Selling entails many skills and aptitudes, but one thing that is often overlooked is the ability to disqualify prospects. Selling Power offers up this article – How to Disqualify Leads – which provides a thorough explanation of techniques.

First, a great image that I have not heard used in this context:

Brooks says top performers are so guarded about who goes into their pipeline that their pipelines look more like cylinders: fewer opportunities going in one end and a higher percentage of them closing on the other. Contrast that with the other 80 percent of your reps. Typically this group aims to prop up every lead that comes their way, stuff them into their pipeline, and hope some will close at the other end.

There is truth for you. We work with companies to evaluate their current team and we often see prospects welded to the 90 day forecast. I like the author’s description of a sales pipeline being a cylinder instead of a funnel. If salespeople are properly qualifying, only prospects will go into their “funnel.”

Check out the 6 questions in the middle of the article. Those questions should be asked by every sales manager of their salespeople’s prospects. I used to work for a sales manager whom I really didn’t enjoy. Invariably he would ask almost the same 6 questions of me regarding any prospect I added to my forecast. I learned quickly to ask those questions of my prospects which truly did improve my closing percentage greatly.

Lastly, the author explains why this seemingly simplistic strategy is so difficult to enact:

Brooks acknowledges that shifting from a mindset of qualifying your leads to disqualifying your leads can be a bit scary. Sales people worry that if they start tossing out leads, there wont be any more coming in to fill their pipeline. But heres the gem: These techniques will never disqualify a true buyer; they will reveal the true buyers, says Brooks.

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In a recent survey conducted by BNS and sponsored by Kronos, researchers found that more employers will give staff gifts and bonuses this year while fewer plan to extend the holidays by granting three or more days of paid leave. Here are some highlights from the survey:

• 49% of employers will give employees holiday gift items, cash awards or bonuses this year. This represents an increase over 2005 (40%) and is the highest figure reported in the survey’s 25-year history.
• 43% of employers are giving workers three or more paid holidays – down from other comparable years when these holidays also fell on Monday (49% in 2000, 47% in 1995 and 60% in 1989).
• Most employers will still grant two paid holidays at year end for Christmas and New Years.

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We’ve defined Self-Starting Ability in a previous post – now let’s define a similar, but still different sales trait that is crucial in any role.

Initiative
This ability directs ones energies toward the completion of a goal without an external catalyst. The ability to initiate actions based on ones own interpretation, or understanding, of a situation.

A salesperson with strength in this capacity has the ability to take action as a result of his or her own decisions. They feel comfortable enough in their own abilities to act on their own decisions without consulting others. They will adapt to a dynamic situation and move around unforeseen obstacles without waiting for supervisory instruction.

A salesperson with weakness in this area would indicate a person who is not comfortable enough in these abilities to act in the above manner. They may have difficulty beginning a project without direct supervision.

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Back in early November I posted on a newsletter article from Workforce Management that middle managers are the most resilient group in the workforce. In one of their late November newsletters they previewed a new study due out in January from Monica Wofford International, a corporate training firm. They found that middle managers are lacking the emotional intelligence to advance into top leadership positions. They also found that middle managers tend to resist coaching as a toll for improving performance.

They have piqued my interest and I will be sure to share with you more of what they learned in this study when it is released.

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In a recent survey of 3,000 workers and hiring managers by Robert Half and CareerBuilder, almost 50% of the hiring managers think higher energy prices will hamper their ability to recruit skilled workers in the next year.

It is very common for hiring managers to be very focused in finding candidates who are extremely local, said Rosemary Haefner, CarererBuilder.coms Vice President of Human Resources. Job seekers are being a lot more selective now of opportunities that are closer to home or can take advantage of mass transit, she said, so they can have a better work/life balance.

Now this article takes this information a little far in attempting to paint a somewhat bleak picture in that the commute distances will affect hiring and retention negatively over the unforeseeable future. Am I telling you that the commute has no bearing on hiring and retention? No. What I am trying to say is look at everyone as an individual.

If you are in the process of recruiting new staff, talk to the candidate about the commute. Will the commute be shorter or longer than they are used to? How far have they commuted in previous jobs? Will they have to be in the office every day? Do they enjoy or look forward to the commute? These are just a few of many questions you can ask the candidate when it comes to commuting. The commuting issue should be a small part of the whole hiring process.

We have had numerous experiences with our clients when it comes to candidates and commuting. We had one client that excluded a very good candidate from a first interview based solely on her commuting distance. Even though the candidate would have been about 25 miles away, her commute time would have been significantly reduced because she would have been going against rush hour traffic. What we learned was this hiring manager hated his own commute of over 30 miles (which was with the flow of the rush hour). He had one employee quit because of her commute became longer once she moved to a new community. His bias was projected onto any new candidates who did not live within a handful of miles of their office.

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