I was talking to a sales manager friend today regarding motivating salespeople. This topic could fill a book, but the key point we were discussing was how managers have to focus on motivations and rewards.

He told me of a company he used to work for that rewarded the sales team with a trip for the entire team. If they made their group goal, the sales reps along with their spouses got to go on an all-expenses-paid vacation together. All except the sales manager – he did not go with the team. He was not inclined to that group reward and felt he was too busy to attend with his team.

The net effect of this expensive reward was a palpable schism between the team and the manager. What a mistake.

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This is not the way to start your day – it is -20 degrees here this morning in New Prague, MN. That’s pretty cold even by our standards.

Next I read that there is going to be a coffee bean shortage next season which certainly means that prices will be increasing. Not what you want to read on a -20 morning.

However, I was thinking about the importance of qualifying in successful selling based on this post from yesterday. A key point to understand is that qualified deals close themselves. If a salesperson can successfully qualify the prospect, they do not need to use slick closing techniques.

The obvious question then becomes, “What defines a qualified deal?” The parameters for a qualified deal depends upon specifics involving the company’s value proposition, market, pricing, etc. But here are 6 points that are required for any sale:

1. Need – sometimes described as pain. The prospect must have a compelling need or pain driving them to change their current situation. All successful selling starts here. No need, no prospect. A “prospect” without a pressing need is a tirekicker and better referred to as a suspect.
2. Budget – many salespeople struggle with this topic. There are 2 aspects to it – what the salesperson’s solution the need costs and what the prospect is willing to pay. Many times salespeople will avoid this topic until springing the proposal onto the prospect. Never let salespeople qualify budget with a proposal. This topic must be discussed in the early stages and, at a minimum, framed into a general range.
3. Decision Process – this topic must be handled adroitly by the salesperson since most prospects overstate their decision-making power. It is wise to acknowledge their importance in the decision but it is mission-critical to sort out all the other players. A good approach is to ask how they have made decisions like this one in the past.
4. Timing – prospects that are not qualified for the timing of their decision often end up welded to the forecast at “90 days out.” Timing must be qualified and requalified during a sales cycle. Any number of unexpected occurrences could derail the close. If the need (from the first step) is compelling and defined, fewer occurrences will be able to delay the deal.
5. Competition – only a foolish salesperson believes they have no competition. There is always competition and it may not come from an expected area. It could be an internal solution (different method, reassigned personnel, termination of the need, etc.). It could be the company your salesperson typically encounters. All strong salespeople know who or what they are up against and adjust appropriately.
6. Dealbreakers – remember Murphy’s Law at this stage. There are always potential roadblocks in any deal no matter how small. A good question here is to ask what could happen to make this deal go away. It is a fair question and one that always elicits an answer from the prospect.

A qualified deal in any sales situation will be defined by those parameters. If a salesperson is unable to clearly explain those 6 topics (no fuzzy phrases), they do not yet have a qualified deal. Send them back to clean up the missing information before allowing the deal to land on the forecast.

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From Selling Power’s latest sales manager newsletter – Does Your Needs Development Need Development?

One of the important early steps in the sales process is uncovering a prospect’s needs. Unfortunately, most reps take that step literally and ask a prospect about his problems and challenges, then check off that step and move on to the next one.

And later in the article:

Freese just worked with a group of reps from a major, global software company who said they were trained to develop needs by asking, “And what else is important to you?” until the prospect ran out of answers. And then they figured they had all the needs.

These approaches don’t help you, don’t help the customer and, most critically, do only a superficial job of uncovering needs.

These approaches stand out in a horrific manner – they appear to be just what they are, “moves” or “tools.” Most people have experienced a clumsy salesperson with pathetically preplanned moves masquerading as helpful questions. An acoustic guitar in the hands of Eric Clapton is a wonderful instrument. That same guitar in the hands of my 7 year-old son is, well, not wonderful.

“Uncovering prospect’s needs” is qualifying – the foundation of all successful selling. Questions still need to be asked and detailed information gathered to determine how strong of a prospect the salesperson is pursuing. The author provides a suggestion:

To set yourself apart and to delve into the deeper layers of customer needs, you must bring something of value to the conversation, says Freese.

