Apparently, I am in the minority on that topic. Nonetheless, when customers have a problem, they want to speak to a live person. Simple. But not always followed by companies.

Personally as a customer, I feel abandoned if I end up navigating through some draconian automated phone system only to leave a voicemail for some unknown person. Resolution seems complete when you talk to a live person even if the problem is not completely resolved on the call.

Are your customers wandering around a cyber wasteland or are they getting to a live person with minimal inconvenience?

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No, Fantasy Football does not improve workplace productivity. From the article:

During the National Football League regular season, nearly 37 million people spend an average of 50 minutes a week at work managing their fantasy teams comprised of real-life players tallying points based on statistical performance, according to outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Fantasy sports ranks with shopping on eBay Inc.’s Web auction site and online poker as the biggest waste of productivity at the workplace, said John Challenger, CEO of the consulting firm.

As an avid Fantasy Football player, if they are spending only 50 minutes a week on their team, they are not going to win their league.

I mean, what a colossal waste of time.

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Steve Rothberg has a definitive post on his blog CollegeRecruiter.com titled Searching for Entry Level Job Seekers on MySpace. I posted on this topic recently and followed the herd mentality about excluding candidates based on their MySpace information.

Steve has a different take on it as he states:

MySpace and other social networking sites are valuable recruiting tools because they provide employers with access to a desired demographic group: those who are searching for entry level jobs and internships. The sites also allow employers to connect with people who may not be looking for a job or who have chosen not to use traditional Internet recruitment sites such as CollegeRecruiter.com. These passive job seekers are often the most valued to employers yet few employers actively seek them out.

He makes a good point and obviously knows far more about the social networking sites than we do. I recommend you read his post to understand this developing trend.

In case you didn’t know, MySpace is one of the top 5 most visited sites on the web.

All of the web.

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Just a quick tip about posting jobs on major boards. We have a couple ads expiring shortly (within days) and are getting swamped with emails. We’ve written about this phenomenon before. At the end of an ad’s posting window, a bubble of responses will flood in to your inbox. We do not get calls, just emails with resumes attached.

One of our sales ads received 24 applicant responses alone during the final 24 hours of the posting.

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Boost Your Conversation-to-Appointment Ratio from Selling Power reads like a companion piece to our post from yesterday. Conversation-to-appointment ratio is what we take a step further and refer to as a connects-to-close ratio. We wrote about this topic in great detail back in January of last year (click here to read the article).

The Selling Power author speaks of a truth we have encountered many times:

Do you know your conversation-to-appointment ratio? Most sales managers don’t. Moreover, most sales managers probably couldn’t define the metric without some thought.

This fact is something we see play out time and time again when we are defining a sale. Many sales managers can only guess at what the ratio is in their typical sale. Some of you may wonder why this ratio is important. It boils down to this point - you cannot ask a salesperson to do something 20, 30, 40 times a year that you cannot even define 1 time. If a salesperson is expected to close 25 deals in a year, it is most beneficial to explain to them how many calls, appointments, proposals, etc. are needed to close one deal.

You know, often successful selling comes down to executing the right behaviors in a consistent manner. That statement sounds simplistic, but think about it. A salesperson who consistently makes the calls and incorporates an effective selling system will make their numbers. The selling system is important behavior in that it allows the salesperson (and sales manager) to always know what stage a prospect is at in the pipeline. Ineffective selling systems lead to salespeople who make the calls but rarely know the veracity of their forecast.

I’ll close with the best piece of advice from the article:

Understand the prospect’s internal business challenges parallel to your offering before you pick up the phone. Too often, says Hardesty, sales reps get someone on the phone and start talking about who they are, how long they’ve been in business, how great their customer service is, and so on. To boost your appointment ratio, you must first challenge yourself to understand the prospect’s internal business challenges and model those themes around your communication. “Scripts don’t work,” says Hardesty. “Conversations do.”

