Marketingprofs.com offers up an insightful article from Jeff Thull that deals with one of the most important aspects of selling – credibility. Here is the setup (emphasis mine):

Now the sobering question, “How different are your two best competitors’ credibility stories from your own company’s credibility story?”

Unfortunately, other than a few minor elements, they are likely to sound quite similar. Therefore, telling the credibility story suggests that you and your competitors are more equal than you are different. This type of credibility is what we refer to as “expected credibility.” In other words, people expect you wouldn’t be in business if you couldn’t provide the above credibility story. They really see it as table stakes. It’s expected, and they’d be surprised and quite skeptical if you didn’t have it.

To truly set you and your company apart, what needs to be developed with your customer is what we refer to as “exceptional credibility.” Expected credibility is what you know about your business and your solution. Exceptional credibility is what you know about your customers, their individual job responsibilities, their business objectives and performance, and their challenges.

How true. There is a threshold that all companies must pass to be in the market. If you stake your credibility solely on that threshold, you are in trouble. As he always does, Thull provides the solution:

The best way to develop exceptional credibility is through diligent preparation and thought-provoking questions.

I’ll leave the rest of the article for your reading pleasure. It is well worth the time to read and digest his approach. Thull’s dissection of “opinion-level” questions vs. observation questions is excellent. For my money, there is no better analogy for sales than medical practices (especially doctors and salespeople).

Read the entire thing.

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I have read numerous article over the past few weeks about phone interviewing or screening sales candidates and every one of them miss the mark. Instead of going at what is wrong with each of these articles, I will give you some essentials that make this an effective step in our hiring process. These are the steps we incorporate into each recruitment process we run for our clients. These techniques have been developed through conducting thousands of sales interviews and phone screens over the past few years.

1. What are the main requirements of the job? I am not talking about the job description. Instead, think about a wish list, so to speak, of what you need this person to be good at to close business for you. Do they need to be good on the phone? Do they need to be solutions-based in their approach rather than product based? Is this a business development role or an account management position? Chances are you are not going to find all of these skills in one person so pick the top 2-3 things from this wish list you know they must possess.
2. Formulate questions to measure the candidates’ competency in these 2 or 3 requirements. Here is where a number of these articles fell down. Don’t ask simple questions like: How many accounts do you presently manage or how many times have you exceeded quota? You may be thinking that these are important to the job requirements and they may be – to a point. Let’s say this is an account manager position and you have been hit extremely hard by the competition in this territory. So these 2 questions do have some relevancy, but there are more pertinent questions to ask. More than likely their resume will reveal which years they exceeded quotas. If they have exceeded quota 2 of the last 4 years, which years did they meet it and, more importantly, why did they not meet it the other 2 years. So drill down – ask them why they did not meet quota. Looking back, what, if anything, could they have done differently? That will help you understand their ability to retain accounts.
3. Use multiple filters throughout your hiring process. Think about the responses you need to hear in order for them to move on to the next filter. After you are done with each candidate’s phone screen answer this question – Were they strong enough to make it to the next step? Don’t get caught up in questioning an earlier decision. Don’t feel the need to compare candidates on a point-by-point basis. The only thing you should be doing is making a determination if this candidate will be making it to the next step.
4. The last phone screen essential is to know (ahead of time) what the next step is in your process. I would recommend that you objectively assess each candidate before moving to the face-to-face interview. A simple reason – even bad salespeople can be adept at building rapport. In fact, they can be so good that an experienced hiring manager can get drawn in by their persona. I submit to you these 2 posts (Salespeople Are Professional Actors and The Unsaid Often Says It All) to illustrate why we assess all candidates before the in-person interview.

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Yahoo Hot Jobs offers Bounce Back After A Big Mistake. The article provides 6 steps for recovering from a significant error. This topic is of great importance in hiring strong salespeople. Sales requires people who have a unique ability to handle rejection and move on without flinching. Similarly, strong salespeople take responsibility for their actions, including failures. And let’s add one more – strong sales managers hold their salespeople accountable and do not accept excuses. You can see how interrelated all of these topics are to sales success.

This article offers straight-forward advice for dealing with a big mistake. Here is the one that caught my attention:

1. Own it.
While many of us would prefer to forget our mistakes, initially you need to acknowledge to your supervisor and everyone involved that you’re accepting responsibility for what went wrong. If you do this right (that is, seriously and sincerely), you’ll only have to do it once.

There is no more important advice than that – the first step is to take responsibility. We have encountered many salespeople who simply don’t. They possess a myriad of excuses and blatantly use them to provide cover for themselves. Don’t let them do this. A strong sales manager needs to put an end to excuse making and focus the salesperson on owning up to their personal responsibilities.

Here are the 6 bulleted suggestions from the article:

1. Own it.
2. Take the heat.
3. Don’t beat yourself up.
4. Learn from the past.
5. Keep it in perspective.
6. Move on.

I’ll close with a good quote straight from the article:

Failure is not in the falling down but in the staying down.

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There are certain windows for sourcing salespeople that are better than other times of the year. Right now we are in the best window for sourcing salespeople for the entire year. The reason is that many salespeople are on commission plans that pay out the highest total after the year is completed. In many instances, that commission payout occurs towards the end of January.

I spent many years selling on these types of plans and can tell you that I would not leave in January since I was waiting for my largest commission check of the year. The different variations of commission plans I sold under usually had some accelerated clause or a cumulative commission that increased through the year with the Q4 payout being the largest.

The most dangerous time for any employer to retain a strong salesperson is right after they receive their big commission check and are staring at a new quota. We have seen this play out recently in the sales positions we are sourcing across the country. The response rate has ticked up dramatically over the past few weeks as salespeople eye new career opportunities for 2007.

If you are thinking about hiring salespeople this year, now is an ideal time to start the process.

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I just read a sales ad this morning that opens:

Wouldn’t you like to be in the Caribbean right now, relaxing by the ocean, with palm trees all around you? Well, next year you might be able to…if you work with us!

I guess that is some form of an emotional word picture. I think it is lame – the reward speaks to not working (a Caribbean vacation).

Believe me, I’m sitting here in the Twin Cities where we haven’t been above 0 degrees for 4 days. A tropical beach sounds inviting. Yet, if you are looking for a new salesperson, I believe the approach this ad takes will draw in candidates who are looking for a fast buck and a long vacation. That profile isn’t necessarily one that invokes a solid work ethic.

Sales success is normally achieved by consistent, skilled behavior applied over time. Far better to take that approach with a sales ad.

Note: The ad ends with the worst possible line you can put in any sales ad – No phone calls please.

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