True, but sometimes it is simply a matter of knowing how to have an open, straight-forward conversation. I think the author hits on the real issue in that salespeople simply check off their questions without having a clear understanding of the prospect’s purposely-superficial answer.

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First off, I have an interest in the Boeing vs. Airbus rivalry. Boeing used to be a customer of mine in a previous role and I have seen their amazing production facility in Everett, WA. The building is unbelievable huge. Anyway, I caught up to this Foxnews.com article – Airbus CEO Dropped Trousers to Seal US Airways Airplane Order. Here is the money excerpt (emphasis mine):

Pierson, who ran Airbus from 1985 to 1998, was at US Airways’ headquarters for what he thought would be a short meeting to tie up a 400-plane deal, the anecdote runs.

At the last minute, US Airways’ then-chairman Stephen Wolf started arguing for a 5 percent discount on the selling price.

“Pierson began slowly lowering his trousers and saying ‘I have nothing more to give.’ He then allowed the trousers to fall around his ankles,” says Newhouse in his book.

Wolf replied: “Pull up your pants. I don’t need any more money,” and the deal was signed, according to the book. The author says he got the story from Pierson himself, and it was confirmed by another person present.

You would have to be the CEO to attempt this sales technique.

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Inc.com offers this article – When Is It Safe To Hire? The focus of the article is a software manufacturer’s assistance to their rep companies in hiring salespeople. Basically, the manufacturer will provide $10,000 to the rep company to assist them in hiring salespeople. The money can be used for assessing, training, supplementing salary, etc. Apparently this approach is relatively common in the software industry.

The article discusses the pitfalls of hiring salespeople in the context of small business owners ($1-2 million revenue). This ground is well travelled by us. I am convinced that in companies this size, sales hires are a make-or-break proposition. And when I say “break” I mean risking the business “break.”

That thought leads to this excerpt:

Brant Wadsworth, the owner of Digitek, a Phoenix-based software reseller with $2 million in revenue, is typical of the CEOs Sage wanted to reach. “I had hired salespeople before, but the process to get them up to speed was difficult, and they didn’t work out,” he says. “The hardest thing about finding good salespeople is that they’re all professional actors. Every salesperson is giving you their best pitch when you’re interviewing.”

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. They are all professional actors which is why relying solely on your gut instinct to make the sales hire is a losing proposition. And proof comes later in the article:

He dutifully put candidates through personality testing, but when a low score seemed to discredit his favorite prospect, he decided to go with his gut.

Mohan thought the person he hired, though inexperienced, had great potential. But soon after she came to work, Mohan realized he’d screwed up. As the personality tests had suggested, the candidate’s natural exuberance did not make up for a lack of aggressiveness and experience. “Some of the weaknesses we identified in the screening process turned out to be the problem,” Mohan admits. After several unhappy months, the salesperson left.

I give Mr. Mohan credit for being so open about a bad hire. He was only using personality tests which is better than nothing, but certainly not enough to consistently hire strong salespeople. Nonetheless, his experience is a persuasive statement about the need to assess sales candidates before hiring them.

Lastly, it is difficult, but trust the assessments. This approach is like a pilot who has his or her instrument rating. When it is pitch black in the night, they are trained to trust their instruments even when they mind is telling them the plane is diving towards the ground. When hiring salespeople, the desire is to follow your gut in the face of assessment results. Don’t do it – trust the instruments.

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What If All Your Senior Execs Left? from BusinessWeek addresses a topic we have been shouting from the mountaintop. First, a great point that I haven’t considered:

Organizations today are running with lean, highly productive staffs. While such streamlining is great for budgets, the fact that workplace productivity levels have continued their upward trajectory has created a dearth of available talent.Losing multiple key executives within a short time can tear a hole in the business plan and hurt both a company’s bottom line and stock price.

Companies are highly streamlined today which makes every position important to overall corporate success. Technology continues to drive productivity increases, but I believe the impending Baby Boomer exit will create too great a gap to overcome. Of course, necessity is the mother of invention so some technological breakthrough is probably on the near horizon. Or perhaps a dramatic rise in offshoring to countries with expansive labor forces.

The approach addressed in this article is the solution “workaround” we endorse – hiring the right talent from outside your industry. We even wrote an article on the topic. The author of the BusinessWeek article seems to agree:

Where should companies find this diverse group of talented people with appropriate knowledge and experience? Companies should be careful not to try to replicate the current senior team. Instead, they should consider creating a “new team” made up of internal promotions and a few hires from competitors, with the majority coming from outside the industry and outside the hiring company’s comfort zone.