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Marketingprofs.com posts this fine article - Telling Ain’t Selling. The article is well-written and quotes some fine points from Spin Selling that we are familiar with at Select Metrix. The author provides some wide-ranging references. Check out these excerpts:

Like milking a cow, selling can be a delicate operation. While a customer probably won’t threaten you with a hoof, you’re still faced with the fact that the harder you push, the more pushback you get.

We’re from Minnesota so this simile is well understood. A reference from later in the article:

The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes had it right when he said, “We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.”

And the closing paragraph:

French philosopher Voltaire was right when he said many centuries ago: “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”

From milking cows to Greek philosophers to Voltaire, now this is an eclectic author. The thesis of the article can be verified by anyone who has come in contact with a loquacious salesperson. The unskilled salesperson has a tendency to judge the effectiveness of a sales call by reviewing what they themselves were able to pronounce in the sales call. I have seen this approach first-hand and it is ugly. The most effective salespeople are the ones who ask pertinent qualifying questions . . . and then shut up and listen.

This article should be required reading for all salespeople. Please read the entire thing.

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We use phone screens extensively in our sourcing activities. The first advantage to this approach is that it removes some biases from the interviewer. Second, it neutralizes a candidates ability to pour on their rapport-building skills. Thirdly, it is a much shorter time commitment than an in-person interview. I could go on, but you get the point.

CareerJournal has reposted this article - Four Tips for Acing Interviews by Phone - which made me think about the candidate side of the phone screen. Tip #3 starts with this point:

3. Prepare in advance.
If you’ve scheduled or are anticipating a phone interview, keep notes and your resume at hand, says Amy Segal, director of talent management for Verizon Communications Inc., a New York-based telecommunications company. “The interviewer is none the wiser,” she notes.

I am always befuddled by candidates whom appear to be completely unprepared during a scheduled phone screen. As stated above, the interviewer has no idea what notes the candidate has in front of them. This advantage should be exercised by each candidate during each phone screen.

Again, it is surprising how many do not incorporate this approach. Watch for it when you are phone interviewing. The candidate should be able to speak to the ad, their resume and hopefully, some aspects of your business.

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Justsell.com has a helpful daily sales email that contains practical tips. Today’s offering (no link available):

Top 3 activities that can hobble a sales day…

1. talking with people who cannot move the sales process along
2. unnecessary research activities
   What’s too much? There’s really no definitive answer — it’s particular to your sales world. Most people start to get a gut feel for when they should move on — the key is to act on it and make the call. You’d be surprised what you can learn by asking a straightforward question of the person who answers the phone or responds to an email.
3. crafting” or “drafting” a letter, email or fax
   Needs to be done but almost never during the money hours — and those who’ve worked the preparedness checklist should already have completed the basics of most standard written communications needed.

All great points. #2 is especially important in successful selling. Today’s information age demands that a salesperson be prepared for an approach call. The days of cold calling and asking, “What does your company do?” are long gone. The time window is much shorter for an approach call and the recipient of the call expects the caller to have a cursory understanding of their business.

However, some salespeople prefer to research a company for 30 minutes before picking up the phone. That approach only works if you have a highly-defined, prospect-limited market. For the majority of sales positions, it is better to limit research on a suspect (cannot call them a prospect until some qualifying has occurred).

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A dated article in the Harvard Management Update caught my eye. The article provided some great practical advice that I thought would be good to pass on.

If you are having trouble narrowing down the number of candidates, the author suggested asking each candidate to perform a simple task. Some examples: write a description of themselves or prepare a report on some aspect of your company or industry. A sizable percentage of the candidates won’t bother to do the task thereby effectively eliminating themselves from consideration. At that point, you can spend focused time with the applicants that have followed through on your request.

This might be a great way to narrow the field down, but I would recommend asking the applicants to respond to a list of questions. Then you can use their responses to narrow down the numbers. This way you will be able to compare their answers to each other since they all answered the same questions. This approach takes very little time to initiate and will pay huge dividends in your hiring process.

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