Some companies believe selling systems are restrictive. Other companies view them as methodical and clumsy. I, for one, am not a fan of the sequential step approaches that require this question be asked first, followed by this question and so on. Those approaches drip with insincerity. But a selling system is important. From ManageSmarter.com’s What’s Your Plan? The survey of over 500 sales professionals proves what most executives should already know: Their reps need a plan of action. TAS found that companies that give their sales staff a concrete plan to close deals experience 39 percent less turnover. Their salespeople are also more than 50 percent more likely to meet… Read More
Continue ReadingWrong Way Purchasing
Hammer’s recent post brought back the memory of a experience I had about 18 months ago. I was with a sales rep at a meeting hastily put together because a vendor’s VP of Sales was coming to town. Although we had several very good, qualified meetings on the schedule, our local rep wanted to make sure the VP was kept quite busy with appointments. So we walked into this last minute meeting not really knowing much about why we were there (man, do I hate that!!!). I asked the attendees to tell us what their role was within the organization, why they were attending the meeting and what they hoped… Read More
Continue ReadingWrong Way Prospecting
We post ads in many locations as part of our sourcing activities. Those ads usually lead to solicitations for services as a set response to new listings. We received one email today that caught my eye. Here is an excerpt: We can have qualified candidates available for you to interview, hire or work within 24 to 48 hours. Our extensive database of qualified candidates and team of experts enable us to provide you with candidates who exactly match what you are looking for. An interesting proposition, don’t you think? Here is the rub for me – how do they know what I need? 1 to 2 days and they’ll have… Read More
Continue ReadingValue – You Or Your Product?
Selling Power.com published an article entitled Six Sins of Selling that discusses modern changes in selling and sales people’s need to change and adapt to them. Certainly that statement is true, but item #2 especially caught my attention. Sales Sin #2: Selling personality rather than value Customers will buy from people they like. There is no question about it. Today€™s buyer, however, is much more sophisticated and has much more information at his or her disposal. The information revolution gives customers a global arsenal of data and an almost limitless number of options. In the past personality may have been your core value. Today it will deliver only a slight… Read More
Continue ReadingSales Skills Always Trump Style
There is a myth regarding strong salespeople that they have to be outgoing. I contributed a short piece to an article earlier this year in regards to this exact error. And then I read this quick blurb for Selling Power’s Identifying the Skills You Want in a Candidate: Sure salespeople need to be outgoing and driven €“ those are a given, but what about qualities that people need to have to fit in your particular position? No, that is not a given and not a truth. Writing in such generalities is not accurate because selling style is not as important as sales skills. Style is simply a matter of how… Read More
Continue ReadingInvest In Hiring, Save On Firing
We often speak of the costs of making a bad hire especially in sales. One bad sales hire can send prospects to your competition and sully your company’s reputation in the market all while you pay this salesperson. But what if it goes even further than that? In our litigious society, what if an employee decides to make a run at a discrimination lawsuit? BusinessWeek online offers up some incredible examples in Fear of Firing: -Many of the lawsuits may seem ridiculous. IBM is currently defending a case filed by James C. Pacenza, a plant worker it dismissed for visiting an adult Internet chat room while on the job. In… Read More
Continue ReadingHow Not To Open A Cover Email
From the opening line of a cover email: I am out of work right now from some bad luck and am looking for a new job. Outside of cursing, it is difficult to imagine a less impressive way to open a cover email. Almost anything would be better. I read a different cover email in which the candidate referred to himself in the third person. “Jim has excellent communication skills. Jim has achieved success at….” I wouldn’t recommend that approach. Ever.
Continue ReadingQualify or Just Bring Cookies
Through our recent assessment work, we have noticed a number of candidates with traits that are not considered desirable in a sales role. In particular, those who have high Social and low Utilitarian motivations. Often, these people have a need to be liked, accepted and helpful even to their own detriment. Those traits are desirable in many positions, but not sales. The main reason is this type of salesperson’s inability to qualify prospects by asking strong questions. A sales person that doesn’t qualify opportunities wastes valuable time, energy and company resources. They typically will take any meeting they can get, return with no particular purpose in mind and spend way… Read More
Continue ReadingGo To Your Strengths – The Art Of Playing Dumb
Red Bird and myself are fighting over the chance to claim this CareerJournal.com article – The Art of Playing Dumb To Deter Unwanted Tasks. Jared Sandberg is an entertaining writer and I highly recommend this article. At first I thought it was tongue-in-cheek, but it is not. This ability is a real artform. Strategic incompetence isn’t about having a strategy that fails, but a failure that succeeds. It almost always works to deflect work one doesn’t want to do — without ever having to admit it. For junior staffers, it’s a way of attaining power through powerlessness. For managers, it can juice their status by pretending to be incapable of… Read More
Continue ReadingIncreased Pay or Better Benefits? That Is The Question.
So which is more important to employees, pay or benefits (specifically health benefits)? In last week’s Workforce Management’s newsletter, a nationwide survey was recently conducted by the National Business Group on Health that asked 1,619 employed people that specific question. They found that employees in the U.S. consider their health plan to be their most important benefit. Furthermore, in a world of rising health care costs, employees would rather give up wage increases and other benefits to preserve health care coverage. More than 50% said they would accept fewer choices in order to keep their premiums low and roughly 75% would rather receive employer health benefits than get paid more… Read More
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