Amen to that. The best return on your investment is to get ahead of your competition and start implementing this approach now. Stop recycling mediocrity by only hiring from within the narrow scope of your industry. Instead, follow the author’s advice:

The solution, then, is to act now. Evaluate your current team. Identify the holes and the available pool of qualified talent. Determine the core competencies you will need, and consider where you will find diverse talent. Build a leadership program to bring the talent on board, and fund the program for success. Then recruit the best talent in the market.

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Our friends over at Hidden Business Treasures have paid us a nice compliment by posting about The Hire Sense last week.

They allowed us to be a guest writer on their blog and we offered up this post – Searching for the Sale. The topic of our post is the importance of finding sales candidates who possess the web-searching skills needed to prospect today. We provide 3 techniques for determining a candidate’s information literacy.

If you are interested, please follow the link and leave a comment for them if you are so inclined. While there, take a look at their consistently thoughtful posts.

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3.7 months. According to this CNNMoney.com article, that was the median time it took to hire in the fourth quarter. As long as that may seem, it trended down from third quarter which is a good sign.

U.S. workers needed less time to land a new job in the fourth quarter of 2006 than they did in the prior quarter, according to a survey released Thursday.After hitting the highest level in more than three years in the third quarter, the median job search time fell 12 percent in the fourth quarter to 3.7 months, according to the survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

While fourth-quarter job search times improved, they were still 19 percent higher than the 3.1 months recorded during the same time a year earlier, the Chicago-based employment placement and tracking firm said.

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Welcome to our new RSS feed. If you receive this post in your reader, you have successfully updated the new link.

If you haven’t considered an RSS reader…

What the Heck is RSS?

And why should I care?

Good questions. First, here’s why you should care.

Unlike getting website updates or ezines by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation.

You don’t have to reveal your email address. If you want to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be ‘taken off the list.’

One click, and poof the subscription is gone.

Plus, since there’s no email address involved, there’s no way a publisher can sell, rent or give away the means to contact you.

That’s right, no more spam, viruses, phishing, or identity theft. And best of all, no reason to put yourself at the mercy of the publisher’s intentions.

You won’t need to suffer through the legalese in the privacy policy (if there is one) looking for loopholes that will send you deeper into inbox hell. No more setting up dummy Hotmail accounts “just in case.”

Again, if you don’t like the content, you can make it disappear as fast as you can change a TV channel. With just one click.

Pretty cool, huh?

That is cool! Umm? What the heck is RSS?

Alright! Now we’re ready to get to that part.

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.

You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed – you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

If you actually want to know how RSS works, click here.

What the heck is a feed reader?

You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it’s also free and easy to get started with.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The latest version of Internet Explorer (IE7) has this feature as well.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Newsgator and Feed Demon.

If it sounds complicated, it’s really not. And things will get even easier when the next version of Outlook integrates feed-reading capabilities. So, you’ll have the same convenience that email subscriptions offered in the old days, without any of the terrible consequences of giving out your email address to potentially unscrupulous characters.

Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a Feed?

First of all, look for the subscription or feed options (some bloggers make this difficult for some odd reason). You might see a variety of buttons (amusingly called chicklets).

If the site you want to subscribe to uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process (like The Hire Sense and many other popular sites), you’ll likely see the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there. This is the new standard RSS icon:

Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see these (among others):

Finally, you may also see little orange buttons that say XML or RSS. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription function.

Hopefully this last method will soon disappear, never to be seen again. (It will be removed from The Hire Sense shortly)

In summary: RSS solves BIG problems.

So there you have it – RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone.

The benefit to readers is obvious. And it’s good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter.

If there’s anything here that is confusing, or you have a question, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help!

(Thanks to Copyblogger for a helping hand with this tutorial)

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Last reminder – our new RSS feed will be up before 10:00am CST this morning. You will need to paste the new feed link into your RSS reader if you use RSS to subscribe to The Hire Sense.

The new feed link is http://feeds.feedburner.com/selectmetrix/gZUw

Please contact us directly – info@selectmetrix.com – if you have any difficulties.

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